I think I'm violating some kind of rule by going so long without blogging on this subject. I found the image to be neither especially funny as satire, nor especially outrageous as bad satire. The problem, though, is that the actually existing whispering campaign against Obama is so severe that it doesn't really admit of satire-by-exaggeration.
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New Yorker Cover
14 Jul 2008 06:01 pm
Comments (104)
The lefty blogosphere has officially gotten as weird about art as Jesse Helms and Rudy Giuliani.
what rock did you crawl out from under?
Matthew, of course, was outraged by this TNR cover. He blogged about his outrage for days.
Oh, that's right. He didn't. Obama works for the interests of trust-fund scumbags, while Clinton doesn't, so different standards of taste are permissible.
It's all about what's "helpful" in defending economic royalism, of course.
Canada’s National Post explains why the Obama campaign is right to be upset:
Basically, our poor brains have trouble processing repeated lies and “truthiness.”
"what rock did you crawl out from under?"
This one. It's a rock under which exists a sophistication that sees the limits of the Stalinist social realist conception of art.
Obama works for the interests of trust-fund scumbags, while Clinton doesn't
When did this happen? I thought that was the *job* of senators from New York.
The problem, though, is that the actually existing whispering campaign against Obama is so severe that it doesn't really admit of satire-by-exaggeration.
These days there is the whispering in the liberal blogosphere is so loud in demanding fealty to the daily talking points, that I no longer have any idea what the actual whispering campaign against Obama is or is not.
We saw the Mighty Wurlitzer and liked it so much we reinvented it. Congratulations to all involved.
Atrios and Drum are going to be at Netroots Nation on the "Fuck Panel" where Drum says he is going to argue that the netroots don't say fuck enough.
Yet Atrios and Drum have come out against this cover and both have given us their wise reasons as to just why this joke isn't funny and worse, how they would have written it to make it better.
Also on the Fuck Panel? Why yes, Amanda Marcotte who blasted Catholics and Catholicism only to issue a non-apology that she was sorry they all got so offended and she was just being ironic. And Amanda Marcotte who in her famous sexist and racist airport post blasted the Duke Students' "good fortune" for having charges dropped against them. And yes, that Amanda Marcotte who peppered her book with "ironic" images of retro Africans, but it was okay because she was being funny.
To explicitly quote Atrios as he decried the New Yorker cover yesterday:
"Deep Thought -- Shouting "n****r" is ok as long as you mean it ironically."
Yes Atrios, and you and Matt love you some ironically laden bigotry all over your blogs.
If the Fuck Panel doesn't compare the New Yorker Cover with Amanda's bigotry and irony, it's will be a huge fucking cop out.
I wish Stanley Fish's classic essay "Short People Got No Reason To Live: Reading Irony" were online somewhere so I could link to it. That would help. Everything else I'm reading about this is tiresome.
OK, I'll admit it. I'm lost. Is that real Petey, fake Petey, tongue-in-cheek Petey wearing a turban and an AK? So confused...
How is it even satire?
"Matthew, of course, was outraged by this TNR cover. He blogged about his outrage for days... Oh, that's right. He didn't.
Matthew, of course, is outraged by the New Yorker cover and blogging obsessively about it... Oh, that's right. He isn't.
Do you actually have a point? Or did you just set up your RSS feed to wait for Matt to post about this, plan another "trust fund scumbag" drive-by, and fail to actually read what he wrote?
The New Yorker cover fails in the same way that media so frequently fails these days by doing reports like "Well, people are saying xyz and that is news even if it's obviously not true."
And it's not particularly funny or creative or daring. Two changes could have made it better:
1) I think this was suggested by Kevin Drum or some other blogger -- Have the picture be inside a thought bubble over McCain or Rove's head.
2) Have it be a picture of McCain dressed up like Obama's African garb, with Cindy McCain giving him a terrorist fist-bump. This would actually be satire, because it would be demonstrating how silly it is to think of either of the candidates as closet-radical-Muslim-terrorists.
Canada’s National Post explains why the Obama campaign is right to be upset:
Basically, our poor brains have trouble processing repeated lies and “truthiness.”
Is that real Petey, fake Petey, tongue-in-cheek Petey wearing a turban and an AK? So confused...
The sober one who has to keep trying to make up things that make sense to be consistent with the stuff he wrote on a cough syrup binge rather than shut up and apologize.
The New Yorker's argument seems to be: A caricature that would be stupid on the cover of an unsophisticated magazine like The Weekly Standard is witty when we run it.
How, exactly, does this alchemy work?
Anybody remember this cover of Giuliani as Mussolinni on the cover of Pat Buchanon's American Conservative?
http://files.blog-city.com/files/N04/80254/p/f/amcon1.jpg
I liked it precisely because it reflected the way I feel about Duh Fuerer of New York.
I think the New Yorker cover will serve the same function who think about Obama the way I think of Giuliani, no matter what Remnick's intentions were.
When you have to get on CNN to explain your "satire", it has failed. Majorly.
"We saw the Mighty Wurlitzer and liked it so much we reinvented it. Congratulations to all involved."
The creepy thing is that this wasn't a project that got corrupted along the way. It was a project that successfully achieved the aims it laid out for itself at the start.
The thought process seems to have been that if he we lie as loudly as they lie, truth and goodness will be the result.
Now, all anyone cares about is being "helpful". And it's produced the most conservative Democratic nominee since Jimmy Carter. Funny how a bunch of folks endeavoring to intentionally tell lies would produce a counterproductive result.
What a waste.
"Petey wearing a turban and an AK?"
Yes to the AK. No to the turban. I dress up as Angela Davis every bastille day.
Matthew and Obama think everyone less privileged than them should eat organic cake. But they got another thing coming.
Hey guys, look at this hilarious satire:
http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/5443/nymccainat4.jpg
You see, when I call it "satire," it makes it okay, regardless of whether it's actually satirical.
The TNR cover was straightforward. it was anti-Clinton. If you read the magazine, it's pretty straightforward in there, too. It was also not racist. Or sexist, for that matter. Unless of course everything anti-Hillary is sexist, which I know it is in some quarters.
The New Yorker cover fails at atire, and hence succeeds at racism. As Matt says, it just about sums up the lies that are out there, but doesn't do anything with them, even exaggerate them to parody. So it's just, there they sit. Take it for how you see it, just like it started.
It's the cover the Weekly Standard can't run.
This entire site is "Paid for by Obama for America." Of course you will react like feminists to a joke.
Joke: How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Answer: That's not funny.
"Matthew, of course, is outraged by the New Yorker cover and blogging obsessively about it... Oh, that's right. He isn't."
This would have more relevance were Matthew writing anything different from what his sleazy tribe of liars is writing in cooke-cutter style on every topic of the campaign.
No one strays an inch from the herd.
They're worse than the fucking Wurlitzer. At least there was some independent thought there, a few flickering brain cells.
Matt sells Obama just like he sold the Iraq war. No thought. No ideas. Just safeguarding his place in the District pecking order.
The New Yorker has a long history of assuming their cartoons are funnier than they actually are.
Dime grifter Petey is too busy planning his next bilk to offer any substance.
And if Barry Blitt had put that image in the thought bubble of a stereotypical redneck, that would have been 'offensive'. Antid Oto's right to cite that Fish essay, though: for irony to work, it generally requires not just a formal frame, but also a circumscribed audience. While the New Yorker might think it has that audience courtesy of its reader base, it's received in a wider context. People who say 'oh, it's great satire' (Joan Walsh, I'm looking at you) are actually perpetuating another problematic frame -- that of elitist perception.
So go the fuck away, Petey. Have your breakdown somewhere else. If you think it's not a mental problem but a feature that has you in your present state make your own blog and flail away at the elitists who are somehow keeping your brilliance hidden under a candle.
Petey says: "Obama works for the interests of trust-fund scumbags, while Clinton doesn't, so different standards of taste are permissible."
True, Clinton doesn't work for trust fund scumbags. Just Kazakhstani oil barons and the wealthy davos set. Real woman of the people that Hillary. Remember that bankruptcy bill she voted for in 2001? Defend that.
By the way Petey, have you ever considered the consequences of all those wars she keeps voting for, and what they mean for domestic spending?
"The New Yorker cover fails at atire, and hence succeeds at racism."
Sure Remnick, Blitt, and the New Yorker staff are racists.
Just like the majority of Democratic voters who voted against Obama are racists.
Just like everyone who don't want to see the most conservative Democratic nominee since Jimmy Carter take power are racists.
-----
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the demographics of calling wolf on racism work faaaaar better in a Democratic nomination race than it does during a general election race...
"The New Yorker has a long history of assuming their cartoons are funnier than they actually are."
I wish I was taller.
Jesus, stop saying Hillary got more votes than Obama. Just stop. There have been about 67,000 articles about how that's not true even by Hillary's tortured definitions. It's such a lie that Hillary herself could only say it with a straight face for a few days.
Nobody ever said the majority of democrats that voted against Obama in the primaries were racists Petey. Stop lying. They said there was a significant racist vote in West Virginia and Kentucky. Why did they say that? Because 10% of the actual voters there admitted to it.
Is that real Petey, fake Petey, tongue-in-cheek Petey wearing a turban and an AK? So confused...
The problem is that the actually existing Petey is so absurd that he doesn't really admit of satire-by-exaggeration.
"So go the fuck away, Petey. Have your breakdown somewhere else. If you think it's not a mental problem but a feature that has you in your present state make your own blog and flail away at the elitists who are somehow keeping your brilliance hidden under a candle."
This is neither especially funny as satire, nor especially outrageous as bad satire, Ed Marshall.
I demand that you recant at the public square.
Jeezus. What is it with Muslims and cartoons?
"Jesus, stop saying Hillary got more votes than Obama. Just stop. There have been about 67,000 articles about how that's not true even by Hillary's tortured definitions."
Of course, if you'd lay off the ibogaine for a day, you might notice that what I wrote is a rather different (and correct) meaning from your distorted characterization.
"Just like the majority of Democratic voters who voted against Obama are racists."
Petey wrote:
Matthew, of course, was outraged by this TNR cover. He blogged about his outrage for days.
Oh, that's right. He didn't. Obama works for the interests of trust-fund scumbags, while Clinton doesn't, so different standards of taste are permissible.
Um, did you actually read Matthew's post? He said he wasn't outraged by the New Yorker cover either, he just thought the joke didn't really work. So, he seems to have a consistent "standard of taste", namely not taking offense at leadfooted attempts at political humor on magazine covers.
"the demographics of calling wolf on racism work faaaaar better in a Democratic nomination race than it does during a general election race..."
OK, whatever, Petey. Here's a suggestion: Why don't you take a break from this election nonsense & sit back & wait (with evident glee) while McCain wins in November. And then you can further sit back & watch (with evident glee) while McCain tries to wreck the healthcare system you care about some more, by, you know, taxing employer benefits contributions, slashing medicare, you know, whatever he can work out.
Then you go to sleep, tucked in with your teddy bear and your Hillary poster, safe and happy in the contentment of knowing. you. were. right.
Petey aside, count me in the "this is overblown" camp. If people genuinely think that the picture is in bad taste, I accept that even if I disagree. But what I've seen more of are people saying, "I know it's a joke, but I don't trust those poor ignorant working-class voters/people of color to know that, and as a result I must register my outrage."
Also, the comparisons to a hypothetical parallel McCain cartoon are totally off the mark. There isn't some huge absurd constellation of lies and rumors about McCain; that's why the Obama cartoon was made.
I think it makes Michelle Obama look kinda hot...
Petey having his eight hundred and seventy-fourth mental breakdown on Yglesias' site? Yawn.
Actually, I think McCain Democrats are racist..
...Because Hillary and Barack would be nearly the same president: Centrist Democrats.
Voting for McCain over Obama while still calling yourself a Democrat because you don't like Obama's policies (while liking Clinton's) is a mask for racism in my humble opinion.
Is Petey the blog mascot?
Didn't say they were racists. Said the cover is racism. We all walk around with some racism in us. That doesn't mean we cross the line into being racists, though. But that in turn doesn't mean some of the stuff we say or do might not turn out to be racist. But you're not a racist unless that characterizes your overall outlook.
This was accidental unintentional racism. But the product is what counts. And the product was racist.
Is Petey the blog mascot?
My apologies, Petey. There were a few weeks there where you were attached to the idea that Hillary won the popular vote. I thought that's what you were referring to, but obviously you weren't.
I thought the New Yorker cover was pretty funny myself. But I see Matthew's point -- I have relatives who send me anti-Obama e-mail forwards, and that cartoon is really not an exaggeration of what's in those e-mails.
@Ethel-To-Tilly: I think it makes Michelle Obama look kinda hot ...
1.) Michelle Obama's current hairdo = Matronly and First Lady-ish
2.) Michelle Obama with an Angela Davis style 'fro = CrazySexyHot.
#1 wins elections. #2 wins my fantasies.
As some others have suggested, the image would be fine if it were a thought balloon over some redneck. Elmer Fudd?
New Yorker Editor David Remnick's defense was "Satire always comes with some risk and the chance of people misunderstanding it, but if you’re going to satirize things only that there’s a 100% census on, there’s no satire." Yes, satire comes with the risk you might screw it up.
He said "What we set out to do was to throw all these images together, which are all over the top and to shine a kind of harsh light on them, to satirize them." So they took all the outrageous smears against the Obamas, which are already over-the-top, threw them all together... How does that shine a harsh light? How does that satirize? They just took a bunch and threw them together. Didn't twist them. Just repeated them.
And Reminick defends the cover: "What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings [about the Obamas]." Well, gee. Is it a political statement, an artistic statement or satire? Because this issue is probably being overblown, but the cover's not actually funny.
Petey:
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the demographics of calling wolf on racism work faaaaar better in a Democratic nomination race than it does during a general election race...
Fortunately, John McCain seems honorable for a Republican and I don't think he'll be as bad as a Republican nominee could be.
His supporters will be bad, but it appears the country has evolved concerning race relations and xenophobia. The proof of this for me is that Hillary lost the primary despite attacking Obama in the way the New Yorker cover caricatures
(i.e. "he's a not Muslim, as far as I know...;" "hard-working white Americans"; 3:00 a.m. phone call on the red phone, diggin up Obama's ties to ex-Weathermen Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn etc.) If Hillary couldn't pull it out, I don't see the Republicans being able to either, especially if McCain doesn't stoop to what Hillary did.
this issue is probably being overblown, but the cover's not actually funny.
You aren't supposed to laugh at New Yorker cartoons and cover illustrations--you're supposed to say to yourself, "Ah, I get it" and enjoy marginally increased self-satisfaction.
I have relatives who send me anti-Obama e-mail forwards
You know, for a while I thought these notions were popular in the small subgroup of people who wear tinfoil hats, but not any longer.
I'm up here in Canada, and I'm *amazed* at how many otherwise worldly intelligent people I talk to who really think Obama's a Muslim. Just to mention a couple - one is a retired political science professor who is also a visible minority, and another is a grad student originally from Tanzania.
Un.be.lievable.
Actually, the satire of anti-Obama BS that I've liked the most was right here, in a blog post title that was "He's a muslim...and his minister's nuts too!"
The 10% of people who believe obama is muslim are probably not new yorker subscribers. This thing is going to blow over quickly.
The odd thing about the New yorker cover is how likable obama looks.
By itself, the Obamas cover doesn't really do anything less or more for me than this one. But, in the context of this kind of BS, I'm really hoping that the average NYer reader gets it.
Oh for God's sake. It's a flippin' cartoon.
There's lots of legitimate things to be outraged about if you're jonesin' for some outrage. Torture, Afghanistan, Iraq, wiretaps and data mining, bailouts of bankrupt businesses but punishment for bankrupt individuals, a broken medical system.
But no! A New Yorker cartoon is now the biggest outrage in America. Now *that's* keeping our eyes on the prize!
It's the cover the Weekly Standard can't run.
That sums up why it fails as satire.
To knock willful know-nothings, it is perhaps more effective to knock the know-nothings, or the know-somethings manipulating them, than to mock the object of their libel. Inside the magazine it'd be a poor shot at irony; on the cover it is, as someone observed, the shiny object of the week, coverage of which will drown out both Lizza's piece and Obama's op ed.
That said, it's worth noting that all the furor of the form "Think what such a cartoon will do to all those poor ignorant people out there, stupider than myself, who might take it seriously, especially if it's on the cover of The New Yorker" is beyond silly.
To quote someone at TNR, Obama's been handed opportunities to distance himself from Jesse Jackson last week and The New Yorker this week--someone give him the opportunity to pass up a plate of brie and arugula and he'll have hit the trifecta for July.
Thought the cover was excellent. I laughed out loud. By the way, The New Yorker does not work for Obama.
I agree. It was not funny.
What makes this New Yorker thing a whole lot funnier is that just a couple days ago I saw the Seinfeld with Elaine and the New Yorker cartoon. And with that, Petey - in the midst of his delusional Maosit rants - got off a damn funny line, that has gone uncommented on - perhaps in large part because nobody saw it through his spittle.
Why does every negative reaction to this cartoon qualify as "outrage"? Is it an effect of the cable news cycle? Of the tendency to construe written sentiments as extreme in the absence of nonverbal clues? Can't we disagree with branding our opponents as hysterical?
FWIW, this is my take:
The other night I went out drinking with some friends. At one point, wasted, two of my friends decided it would be a good idea to grapple, and wrestled themselves off of their barstools and onto the floor, where they had to be separated by the bartender--and if he hadn't been a good friend of the main instigator, we would have been 86ed immediately.
Was it funny at the time? Yes. In retrospect? Much less so. Even in the moment, was it poor judgment? Definitely.
That's how I feel about this cartoon.
The 10% of people who believe obama is muslim are probably not new yorker subscribers. This thing is going to blow over quickly.
Let's see what happens when the New Yorker sends a cease-and-desist to some wingnut trying to sell t-shirts with that image.
Oh man, I hate it when people who acts as effete and elitist as David Remnick lectures us about what satire is and how we would get it if we were a little smarter or been around a little longer and developed taste that was a little more sophisticated. Well, I know what satire is and I can tell what is effective satire and what is a poor excuse for it. This is a sophomoric attempt at satire, not nearly sharp enough, nor incisive enough, nor clever, nor funny, nor outre enough to work. And I've been reading the New Yorker since before Remnick was born and I know when a magazine makes a stupid fucking mistake. And this is a dangerous cover.
Effective satire needs an effective set-up. You can do set-up many ways, but what you can't do is simply re-produce images or representations in another context to a different audience. That's not satire. It may be "art", but it's not satire.
Spinal Tap is satire. The Onion is satirical. Colbert is satire. This cover is not satire.
What would be satire is a set-up involving a group of Ivy League educated and parochial East Coast journalists at an centuries old magazine that caters almost exclusively to a aging, educated and affluent readership, and who, as a result of their decision to run a cover illustration of a presidential candidate with an Arabic-sounding name dressed as a Mujahedeen standing in an oval shaped office with a woman who looks like Angela Davis as cast in a blaxploitation film, grapple with the resulting controversy.
Think Spinal-Tap meets Frontline. See, that's a set-up. The context is clearly defined. That is satire. It may suck, depending on the execution, but if it's set-up well, it's satire. The set-up is key, if you whiff on that, then you whiff on any right to call it satire.
Context is everything. Take a Mapplethorpe photo -- let's say a b&w photo of a naked man in a ball-gag, tied up with rope, and center the photo with a clear shot of the man's pierced penis. Put that photo inside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art among by hundreds of other Mapplethorpe photos, many of them exquisite color still-lives of flowers, and you have, arguably, art (though the good burghers of Cincinnati disagreed). However, take that same photo, blow-it up to maybe 16 by 20 feet, put it above the Wilshire Boulevard entrance of the museum and people are getting fired and going to jail and no defense of "art" is going to help.
Yes, this cover is ironic, especially to the readership of the New Yorker, but it's not satire, and if Remnick thinks it is, then he would leave comedy and satire to the professionals, and stick to, I dunno, maybe he can take back Goldberg.
This issue brings out the inherent nuttiness in much of the liberal blogosphere. As an inhabitant thereof, and a huge Obama supporter besides, I can only sigh. cmholm links to the great Spiegelman cover, a true masterpiece smack in the face of certain contending ethnic groups and their pieties. The current cover is, yes, too busy and not in the same league; still, it pisses a lot of people off, which is certainly a mark of satire. What would those of you who think it went too far want--Jay Leno? Mark Russell? The Capitol Steps?
Satire must offend, or at least it must offend those of its targets who get it. Namby-pamby won't do: Will Rogers was no more a satirist than Walt Disney.
And as a previous commenter said, The New Yorker don't work for Obama.
And thank goodness for that.
I only got halfway thru the comments before I gave up.
You people need to get a life.
The fist bump told you everything you needed to know about this cover. It was totally satire on the Faux News/Wingnut conspiracy.
Was it funny? I don't know. I haven't watched TV in 12 years and seldom watch movies, so I don't know the heart of American popular culture.
I do recognize signs and symbols. This was an expert repudiation of the "terrorist fist-bump," "Obama-Osama," "secret muslim" drek that is continuing to float, unremarked, out there in the ether.
This is win-win for Obama. No matter what he says, it will get people to question the Rovian/MSM whisper campaign. That's what it's really about, silly people.
To be good satire it should, besides the FOX (dangerous radical) narrative, incorporate the Oreo (McLaughlin), elitist leaning against the wall holding a martini (Rove) and indistinguishable from McCain except without experience (AP) ones. Well, the Oreo one wasn't out a press time. But there'll be a new one tomorrow.
Maybe satire must offend, but it also has to be funny. This cover was just lame.
I thought it was hilarious, especially when they described it on the radio. When I saw the picture, I was less amused, because the picture in my head was better.
The cover may be many things: art, ironic, funny, offensive, silly, provoking, yada yada yada. One thing it is not, pure and simple is satire.
Satire is the often the producer's last excuse for a creative representation that fails on some level.
the problem with the satire, to my mind, is not that it isn't funny -- the problem is that it isn't clear from the picture who is being satirized, the right or the Obamas.
the only way to guess that it was the caricatures being targeted was to credit the New Yorker's good intentions. a bit smug no? perhaps this is a reminder that their credentials are not so unassailable.
second, bigger, issue: the racialized aspect of the satire -- especially Michelle's fro. i thought we had a bright line rule, no sambo, no mammy, no giant fros, regardless of what point you are trying to make. it's just not worth it to reify those dangerous images. why the new yorker thought it was above those rules, is beyond me.
Was it funny? I don't know. I haven't watched TV in 12 years and seldom watch movies, so I don't know the heart of American popular culture.
Has The New Yorker made it to 'Stuff White People Like' yet? David Sedaris is on the list, so it sort of counts.
http://files.blog-city.com/files/N04/80254/p/f/amcon1.jpg
I liked it precisely because it reflected the way I feel about Duh Fuerer of New York.>>
I remember. Pat Buchanan doesn't play much of a role at the American Conservative, as editor or owner. The cover in question was meant as over the top, but not ironic. .
The New Yorker cover clearly was. And quite funny. But perhaps voters Obama needs won't get the joke.
Resident morons Jefferey Goldberg and Andy Sullivan thought it was droll, so clearly it sucked.
Not that funny. As usual, the pleasure seems to be in "getting it" and thinking about all the dumbasses who either don't get it or don't know how to react to it the right way.
And the arrogance of putting a Malkinesque fantasy on your cover and assuming that your reputation will cast a safe, satirical light on it is simply astounding.
As for Obama being pissed about it, NO SHIT he's pissed. The guy's had to contend with this bullshit all year, all because he spent some time in a majority-Muslim nation as a fucking toddler and has a "Muslim" name. And now The New Yorker thinks that because it's The New Yorker, it can just peddle the same bullshit as satire.
FUCK. THAT. SHIT.
Shine - Effective satire needs an effective set-up. You can do set-up many ways, but what you can't do is simply re-produce images or representations in another context to a different audience. That's not satire. It may be "art", but it's not satire.
Thus Shine lectures to, and attempts to educate the unwashed masses that there is no such thing as a satirical cartoon or magazine cover. For they lack set-up. And somehow caricature is merely reproducing images or representations in a different context to a different audience.
There.
How typical of an elitist Obama supporter to be humorouslessly be deconstructing the caricatures of others in an attempt to explain why that is not funny.
Reminds of the feminist jokes on their famous lack of humor: "Why does it take 5 feminists to screw in a lightbulb?"
1st feminist - "That is not funny when hundreds of millions of more-deserving women are stopped by the Glass Ceiling."
2nd feminist - "Not to mention research that shows another woman is raped on campus every second of every day. Joking about lightbulbs is like joking about rape!"
3rd Feminist - "And why lightbulbs? Because it is code for a simple task that sexists believe women are barely capable of. Why not 5 womyn astrophysicists preparing a ground-breaking scientific paper?"
4th Feminist - "I see 5 as code for casting occult smears on honest women everywhere.."
Petey having his eight hundred and seventy-fourth mental breakdown on Yglesias' site?
Oh, whos to blame? That boy's gone insane.
Well nothing we do dont seem to work,
It only seems to make matters worse. Oh please.
It's just his 874th nervous breakdown . . .
How many Chris Fords does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Just the one--he holds it up in the air and waits for the world to revolve around him.
I think the cover was more sarcasm than it was satire. It simply said the opposite to what was meant.
Excellent.
I got flamed by MY resident douchebag racist.
I absolutely love that Chris Ford denounces the damned elitists for daring to judge what's funny and isn't, and then responds with an attempt to demonstrate what's funny with a joke which, while attempting to be un-PC in its send-up of feminists, is neither risque or funny, I mean, like, lame karaoke unfunny. To add insult to non-injury, he wrote the joke himself.
Matt: "I think I'm violating some kind of rule by going so long without blogging on this subject."
Why? You've ignored most of the most important subjects of the year for months now. The cover has only been out what, a few days?
It took me months to get you to answer two lousy questions on Iran.
You ignored the House and Senate Iran resolutions for several weeks until finally posting ONE post on it - meanwhile expending two or three days worth of posts on dead racist fucktard Helms that nobody gave a shit about.
Most cogent post I've seen on the topic -- surprisingly, in the Washington Post open comments, which are usually pure dross:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
OSCAR WILDE was one of the best satirist of all time.
Satire 101:
The subject being satirized, is included in the satire.
You satirize the perpetrator not the victim.
The New Yorker, if mocking the right wing, is not including any of them in the imagery.
Let me give you an equivalent and see how the word sinister would clearly jump at you:
It's the late 1930s and Hitler has been ratcheting up his anti-Jewish propaganda. A prominent magazine, puts on its cover the most racist images of Jews imaginable - big noses, babies being ate, cold coins everywhere.
When people protest, the magazine argues that they were just making fun of how Hitler thinks! "We're just showing you Hitler's feeling for the Jews and hence through satire - expressing our opposition."
I don't think so.
Posted by: sinisterly silly New Yorker | July 15, 2008 12:05 AM
Anyone actually smart enough to read and understand the articles in the New Yorker (presumably including the subscribers) understands that the cover is satire. Anyone who actually reads the magazine knows that it is editorially very pro-Obama. I guess the problem is that others were going to see the cover and not understand, which is why it was a miscalculation by Resnick. Nonetheless, I'll keep my copy as a collector's item.
Oops, meant Remnick. Sorry!
I've found the whole media frenzy surrounding the Obamas in the Oval Office cartoon on the cover of The New Yorker so entertaining and deliciously trivial that I decided to add my own cartoon mashup to the mix.
skitch.com/dansalmon/x7rp/the-obmas-and-the-new-yorker
It'd be great to spend some time on the issues, but then again that's not the America we love and adore. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
I appreciate the New Yorker's intentions, but the cover still falls flat; in terms of sarcasm-- its neither risque enough, nor subtle. Just hovers somewhere in the middle (right around where someone as dry and humorless as Remnick wouldn't know his ass from his elbow.)
The debate in the blogosphere however is quite funny. In defense of the New Yorker cover, people argue: shouldn't readers of the New Yorker be "sophisticated" enough to understand the cover's intentions?
The question itself begs the response: even "sophisticated" liberal people are bigoted (towards Islam) in America.
And that's not what satire is about. It's not just about "getting it"; it should still provoke and/ or humor. The cover fails to do either, except perhaps remind liberals that yes-- they are fearful of rumors that smear Obama as a secret Muslim and a radical hater of all things American. In and outside his campaign, supporters have been nothing but clumsy in trying to brush off allegations of an Islamic background.
The real issue here that the Obama campaign has not dealt with the entire issue gracefully nor effectively. He has been as bigoted and hysterical in his rebuttal-- I was never a Muslim, God forbid! Yuck! I had a Jewish camp counselor for crying out loud! Remove those veiled women from the stage, etc.
Intellectuals and commentators of Remnick's ilk haven't stood up en masse and said, the vilification of Muslims and Islam across the political spectrum is actually at stake here. Its precisely those people who have failed Obama in rebuffing pernicious rumors about him. That is the issue that sorely requires attention.
And no, the New Yorker does not get a free pass for failed satire because they are so decent politically.
Jon--The comment you quote approvingly takes things too literally.
I can portray you (and satirize you directly) or I can portray the world as seen though your eyes (and satirize you, by making your world view look ridiculous to reasonable people).
But you're right in a broader sense that the New Yorker satire fails. It fails because the incongruities it includes as a way of suggesting the ridiculousness of current slanders (flag as firewood; 60s black radical married to strict foreign Muslim) are so mild; it's a gentle satire suited to a very different political climate than today's, and to put it on the cover seems to me more than anything a sign of the relative age and cultural isolation of the magazine's readership...
Completely agree with the person posting as Petey who said: "The lefty blogosphere has officially gotten as weird about art as Jesse Helms and Rudy Giuliani."
This whole NYer brouhaha is another example of the Left shooting itself in the foot, unfortunately an increasingly common occurrence. Irony isn't allowed, satire isn't allowed, parody isn't allowed, all kinds of art aren't allowed, because of the risk that somebody somewhere might misinterpret them. This is attempted censorship (or at the very least, an I-know-what's-better-for-you-all condescension), and it's no better coming from the Left than it is coming from the Right.
It's a funny cartoon. It's a fairly obvious and unambiguous satire on the sort of paranoid delusions that right-wingers have about the Obamas. That a lot of wingnuts embrace the cartoon at the literal or descriptive level, and are blind to the irony of their liking it so, doesn't make the cartoon a "failed satire". It makes it funnier yet.
Thanks to Jon and "sinisterly silly New Yorker" for getting the reductio ad Hitlerum out of the way. I knew that was coming sooner or later, given all the hysteria on this topic.
Satire must offend, or at least it must offend those of its targets who get it. Namby-pamby won't do: Will Rogers was no more a satirist than Walt Disney.
And as a previous commenter said, The New Yorker don't work for Obama.
And thank goodness for that.
Well, I agree that satire should offend the target of the satire, but that's not what's happening here. Good satire against rightwing caricatures should offend the rightwing, not Obama.
Completely agree with the person posting as Petey who said: "The lefty blogosphere has officially gotten as weird about art as Jesse Helms and Rudy Giuliani."
Oh, come on, that's pretty ridiculous. Nobody's talking about censorship or burning New Yorker copies in the streets. Most comments have been fairly mild, usually saying that it's a work of failed satire. Freedom of expression doesn't include freedom from criticism, I'm afraid.
rather than getting all worked up about the moral issues involved, I find it interesting to consider ; what will be the practical outcome of this cover having been published? seems to me that it could, to a small extent at least, neutralize and desensitize the far right's favorite attack points on Obama - as satirized on the cover. The coming months will tell - if Fox trots out the usual "he's a radical/Muslim" nonsense now people will recall this cover and, hopefully, laugh.
rather than getting all worked up about the moral issues involved, I find it interesting to consider ; what will be the practical outcome of this cover having been published? seems to me that it could, to a small extent at least, neutralize and desensitize the far right's favorite attack points on Obama - as satirized on the cover. The coming months will tell - if Fox trots out the usual "he's a radical/Muslim" nonsense now people will recall this cover and, hopefully, laugh.
Will, we've been trying to find the "alternate cover" that would make the most sense and I think you landed on it. Showing the McCains instead of the Obamas, in the same pose and garb would get the point across perfectly. However, the amount of outrage that would generate would be exponentially greater (though granted, mostly on the Republican side). I don't think the fine folks at the New Yorkers have the balls for it.
This same cartoonist was much praised for his Ahmadinejad cover, which just goes to show that nobody in the U.S. much likes Ahamadinejad and the risk of making fun of him or pissing off his adherents is pretty small.
There is no left in this country. The New Yorker reeks of elitism and bad taste (i.e. Upper West Side New York "intellectual" out-of-touchism) and is seeking to sell magazines and gain publicity because its readership has abandoned it or is dying out. This Upper West Side New York elitist circle secretly wants Obama to lose, which doesn't matter anyway, since his policies don't seem so different from those of PTSD-suffering, vengeance-seeking McCain. Get a life people and wake up. And as as aside: what does the kink in Michelle Obama's hair have to do with anything other than latent racism smeared for the world to see as awful Americana-Rorschach. This is just as offensive as the anti-Islamic cartoons we hear about. You'd be shot if you did such a caricature of a Jewish person in New York.
There is no left in this country. The New Yorker reeks of elitism and bad taste (i.e. Upper West Side New York "intellectual" out-of-touchism) and is seeking to sell magazines and gain publicity because its readership has abandoned it or is dying out. This Upper West Side New York elitist circle secretly wants Obama to lose, which doesn't matter anyway, since his policies don't seem so different from those of PTSD-suffering, vengeance-seeking McCain. Get a life people and wake up. And as as aside: what does the kink in Michelle Obama's hair have to do with anything other than latent racism smeared for the world to see as awful Americana-Rorschach. This is just as offensive as the anti-Islamic cartoons we hear about. You'd be shot if you did such a caricature of a Jewish person in New York.
Shorter Matthew: it's not "helpful".
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The lefty blogosphere has officially gotten as weird about art as Jesse Helms and Rudy Giuliani.
Posted by Petey | July 14, 2008 6:07 PM