The New Yorker finally made me laugh…
It was just three lines in the May 4, 2009 issue of The New Yorker:
"CORRECTION: The cartoon on page 43
of the April 27th issue was incorrectly
credited; the artist was Karen Sneider."
Oh. That cleared things up for me in a big way, and actually made me laugh.
Last week, when I first glanced at the cartoon in question, I thought, okay, there's another Jack Ziegler cartoon. Then I noticed the signature and thought, hmmm, a new cartoonist, let me check this out in the masthead. And the listing of cartoonists in the masthead indicated very clearly that the cartoon was drawn by Edward Koren.
Edward Koren!! At that point I was completely at a loss and all kinds of thoughts rushed through my mind: What's going on? Was Koren going through a late-life crisis? Did he have a crippling accident that I hadn't heard about? Did cartoon editor Bob Mankoff finally read him the riot act: no more of your frenzied scratchings — if you want to see another cartoon of yours in The New Yorker, you had better shape up and draw more Saturday Evening Post-ish? And, finally, I wondered why in the world Koren would sign the cartoon in that peculiar way, where the "o" plainly looks like an "a".
As I said, it's all very clear to me now. And very funny. And the person I feel sorriest for is Karen Sneider. This was only her second cartoon in The New Yorker — what a way to treat a newcomer!
This is the "Karen" (from the April 27th issue): 
This is a typical "Koren": 
And for those of you who are still with me, this is a recent New Yorker cartoon by Jack Ziegler: 