Judge, 1927-08-27 · page 25 of 36
Judge — August 27, 1927 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a satirical piece mocking early radio programming and its audience. The cartoon depicts two children listening to "Uncle Frankie," a radio personality, while the text presents a crude joke about a child asking his grandfather to "make a noise like a frog" so the child can collect a reward when the grandfather dies ("croaks"). The satire targets: 1. **Radio entertainment's low quality** — mocking the simplistic, often nonsensical content broadcast to listeners 2. **Gullible audiences** — depicting radio fans as naive, childlike consumers 3. **Commercial radio** — suggesting the medium traffics in crude humor and dubious claims The "diphtheria serum" reference appears to be a non-sequitur typical of the absurdist humor Judge employed. The overall tone is dismissive of radio culture as entertainment beneath serious consideration.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Hello, little radio fans, this is Uncle Frankie, about to bend your ear again with his kilocycles. A little ape accosted his granpa once and said, “Hey, fish-face, make a noise like a frog, will you?” “Why, Eglantine?” inquired the bewildered oldster. “Because the pater says that when you croak the astounding answer. Mush on, malamutes, Nome tonight. ll get five thousand smackers!” was we've to get that diphtheria serum to comicbooks.com