Barry Blitt Defends His New Yorker Cover Art Of Obama

Barry Blitt is the artist behind this week's very controversial New Yorker cover of Barack and Michelle Obama. Via email, I asked him to respond to those who feel that his work was offensive, and to explain his own personal feelings about the Obamas. Here's what he wrote:

I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous. It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.

And in retrospect, given the outcry, is he glad he made the art?

"Retrospect? Outcry?" he wrote. "The magazine just came out ten minutes ago, at least give me a few days to decide whether to regret it or not..."

Rachel Sklar has much more.

Update: Three of Blitt's previous cover pieces are below. Note the Ahmadinejad bathroom shot, probably the most provocative recent New Yorker cover prior to the current one.

Comments

[DonDavis]

The New Yorker Continues its Irony Tour, with Bush on Rushmore
http://satiricalpolitical.com/?p=2012

[Dannydel]

The problem is that out there in the heartland and down south, there ARE people who won't get it! They'll see it on the newsstand and say: "I KNEW he was a Muslim!" When 7-10% of the country is so gullible that they believe a rumor or a sleazy email, without lifting a finger to check out uts authenticity, then you KNOW they'll be thousands that look at this cover without reading a word of the story. If you want to check this out, come to Texas wearing a turban. But be sure you are also wearing kevlar. New Yorkers will pride themselves on their sophistication and snigger at the idea that somebody won't get the point of the cover. I suggest that they are clueless as to how much of the country will react to this. I
think your smarminess has outweighed whatever common sense you might possess. This is a totally tasteless, hurtful, demeaning and unnecessary cover. You owe the Obamas an apology.

[JimR]

I thought the New Yorker misfired on their attempt at satire, but they don't owe Obama doodly-squat.

Some of us still believe in a free press.

[RRundbaken]

Folks! CALM DOWN!. It's satire. It is not necessary that every candidate react to everything that's out there. The New Yorker is not The New York Post or some other partisan rag.

It was a cartoon. The only people who get their bloomers knotted up because of a cartoon are Islamist fanatics. Are we not better? Take a deep breath, it's a long campaign and there are far more important issues out there. Like this nation apparently having committed war crimes. $12 billion a month in Iraq. Iraqi president throwing money, our money around the street. $9 Billion in cash vanished over there. Collapsing banks. The failure, again, of trickle down (piss-on me?) economics. And the list goes on and on.

[simplyirresistible]

Apparently you've been paying attention to life in America. You are not typical.
... The rest of us need context.

http://healinganation.wordpress.com/

[kassandrasduplex]

Forget Britt, the artist, he didn't make the editorial decision to publish his cartoon. What are the political leanings of the editor who DID choose this cover?
Who chose this for the cover of New Yorker and which party is he registered to? Better yet, which party does he actually vote for?

[JohnTalbutt]

I agree. Forget Blitt. It is a racist cartoon regardless of the editors poltics. But on the other hand I would be willing to bet that whoever made the decision to run that cartoon on the cover is hostile to Obama.

[Coronadoman]

how much?

you'd lose.

you know nothing about the magazine, it's leadership, its policies or history.

in other words, you are ignorant.

send me a big check.

thanks!

[JFM]

Couldn't disagree more. I am pro-Obama, and view the cartoon as provoking the nation to consider the baseless charges being leveled against him. It is too bad that these issues are for now taking a back seat to the uproar over whether the cartoon should have been published. But the matter of *where* the cartoon appeared is a relevant point. Because its on the cover of the New Yorker, with its open-minded/progressive reputation, the cartoon can be fairly viewed as satire. If it were published on the cover of a conservative publication I think there would have been more uproar.

[live by the golden rule]

The editor and cartoonist think they are crystallizing just how ridiculous the whispering campaigns about Obama are.

But clearly they are clueless about what goes on outside of their dinner conversations. Haven't they caught on that people actually take take Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and similar [clowns?] seriously?

There are [too many] people who say "yes! exactly what I thought too !!!!", rather than "ha, ha, isn't that ridiculously hilarious". The fact that even some critics [even those writing here] think it was serious rather than a [miserable, failed] attempt at ridicule shows that the satire component is not working in the nation overall [even if NYer subscribers kind of understand it--- folks, as a NY er subscriber (so I can read Seymor Hersh): this might have worked inside as part of an article, surrounded by text about how ridiculous this view is; it is not being understood as intended on the cover where everyone sees it passing the checkout counter in the supermarket.]

[wdw101]

who cares........it is his right to put the cover how he wants it...... don't like it, don't buy it.......Let the market prevail.......It does work........just takes time

[JimR]

The ONLY problem I have with the cover is that it was not clear who was being satirized (hint: They are not making fun of the Obamas). You don't like it? Don't buy it.

[Puller58]

The most obvious point about this furor is that Fox News viewers will see the art as reality rather than satire. The artist and the magazine are entitled to run it and are obliged to face the fallout as well.

[wdw101]

It is funny.........come on

[TRex86]

No it is not. It fails for lack of context (other than being on the front of the New Yorker). Who is being lampooned? Where are those persons in the cartoon?
Put it on the front of National Review, the NY Post, Was Times, etc., and it becomes a despicable editorial cartoon, conflating every wingnut claim about the Obamas. Consequently, it's claim to humor functions only as an in joke for the folks who know the New Yorker would never dis a liberal or a person of color.
Aside from that snicker-up-the-sleeve attitude of superiority over the ignorant parterres it isn't remotely amusing. Hardly better than putting Aunt Jemimah and Uncle Remus on the cover.

[jmh55]

I am sure this might be redundant, for I have not read all 900x posts:
My initial reaction when seeing the cover was that it
was an obvioud commentary (satire) about Fox News.

[BPCentrisAmerican]

It would have made more sense if their were an illustration had included Rush champing on his big cigar or Sean Hannity, even Murdock himself smoking a pipe in the lower left foreground like that famous Norman Rockwell self portrait. Otherwise the illustration relies too much on the bias of the people viewing it, which is the function of fine art not satirical political illustration. The other illustrations are much more symbolic, this cover doesn’t make any satirical point, unless you read the article, just to clever by half. The people, who really should read this article, don't read the New Yorker, unless it's the only thing sitting on the table at their doctor's office.

When ask about it on Larry King, Obama was gracious as always, pointing to the New Yorker’s right to free speech, but obviously found it hurtful. The only positive thing about it, the cover started a TV conversation about the whisper campaigns and lies that the art represents.

[JFM]

"The only positive thing about it, the cover started a TV conversation about the whisper campaigns and lies that the art represents."

That's just the point of satire.

If true, it's done its job.

[Jonni Rae]

It would be nice if it would stop the whispers and lies, but it is going to have the opposite effect and you know it. Educated people already know they are lies.

[Jonni Rae]

Exactly, BP

[kassandrasduplex]

Here's a theory:
The corporate mainstream media went easy on Obama and really hard on Clinton in the primaries (incredible distortion and yellow journalism was levelled at Clinton) so that Obama would prevail in the primaries. Obama then would be an easier target in the general against anything the GOP put up.
This cover on New Yorker does nothing but harm to Obama. It reinforces every ridiculous stereotype and ignorant fear non-black Americans have of him. This was intentional.

[wdw101]

oh come on ........most media is liberal??????????? he is inexperienced and speaks in platitudes.

[grn1]

About as liberal as warmongeers can get?

[lady49]

Here's a better theory:

Media always goes after the front runner. The media went after Senator Clinton when they discovered that she CRIED to get votes, (New Hampshire), She LIED to get votes.(Bosnia) and she CHEATED to get votes (rampant voter fraud-especially Pennsylvania).

Senator Obama won because despite all the negativity coming from the Clinton Campaign, he NEVER spoke ill of her. That is why the "good guys" like Richardson, Edwards, Riesh,Kennedy many more all came out to support Senator Obama.

It is no secret that Bush and the GOP OWN THE MEDIA.(total blackout of "WINTER SOLDIER" coverage)...
The NEW YORKER is going after Senator Obama because that is the only area they can attack him.
Bush listens to Obama on how to "negotiate" with our enemies (multilateral negotiations have positive results-Bush on N. Korea nuclear negottiations, sitting down at the table with Iran this week, sending troops to Afghanistan:=ALL PLANS INITIATED BY SENATOR OBAMA)
I agree that the cover WAS INTENTIONAL

[Jonni Rae]

Why don't we have a conversation about that? Who owns the media and what are their political leanings? That would be more to the point. I fear for his life, truly.

[JimR]

Can we work OJ and UFOs into this conspiracy, too?

[grn1]

This isn't free speech this is inciteful garbage. The same type of political garbage used to incite Muslims into rage. The action-reaction stimulus that fills cable news without any news. Gee Mr. Barry you sure is a powerful man, why you can present an image of a presidential candidate and his family as the type of peoples that may be able to fight what's really wrong with this country.

[JimR]

You sound like the Taliban.

[grn1]

Have you had enough conversations with the taliban to know? I'm sure our government has when they were working for US.

[veracity]

To realize how tasteless and offensive Barry Blitt's New Yorker cover illustration of "Obama and Michelle as terrorist-loving America haters" should be, just imagine the New Yorker posting cover illustrations of Nazi German propaganda from the 1930s, "The Eternal Jew" as the personfication of greed and treachery and manipulating markets and scheming for war.

You would be able to hear the national and worldwide outrage in outer-space!

But somehow, it is "Fair" and "within reasonable limits" to portray Sen. O and his wife in those derogatory if not defamatory tones??

METHINKS the New York "sophisticated, literary set" do have a little double-standard thing going here!

[Coronadoman]

either you are a republican, or you are willingly ignoring the FACT that the cover mocks bigots, or you really ARE ignorant.

In any case, it's sad that you cannot see how precisely helpful this cover is being to root out and expose bigotry, hatred and racism.

please try to get a clue. one, little, clue.

[TRex86]

Please explain where in the cartoon bigots are getting mocked? Is it a tiny image in a corner that I missed? I don't see Rush or Karl or any such slime merchants in that cover. I do see a medly of wingnut assertions personified as Angela and the Taliban. (Insert belly laugh here).
The New Yorker editors made the egregious error of PRESUMING that everyone knows they're liberal and enlightened. So then because it's a cartoon it must be funny. They would never intentionally hurt anyone with stereotypical images...

[JimR]

Total B.S. comparison. The Nazi propaganda had the express intent of making Jews look bad. The New Yorker cover is just satire that misfired, that everybody is getting all huffy and puffy and righteous and preachy about.

It'll all blow over by next week.

[LaFeminazi]

Article by one of the best political cartoonists of the last thirty years.
------

So should we tread warily, lest we are misunderstood? Of course we should. Cartoonists are some of the most painstaking, careful, shy and sensitive people on earth, yet we do play with fire, toying with other people's (and of course our own) most deeply held beliefs and most cherished illusions. Is it possible to go too far? Of course it is? Should we go too far? Of course we should. That's what makes our job so interesting. There's no better feeling than, having taken a risk in a drawing, seeing the thing in print and knowing it works. The converse is also true, which is why I work in a bunker on the south coast.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/16/pressandpublishing.barackobama

By Steve Bell one of the very best.

[peacebro]

Oh...we are so careful, shy and sensitive...oh, did I forget to mention 'full of ourselves'.

[111]

Thanks for the article ... I'm afraid the next thing the Dems will be tossing overboard is our freedom of expression because someone thinks it's dangerous or offensive.

[JohnTalbutt]

Many people see that cartoon as racist trash. That is freedom of expression. No one challenged The New Yorkers right to publish it.

Typically wing nuts take criticism of their nutty theories as challenges to the right of expression. Rave on, please.

[TamysDMilo]

Here's my idea to provide balance to this issue. The HuffingtonPost should hold a contest asking that readers send in their concepts for a McCain New Yorker cover. A panel made up of the most respectable HuffingtonPost contributors will select the best idea, after which, an artist hired by the HuffingtonPost executes the winning concept.

[live by the golden rule]

the problem with this idea is that, in contrast to the Obama cartoon, even the most ridiculous things we can come up with about McCain [bomb, bomb, bomb Iran? confusing Sunnis and Shiites? being against the Bush tax cuts before supporting them? walking through Baghdad surrounded by troops and helicopters and calling it perfectly safe to be there? family values while dumping his first wife?] all are true

[charon]

I think the concept of the cover is absolutely idiotic. With friends like Blitt, Obama doesn't need any enemies. Horrid, and harmful to Obama. It offers no context for the misconceptions, and thus reinforces them.

[Coronadoman]

no, your "logic" does not merit a "thus"

Go back. Look at the cover. Now, SEE the cover.

Did you notice how the artist has skewered the racists who continue to be racists, with style, with grace and elan? No?

tough. you'll never get it.

what you WILL do is unwittingly contribute to precisely the discourse that will remove the power of bigots to attack the next President of the United States, President Obama.

So i guess we're thanking you for your ignorance...

[JimR]

BALONEY! This will all blow over by next week.

If Obama can't handle a little blip like this, he has no business being president. Fortunately for all of us, he has much, much thicker skin than you do.

[Sabreen60]

As a black woman I am offended. I offer no excuses for my feelings. I think the way M i c h e l l e is depicted is horrific. Some of you say "the artwork is terrific". Well I don't think many black folks will see it that way.

[Coronadoman]

'tis your privilege to be offended.

But..........

May I offer one little point?

It's not about the "quality" of the image. It's about telling bigots that we've got their number. We know they think "like this", and we will not let them define us. We will not let them define Barack and Obama. We will be electing the next President of the United States, in spite of their hatred. Their hateful, bigoted, terrible Republican ways are over, and there is change in the land. You bigots, who spread your lies about the Obamas, have now been put on notice that your brand of racism is now cast out. Your shameful, terrible criminal ways are coming to an end.

That's what it says.

[XCITIZEN]

That is a truly pathetic defense of this clearly racist, bigoted propaganda. This is NOT satire, this is taking every smear of the Right Wing against Obama and PERPETUATING THAT SMEAR.

This image will circulate in cyberspace and reach billions of people who don't 'get' your elitist sense of irony and satire.

There is NO way that this imagery was put out into the public without clear knowledge of how incendiary and anti-democratic it is. There is NO excuse, it is NOT satire. Someone was behind this - the promotion of this imagery in the media was deliberate, not some naive miscalculation.

"It's about telling bigots that we've got their number" - that's a load of BS.

As anyone can tell, I'M FURIOUS. I am encouraging a BOYCOTT of The New Yorker.

For anyone who does not already have it here is their email: newyorker.comrker.com

[live by the golden rule]

Actually, your paragraph is not not how the bigots took it. They do not feel "on notice". They will thank you for the picture and hang it on their wall.

[JimR]

And yet there are rabid right-wingers who are trying to depict Michelle Obama exactly that way. And THAT is what the artist was saying. Or trying to say, anyway, they botched the setup.

[Meadowlark]

I guess everyone would have thought Jonathan Swift really wanted to make "Irish Baby Burgers" when he wrote his famous essay on how to deal with the "Irish Problem". Question: Do you think they pull down the shades at the New Yorker as they carry Mr. Blitt around on their shoulders to huzzas while high fiving and dapping "terrorist fist pounds"? (I was going to say while offering him the hand of their virgin daughters in marriage, but that would be sexist and outré, and, well you know, so I changed my mind). Bottom line, Blitt has produced one of the most famous magazine covers ever to hit the stands. If all the free publicity leads to increased sales he has certainly done his job for New Yorker, and after all, he works for them not Obama...unlike the rest of the media, including the late night comedians . I joke! I joke!

[Coronadoman]

thank you, thank you, huzzah, huzzah!

What are we to do?? I am truly distressed that people posing as progressives are confessing, IN PUBLIC, that they cannot fathom a very simple satire.

You have restored my faith.

I can sleep tonight, knowing there is one other soul, who can read. Who can think. Who has what we used to call, "a sense of humor".

Huzzah for Meadowlark!
Long Live Meadowlark!

[ChicagoJim]

Swift's essay worked because no one was actually suggesting eating babies. He took the arguments of the priviledged class to an absurd extreme.

Blitt's cover DOESN'T work because all it does is create a perfect picture of ACTUAL right-wing smears about Obama. For far too many in the country, this cover will simply confirm their own beliefs about Obama. And seeing it reprinted by a "liberal" publication like The New Yorker will help convince them that their fears are well based.

[JohnTalbutt]

There was no hateful myth of baby cannibalism among the Brittish and therefore Swift did not play into a hateful prejudice that might have some credibility.

Now, if Swith had proposed that the Brittish turn a tidy profit by selling the Irish babies to Jews to use in their Satanic blood rites, he would have touched on a hateful myth and be in the same ballpark as this cartoon.

I take Britt at his word that he meant no harm. I don't think The New Yorker editors are that naive.

I stopped subscribing or reading the New Yorker last year after one too many George Packer's NeoCon sob stories about all the Iraqis being so grateful for the occupation.

[jnik]

The New Yorker editors ARE naive to assume that everyone is as urbane and sophisticated as their readers supposedly are to "get" the joke!

[starboymikey]

It's not a deliberate smear. It's not deliberately racist. It's satire. Just very *bad* satire.

Great technique, but sloppy conceptualization and poor execution of an idea. If it were a great piece of satire, a really great political cartoon, the artist and the magazines editors would not have to be at such pains to "explain it." I

A joke you have to explain is probably not very funny. I don't blame Britt for the failure, but rather the New Yorker editors who approved the cover as is. Besides judging the artistic quality of piece of writing or an illustration, an editor's job is to understand what the artist means to say and determine whether or not the work is actually getting this idea across.

In this case, there was enough ambiguity in the work that its meaning was unclear to even a great many "sophisticated" people. For this to have happened points not so much to a failure of the artist, or a "lack of a sense of humor" on the part of the audience. It is a clear failure of the editors to bring true objectivity to the work of a highly seasoned and favored artist.

[eden4barack08]

Thank you.

[Coronadoman]

So, you're admitting, here, now, that caricatures of Michelle and Barack, in mufti, afro, fist-bumpin', AK at the ready, flag in the fire, Osama framed on the wall, all set in the Oval Office, all of this, and you, you're admitting it is all:

"unclear".

Right?

Man, we gots MUCH bigger problems!!! You're not allowed to watch teevee, right? Certainly not Stephen Colbert, right?????

oh............my.................god............

[texastrixie]

Do you get it that MOST of the country doesn't watch Colbert or the Daily Show. Do you get it that many people will see this image on the news for a few seconds, not pay attention to the discussion, and turn to their spouse and say, "Look some magazine is writing about Obama and his wife and their terrorist backgrounds." Yes, I get it. It's satire. But 40% of the country (in a poll released today) think Obama went to school in a madrasa (sp?) and when they say madrasa, they mean terrorist training camp. As usual, with friends like these, Obama doesn't even need Republicans to tear him down. I'll bet that this drawing turns up in campagin literature for the Repubs.

[eden4barack08]

Stephen Colbert cannot be compared to this, so stop using him please.
On any given day, a viewer is clear on where Stephen is coming from and can "get" where he's going. He does this without using racial stereotypes and delivers his punch brilliantly.
He's a satirical genius.

Blitt did not deliver on this one and therefore all that's left is the visually offensive part of it, still, nobody is questioning his intent.

Thanks to the freedoms we enjoy, The New Yorker is able to publicize their work, regardless of whether it may be racially insensitive to blacks or others, and the public is able to voice their opinion. END of story.