The New Yorker Cover

I’m not much interested in the caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama on the cover of The New Yorker that’s causing so much ferment in the Sinistrosphere. I do think that anybody who’s outraged by it would make a much stronger case by naming and citing actual prominent Right Blogosphere blogs that are peddling the sort of nonsense that’s being lampooned in the illustration than by making vague complaints about unnamed blogs and conspiracy.

3 comments… add one
  • reader_iam Link

    This cover is so manifestly satire. The overreaction is mind-boggling, and some of the rhetoric–for the most obvious example, that there’s some huge number of people who will see the mag casually displayed on newsstands and grocery store display racks (As If!) and have their minds poisoned–is ludicrous to the point of delusional.

    I myself am composing a letter to David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, in which I express my intent to NOT cancel my subscription to the magazine.

    My favorite reaction of the day is that of my husband, who, like me, thinks the outcry has brought out some pretty egregious idiocy: “If the New Yorker reports a sudden spike in subscriptions from areas of the country, like rural West Virginia, which these clowns think are populated with masses of drooling, stupid people to whom exposure to such political cartoons would be so dangerous, then I’ll admit I’m wrong. Until then, I’m just going to stand back and laugh at the so-called sophisticated, educated types AND their hysteria over satire, of all things. How ironic!”

  • reader_iam Link

    And we both think it’s sort of pathetic that both Obama and McCain had to come out and say it’s “offensive,” as if they don’t understand full well what political satire is and that this is an example of it.

    If I end up finding myself unable to vote for either presidential candidate when I go to the polls in November (which I will do, regardless, because there are so many offices up for election apart from the presidency), I think that instead of writing in the name of an actual politician whom I’d prefer to see in the Oval Office, maybe I should consider Jonathan Swift or Mark Twain. At least those guys “got” political commentary and satire–and believed in the importance of a sense of humor, too.

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