I don’t get the joke here
I think it’s the 2 lady warthog’s being enamored with the one that walked in.
Sometimes you’ll hear someone say so-and-so is “god’s gift to man,” usually used to describe an attractive man among ladies, and this is the equivalent.
I get that part, I don’t get off it’s referring to something, or some kind of current event from the time.
All the warthogs at the party are very ugly and have warts, including the handsome one. There’s nothing really to distinguish the handsome one except he’s got the cool eyes thing going on and he’s smoking. So you can interpret the joke a couple of ways: a) it’s silly Larson anthropomorphism where humans like us reading the cartoon don’t get what attributes animals would find attractive or b) every animal thinks cool eyes and smoking is cool, which probably circles back to being a commentary about those things not being terribly cool at all. Or a hundred other meanings I haven’t gotten.
I can’t say I’ve ever heard that term used without heavy sarcasm before
