So there’s Marie Antoinette, about to get her head chopped off. The caption says “Marie Antoinette’s last-ditch effort to save her head.” She’s got a word bubble, too, that says “And ice cream! I said, ‘Let them eat cake and ice cream!’”
I don’t get it at all–but then, I’m not much of a history student. What’s this mean?
Marie Antoinette is widely rumored to have said, when asked what the peasants of France should do since they had no bread, “No bread? Let them eat cake!”
So, this would be her attempt to make it sound like she was being nice. Cake and ice cream, that’s nice. Marie was not nice.
That was a terrible explanation, but hopefully it gave you an idea.
Btw, welcome to the SDMB!
The story goes that when Marie Antoinette was told the poor were starving because they had no bread she said “If they have no bread then let them eat cake”.
Of course Cecil has the real story
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_334.html
Trying to offer something “good” to prevent herself from being killed? That’s my take on it…
Can someone please explain this to me??
I may be mistaken (and I probably am), but the way I’ve always understood it was that it was Marie’s lack of understanding of the real problems of the poor. They had none of the necessities of life, and she suggested they just eat something else. I’ve always seen it along the lines of a rich person responding to a poor person’s lack of cash by saying, “Well, just write a check, or use your credit card!” The person in question is missing the point that there is nothing there in the first place.
Well, I’m probably way off, but this explanation has always made sense to me, anyway. 
Super Gnat:
Anything for a fellow “Phule’s Company” fan…
The basic notion was that the French nobles (such as the queen) were so out of touch with the common folk that they couldn’t even relate to the notion that people were starving. Her reaction to people “not having bread” was to think that they should just eat something else.
As for the Far Side cartoon, that takes the cluelessness one level deeper - not understanding why her “let them eat cake” line was met with hostility, she thinks maybe her suggestion was not sufficient, so adds that they should eat ice cream as well…compunding her problem, not fixing it (thus the humor).
And if that doesn’t explain it cmkeller perhaps you could draw them a picture. 
[sup]but Far Side already did that.[/sup]
Look, we in 21st century America are not unlike Marie Antoinette- to us, bread is something we use to sop up the gravy from our dinner, so if we run out of bread (or if the local market is out of bread), we’re a bit miffed, but it’s not a big deal.
We forget that, until fairly recently in human history, bread wasn’t a minor accompaniment to our dinner, bread WAS our dinner! In the past, when people prayed “Give us this day our daily bread,” what they meant was, “PLEASE, God, let us have enough bread to stay alive another day.”
Bread was to 18th century Frenchmen what potatoes were to the Irish in 1947- it was practically all they got to eat. So, when blight struck the potato crop, Irishmen starved. And when stores in Paris had no bread, Frenchmen starved.
As others have noted, when people spread the rumor that Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake,” they were making the point that French royals were out to lunch, and were so removed from everyday reality, they didn’t know or care that their people were going hungry. Just like modern Americans, Marie Antoinette supposedly thought a dearth of bread was a trifling matter, not a matter of life and death.
The Irish potato famine began in the 1840s, not the 1940s. Otherwise, good answer.
Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) made a joke about the Irish Famine, similar to the OP cartoon.
He said, reflecting on the potato crop failure, …“Well, expect no sympathy from me if you’re giong to be a fussy eater…” (or something to that effect).
Actually, to quote (just found it…)
Hee hee hee. 
No, no, no! I think you’ve all got it wrong. She was saying “I said Ice Cream” because they thought she was saying “I Scream”. Get it? Let them eat cake and I scream…
I had always assumed that the “let them eat cake” line was circulated to illustrate her callousness rather than an innocent lack of understanding i.e. she knew well that there was no alternative to bread for the poor. Of course that wouldn’t make sense in the context of the cartoon, so it’s probably just me being a bit slow on the uptake.
[hijack]
Man, I thought I was the only one who’d every heard of them, and now two in one thread?!?
manwitha, though it may be your interpretation, that’s a context in which I have never heard the quote used. She was just so pampered that she thought the poor were rioting due to lack of choice in bakery products.
I heard that “cake” was a euphemism for “shit,” which would explain (if Larson is coming from the same place) why the statement outraged the populace in the cartoon.
I was told ( by my history teacher back in school, so it must be true!) that what gets translated as ‘cake’ was actually some sort of animal fodder (maybe like a seed-cake)
I learned she actually said “brioche”, which is a fancy sort of cake/bread thing. But it was propaganda anyway.
Thanks cmkeller! Never knew there were so many interpretations, though. And yeah, I like Phule’s Company, although the first two are vastly better than the last two.