About that New Yorker cover …
Okay: I thought it was funny. I realize everyone is freaking out about it and how it embodies every stereotype ever about Barack and Michelle Obama; I thought it was brilliant. The question, I suppose, is how does an audience — the voting public, AMERICA — engage with something like this? Do they see it as satire, as a reflection of the horrible and over the top way that the right has worked to portray Obama as a terrorist? Or do they look at a cover like that and say, oh jeez, the New Yorker shows Michelle Obama looking like a radical and Barack Obama burning the flag. I guess Michelle Obama is a radical and Barack Obama burns the flag. Or is it bad in a softer but still insidious way, wherein a cover like this just keeps the debate ON those false issues (patriotism, terrorist fist jabs) when the hope is that the media can turn the page and focus on the issues.
We struggle quite a bit with sarcasm at Pinko. I think it’s an effective tool and a way to bring some levity and fun back into politics, and I think the New Yorker cover captures how preposterous the attacks are on Obama. So does he have to reject and denounce just because he has to reject and denounce anything that touches the Obama-as-fist-jabbing-terrorist meme?
Maybe the question really is how smart do we think New Yorker readers are … or how media savvy is the nation at large? If the answer is not very — and it may be — than I’m probably wrong, and this cover is a problem for Obama even though I think it’s a brilliant sendup. Here is the response from David Remnick at the New Yorker; what do you think?
About The Author - Ben Wyskida is a writer, activist, conscientious hedonist and political communications strategist living in Brooklyn. - Visit Ben's site.
Loading ...
The burning flag in the fireplace might be a little much …
I guess so. A colleague of mine thinks that Obama’s campaign is doing a smart thing by fanning the flames of outrage because them versus The New Yorker makes them look effectively NOT elitist. Like, these liberal mags are being mean to Barack. If so it’s smart — maybe him and Michelle even like the cover!
Perhaps. Then again, maybe it makes them look humorless like they have such a bad sense of humor that even the New Yorker is too irreverent for them.
Just makes me wanna cut his nuts off…
The New Yorker is an obnoxious, elitist publication that is not by any means progressive. They supported the Iraq War, for example, making it — at best — a bourgeois neo-liberal rag that’s worth less than toilet paper.
I heard something today which I think puts this controversy in perspective. Of course, the New Yorker intended this to be satire — but it was also humor with their typical condescending attitude of “isn’t it ridiculous that those ignorant redneck plebians actually believe that.”
Their definition of humor is to make fun of those stupid people who live in fly-over country. I for one am glad that Obama’s putting up a major fight.
i dont know maybe it needed like, Karl Rove peering out of the fireplace to make it clear its a sendup.
The REAL problem here is that the article totally sucks. I gave it a read and I think it glazes over the intensity of the community organizing work he did. Sure, maybe he was planning to run for office someday but you don’t spend three years doing that shit unless you believe in it a little.
I disagree, Ben. I only read through it once, but I think the point of the article was more about what Obama did AFTER he returned to Chicago from Harvard Law School — (he was only a community organizer between college and law school.)
I grew up in Hyde Park, and Barack was my neighbor when I was in High School. The article’s description of Hyde Park politics was pretty much spot-on.
the thing about the joke is that you sort of have to be an obama supporter to enjoy it. if you’re one of the “ignorant” who secretly subscribe to any of these fears, you’re put on the defensive. since racism does not get openly expressed in america to the degree that it used be (more often given vent in select, closed groups of individuals wellknown to one another), the cover might unite them in both their contempt for the “sophisticated” new yorkers and for obama. people on the fence? well, how did they react to the relentless positioning of hilary as a harridan, of gore as a robot, of kerry as a trust fund brat? what’s disturbing about the cover to some on the left is not that it isn’t right to the point and quite funny, it’s that you won’t see any similar mainstream satire of mccain being brainwashed in a cage in vietnam, becoming the manchurian candidate he is; you will only see his age skewered, which is a no brainer and devoid of political bite.
that’s true … there is that Seattle P-I thing lampooning McCain a bit but there won’t be anything similar. I think the age thing has a little bite, but not as much as … terrorist fist-jabbing muslim flag burner.
This is funny …
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0708/Another_magazine_cover.html
So is this …
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0708/Another_cover.html
This is exactly the kind of debate that makes it harder and harder for me to convince our neighbours here in London that we actually have a sense of humour. You should hear the conversations. ‘No, really we do get sarcasm… honestly, sometimes we do satire… of course Americans can be subtle.’ As The Evening Standard pointed out today (The Evening Standard!) Private Eye does worse and more offensive than this on an off day. Have a look:
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/covers.php?showme=1213&issue=1213