I can only think that in this universe the phrase— call “X” a Y— means to refer to Y as an “X”.
So this strip is Panel 2: Mutt: So I should refer to a policeman as a “mule”. Judge: Of course not! You are insulting him”. Panel 3: Er, Is it okay if I refer to a mule as “policeman”. Judge: Yes.
And so panel 4 is Mutt refering to the policeman as “policeman” but it’s clear he is implying the policeman is actually a mule.
Thing is…. In what dialect at what time does: call “X” a Y– mean refer to Y as an “X” and how in heck could the people in the place hear quotation marks.
I’m not sure how much effort it’s worth investing in a re-run of a zombie strip. Not only are all the cartoonists ever involved dead, the same is true for the twerp who finageled control over the strip’s copyright and obliterated the real author’s name with his own.
The jerk simply screwed up the joke completely. The second panel should say
‘So I can’t call a mule a policeman?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’
Then toss the third panel.
I think I once saw this joke in a book published in the thirties.
This joke works exactly as written in Spanish, but the names need to be flip-flopped for it to work in English. This looks like a careless translation job; I’m just wondering why this would happen with Mutt & Jeff if it was written in English.
I think that the comic is using “a” in a dialect form meaning “at”. I did find this definition of “a” :
So in that context the line ‘call “mule” a policeman’ does make sense. Dialect was a large part of humor in the early twentieth century and people were used to reading it in the comics.
I have no idea what’s going on here, but I’m glad to see someone besides me gets upset when they see “Pierre S. Beaumont” on Mutt and Jeff.
Is ‘mule’ a euphemism for ‘*$$’? Otherwise, why call a policeman a mule? I’ve heard ’em called pigs, but never mules.
I’m wondering if Mutt (or Jeff, don’t know who is who) actually knows a policeman who’s name (or nickname) is Mule. Maybe he also knows the guy from the Asimov “Foundation” books.
Guys, you’re all overthinking this.
Of course today we would all say “Call X a ‘Y'” if we mean to use ‘Y’ to refer to X. But here the use of quotation marks makes it clear Jeff is saying “Call ‘Y’ a X” (or, to normalize the syntax, “Call a X ‘Y'”), still using ‘Y’ to refer to X.
Sure it would have been clearer if he said “Call a mule ‘Policeman'” but I get the impression that the reverse syntax was not unknown in the earlier era.
Red herrings like “‘a’ really means ‘at’ here” don’t help. =)
“Is ‘mule’ a euphemism for ‘*$$’? Otherwise, why call a policeman a mule? I’ve heard ’em called pigs, but never mules.”
Mules are thought of as extraordinarily stubborn and not very bright.
(In truth, they are fairly smart, and refuse to be led into dangerous situations.)
So, calling someone a mule is an insult, not specific to policemen.
Of course, it seems whoever wrote this strip never heard of the first amendment.
Oh, and my opinion of the dialog was that he was trying to “rabbit season, duck season” the judge.
I also had the same understanding as James Pollock. In addition, as already touched on, I can only think this is some old grammar where ‘call “Policeman”‘ is a single verbal structure, similar to if we said “he name-called that man” (where the assumption now is that if you here “someone called someone else a name”, the someone has been in some way derisive or they categorized the other someone without stating the reason (e.g. by calling them any of a bunch of words ending in “-ist”).)
Treesong’s explanation makes the most sense to me — so, the basic joke that was flubbed is you can’t call a policeman a jackass, but you can call a jackass a policeman; since that guy in blue is clearly a jackass, not a policeman, it’s OK to call him “policeman”.
I suspect this might have been part of an arc, and there is a mule named “policeman” and possibly that this policeman’s name is “mule”. That’s the linguistic explanation for using quotation marks sometimes and not others. It makes a skosh more sense that way, I think.
>Guys, you’re all overthinking this.
Well, so are you, I guess.
>Sure it would have been clearer if he said “Call a mule ‘Policeman’” but I get the impression that the reverse syntax was not unknown in the earlier era.
Well, that’s what I find odd. It is very perverse and alien syntax. And although I’m fond of popular books, popular songs, stage productions, movies and comics of the era it is one I have *NEVER* come across and is hard to fathom.
>Red herrings like “‘a’ really means ‘at’ here” don’t help.
They help tremendously! They explain how such an utterly alien very unenglish like syntax could have existed.
…
>Treesong’s explanation makes the most sense to me
Um. Isn’t *everyone*’s explanation (except James Pollock’s Duck Season/Rabbit Season) the the same as Treesong’s?
Here’s the joke that I read (I think) in “Lum ‘n’ Abner’s Jot ‘Em Down Store”:
A man is hauled into court for calling a policeman a jackass. The judge tells the man he mustn’t do that. The man asks the judge, “Is it OK if I call a jackass a policeman?” The judge says there’s nothing wrong with that. The man turns to the cop and says, “Good day, policeman.”
The strip screws up the joke badly by reversing “policeman” and “mule” in Jeff’s lines. Pretty sloppy on the part of both the cartoonist and the editor.
I would guess that someone changed “jackass” to “mule” because they thought “jackass” wasn’t suitable for a newspaper comic. A jackass is just a male donkey, but it does contain the word “ass,” so someone might complain about it.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Weird.
Weird syntax.
I can only think that in this universe the phrase— call “X” a Y— means to refer to Y as an “X”.
So this strip is Panel 2: Mutt: So I should refer to a policeman as a “mule”. Judge: Of course not! You are insulting him”. Panel 3: Er, Is it okay if I refer to a mule as “policeman”. Judge: Yes.
And so panel 4 is Mutt refering to the policeman as “policeman” but it’s clear he is implying the policeman is actually a mule.
Thing is…. In what dialect at what time does: call “X” a Y– mean refer to Y as an “X” and how in heck could the people in the place hear quotation marks.
I’m not sure how much effort it’s worth investing in a re-run of a zombie strip. Not only are all the cartoonists ever involved dead, the same is true for the twerp who finageled control over the strip’s copyright and obliterated the real author’s name with his own.
The jerk simply screwed up the joke completely. The second panel should say
‘So I can’t call a mule a policeman?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’
Then toss the third panel.
I think I once saw this joke in a book published in the thirties.
This joke works exactly as written in Spanish, but the names need to be flip-flopped for it to work in English. This looks like a careless translation job; I’m just wondering why this would happen with Mutt & Jeff if it was written in English.
I think that the comic is using “a” in a dialect form meaning “at”. I did find this definition of “a” :
chiefly dialectal : on, in, at
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/a
So in that context the line ‘call “mule” a policeman’ does make sense. Dialect was a large part of humor in the early twentieth century and people were used to reading it in the comics.
I have no idea what’s going on here, but I’m glad to see someone besides me gets upset when they see “Pierre S. Beaumont” on Mutt and Jeff.
Is ‘mule’ a euphemism for ‘*$$’? Otherwise, why call a policeman a mule? I’ve heard ’em called pigs, but never mules.
I’m wondering if Mutt (or Jeff, don’t know who is who) actually knows a policeman who’s name (or nickname) is Mule. Maybe he also knows the guy from the Asimov “Foundation” books.
Guys, you’re all overthinking this.
Of course today we would all say “Call X a ‘Y'” if we mean to use ‘Y’ to refer to X. But here the use of quotation marks makes it clear Jeff is saying “Call ‘Y’ a X” (or, to normalize the syntax, “Call a X ‘Y'”), still using ‘Y’ to refer to X.
Sure it would have been clearer if he said “Call a mule ‘Policeman'” but I get the impression that the reverse syntax was not unknown in the earlier era.
Red herrings like “‘a’ really means ‘at’ here” don’t help. =)
“Is ‘mule’ a euphemism for ‘*$$’? Otherwise, why call a policeman a mule? I’ve heard ’em called pigs, but never mules.”
Mules are thought of as extraordinarily stubborn and not very bright.
(In truth, they are fairly smart, and refuse to be led into dangerous situations.)
So, calling someone a mule is an insult, not specific to policemen.
Of course, it seems whoever wrote this strip never heard of the first amendment.
Oh, and my opinion of the dialog was that he was trying to “rabbit season, duck season” the judge.
I also had the same understanding as James Pollock. In addition, as already touched on, I can only think this is some old grammar where ‘call “Policeman”‘ is a single verbal structure, similar to if we said “he name-called that man” (where the assumption now is that if you here “someone called someone else a name”, the someone has been in some way derisive or they categorized the other someone without stating the reason (e.g. by calling them any of a bunch of words ending in “-ist”).)
Treesong’s explanation makes the most sense to me — so, the basic joke that was flubbed is you can’t call a policeman a jackass, but you can call a jackass a policeman; since that guy in blue is clearly a jackass, not a policeman, it’s OK to call him “policeman”.
I suspect this might have been part of an arc, and there is a mule named “policeman” and possibly that this policeman’s name is “mule”. That’s the linguistic explanation for using quotation marks sometimes and not others. It makes a skosh more sense that way, I think.
>Guys, you’re all overthinking this.
Well, so are you, I guess.
>Sure it would have been clearer if he said “Call a mule ‘Policeman’” but I get the impression that the reverse syntax was not unknown in the earlier era.
Well, that’s what I find odd. It is very perverse and alien syntax. And although I’m fond of popular books, popular songs, stage productions, movies and comics of the era it is one I have *NEVER* come across and is hard to fathom.
>Red herrings like “‘a’ really means ‘at’ here” don’t help.
They help tremendously! They explain how such an utterly alien very unenglish like syntax could have existed.
…
>Treesong’s explanation makes the most sense to me
Um. Isn’t *everyone*’s explanation (except James Pollock’s Duck Season/Rabbit Season) the the same as Treesong’s?
Here’s the joke that I read (I think) in “Lum ‘n’ Abner’s Jot ‘Em Down Store”:
A man is hauled into court for calling a policeman a jackass. The judge tells the man he mustn’t do that. The man asks the judge, “Is it OK if I call a jackass a policeman?” The judge says there’s nothing wrong with that. The man turns to the cop and says, “Good day, policeman.”
The strip screws up the joke badly by reversing “policeman” and “mule” in Jeff’s lines. Pretty sloppy on the part of both the cartoonist and the editor.
I would guess that someone changed “jackass” to “mule” because they thought “jackass” wasn’t suitable for a newspaper comic. A jackass is just a male donkey, but it does contain the word “ass,” so someone might complain about it.
Can’t fool them flies though.