2011-08-20
Explanation
This comic shows a British man at a police station in America, desperately reporting that his wife has been missing for three days and that he received a bloody ear in an envelope. The police officer, rather than responding to this alarming report, says, "I'm sorry, I lost the thread of that. Your accent is just SO adorable." The caption below reads, "It must be hard being British in America."
The humor plays on the well-known American tendency to find British accents charming and endearing, to the point of being completely distracted by them. The joke escalates the stakes to an absurd degree -- this is a life-or-death missing persons case with evidence of violence -- yet the officer is so enchanted by the man's accent that she cannot even focus on the horrifying details he is describing. It satirizes the way Americans sometimes treat British people more like novelty entertainment than real people with real concerns.