Obama: Satire Is Offensive
The latest cover of The New Yorker, drawn by Barry Blitt, looks like it will be the latest fake outrage since The Huffington Post has it as the top story with a red headline. (just to let you know how important it is.) I think they should have double underlined it. Let's all cancel our New Yorker subscriptions! Barry Blitt and Jesse Jackson should tattoo "I'm sorry" on their fucking faces! Do they use soy-based inks? Let's investigate! Oh hey, didn't the mortgage industry almost collapse Friday?
You'd think Obama and his supporters would appreciate a sympathetic magazine like The New Yorker lampooning the right-wing caricature of him. But satire is too divisive for Obama. His campaign condemned the image:
I'm not so sure about condemning the scary drawing so quickly. It makes his campaign seem like The New Yorker is on their radar. New Yorker=Elitist. Could backfire. They may have some gay friends in those red states, but a subscription to The New Yorker? That's for people who wear a monocle.
Yup. Jake Tapper's ABC blog: "sophisticates...liberal politics... Upper East Side liberal...superior." Jake is so anti-elitist he includes a hyperlink to the Urban Dictionary entry on "dap" so all his readers--farmers, mill workers, cattle ranchers--will know what's going on.
Wait....my spellcheck doesn't recognize "dap" or "Obama". Racism or satire?
You'd think Obama and his supporters would appreciate a sympathetic magazine like The New Yorker lampooning the right-wing caricature of him. But satire is too divisive for Obama. His campaign condemned the image:
“The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."They "may think" it's satire? Is it possible that it is something else? A photorealistic illustration of the Senator or perhaps a crossword puzzle?
I'm not so sure about condemning the scary drawing so quickly. It makes his campaign seem like The New Yorker is on their radar. New Yorker=Elitist. Could backfire. They may have some gay friends in those red states, but a subscription to The New Yorker? That's for people who wear a monocle.
Yup. Jake Tapper's ABC blog: "sophisticates...liberal politics... Upper East Side liberal...superior." Jake is so anti-elitist he includes a hyperlink to the Urban Dictionary entry on "dap" so all his readers--farmers, mill workers, cattle ranchers--will know what's going on.
Wait....my spellcheck doesn't recognize "dap" or "Obama". Racism or satire?
posted by Matt Bors at
1:42 AM
5 Comments:
I haven't received my copy of the NYer in the mail yet, so this is a pleasant surprise. What a great cover!
I shall have my man get it framed as he retrieves my polo pants from the tailor's. Pip, pip!
The reaction seems to fall along one of two lines:
1) Outrage, whether it's real or staged, grimly restrained or frothing at the mouth (Daily Kos is really good at that last one)
2) "You don't understand context or art."
Very few people seemed to have my reaction, which was a strained smile and the thought "That didn't come off at all, did it? (And the first thing black women are going to see is that hair.)"
It's not insignificant that Jonah Goldberg, of all people, said that "it's almost exactly the sort of cover you could expect to find on the front of National Review."
A lot of people pointed out that the New Yorker wasn't likely to run an image of John McCain dribbling into a pair of Depends with a trophy wife festooned with Bloomies bags at his side. I think the more apt analogy would be Jet or Ebony parodying the New Yorker by running a cartoon of David Remnick with a Shylock nose chasing a dollar bill down the street.
In Portland, if the Willamette Week ran a cover cartoon of Sam Adams modeling a dress while he fisted a guy with a stack of Streisand CDs nearby, I think they'd have some explaining to do...and I loathe Sam Adams.
So, yeah, I'm not a staunch Obamaite, and I really hate it when people don't think, but this image not only says a bit about the knuckledraggers, but also about Blitt's and Remnick's lack of thought process as well. The New Yorker staff would be the first to be curling their lips if a conservative magazine used this and called it an ironic parody of the ignorant, and it cheeses me when the leftward-leaning insists that they can't be racist because, well, they just aren't, QED.
I see your point, Kevin.
Make sure to check David Horsey's comic:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?id=1792
Although it's not exactly clear to me, because it has words on it to the cover to help it along whereas New Yorker covers don't. I do wonder what the newstand edition of the New Yorker looks like. They always have that flap with text on it. I wonder if adds context or plays up the irony.
If magazines like the New Yorker want to get into the political cartoon fray, I think they should actually run political cartoons and not just do covers once in a while.
That Harper's was the home of Thomas Nast and now has no cartoonist--only pretentious paintings sprinkled throughout their first section, is a disgrace.
On Sam Adams it there would have to be smears that would warrant something like that not just claiming hipster irony. But yeah, if it was a big issue, like Obama's smears, it could be done right.
Although, I'd recommend they use a clear headline:)
I think Michael Gerber at A Tiny Revolution gets to the heart of the issue. As Kevin Allman points out, it's only a little bit funny. For satire, it's not too impressive. Even so, Obama supporters (like me) really shouldn't get in the habit of outrage over lukewarm satire. It's not necessary and only reinforces the shrill, PC, easily offended, stereotype of the Modern American Liberal.
Lighten up - for once our guy is the cool one.
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