8 Quotes & Sayings By Robert Mankoff

Robert Mankoff is a cartoonist and the editorial cartoonist for The New Yorker. He is also a columnist for the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and Wired. He is the author of several books, including The World According to Bob Mankoff: The Cartoonist's View of Politics and Society. Before taking up his current work in 1978, Mr Read more

Mankoff was a staff cartoonist for Newsweek from 1969 to 1974 and a staff writer and cartoonist for the San Francisco Examiner from 1966 to 1969. He has drawn cartoons for Time, Life, and other publications.

1
There's public humor, and there's private humor, and they're all appropriate in their own way, and you shouldn't - just as you wouldn't have a megaphone and say certain things that you would say around your friends - things that are perfectly all right within your close social group with whom you share a certain context. Robert Mankoff
2
Humor levels the playing field. I understood that early on - that was something I had. Robert Mankoff
3
The interesting thing about humor is that in humor, you - in logic, something is A or not A. In humor, it's both A and not A. Robert Mankoff
4
The line between humor and bad taste is your audience, in which some people will find everything offensive, and some people will find nothing offensive, but the truth is that most humor originates in what would be called bad taste. Robert Mankoff
5
One question about a joke is, how well is the strangeness of the situation resolved? At 'The New Yorker', we retain a lot of incongruity, tapping the playful part of the mind - Monty Python-type stuff. We also try to use humor as a vehicle for communicating ideas. Not editorial comment, but observation. Robert Mankoff
6
I'm pretty adept with computers and Photoshop for my blog, and I found my style with a conversational voice and an image-ready column. Robert Mankoff
7
I think funny is just the foundation. I don't really think, to some extent, funny is the absolute most important thing. It should also communicate some idea through the medium of cartooning. Just to be funny is... You know what, the things that you laugh hardest at aren't cartoons. Robert Mankoff