Out of Touch New Yorker

As most people know by now, the New Yorker's current issue, has what I think is a remarkably idiotic front cover depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as flag-burning, Osama-supporting terrorists jabbing fists in the Oval Office. The New Yorker has decided the best way to satirize the worst and most ignorant beliefs about the Obama's is condense them into one remarkably unsucessful satirical image.

This image fails as satire because it requires you to know the intent of the creator. Successful satire would make the foolishness of these beliefs self-evident if you harbored them beforehand. This image, on the other hand, can only tap into those fears if you had them already. Furthermore, cartoons are usually depicting something ridiculous about the subjects and not something that others are saying about them. If the target was those saying the ridiculous things then those people should have been the subject of the satire. Note to the New Yorker, you could do with some lessons from John Stewart and Colbert about how to be funny.

This is exactly like a very controversial exhibition a few years ago--I don't recall the exact details--that was meant to depict the history of racism. The only problem, it presented the racist representations with no commentary and no opposing voices. With the result that unless the viewer deduced the museum's intention, it seemed the institution was promoting racist ideals. Just as that curator did an awful curatorial job, so also has the New Yorker's editor done an awful job.

What would the New Yorker's editors have said if the Weekly Standard had put that same image up? Being a liberal institution doesn't give you some sort of right to publish this rubbish. BTW, there was a similar incident a few weeks ago when an image was published on the Daily Kos depicting Michelle Obama being strung up and branded by the KKK. That was their attempt to satirize the right's attack on Mrs. Obama. I hate to say it, but this is only something a bunch of people who are not the subject of these stereotypes or attacks can think is funny.

UPDATE: One thing that I've found missing from then national conversation is the history of racist imagery in cartoons and jokes. Somehow, people seem to think somehow humor is harmless. Few mediums have been used to spread racist stereotypes than funny images. BTW, the issue is not that you can't make fun of Obama but make fun of him not of lies about him by supposedly caricaturing the lies. I think I'm more pissed by the smug liberal commentary on this issue than the cartoon itself.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, I helped reward the New Yorker for this cover by buying my copy the day it came out. Went to lunch with it today, 7/15/08, and it was a serious conversation starter. The falafel guy wondered whether I should have rewarded the New Yorker by buying it while the white lady seating next to me wanted to know if I thought it was offensive. In that sense, if it gets us talking about this issue, then it's for the good.