A Fist-Bump for the New Yorker

I'm a little late to the party, but here is an absurd decorousness in the denunciations -- from the Obama and McCain campaigns and across the liberal blogosphere -- of the current New Yorker cover.

The top-line objection is to accuse the New Yorker of poor taste. In the limited context of campaign discourse this is true. But magazines and other journalistic enterprises would be crazy to buy into the notion that abitrary etiquette of American campaigns (which encourages candidates to lie baldly, and surrogates to spin and smarm and swift-boat, while prohibiting frank talk to a host of issues from race to religion to terror itself), should govern their decisions.

Underneath that are liberals' more practical fears about the cover's impact on Obama's campaign. This line of thinking goes: Obama is so new and different, his image so unformed in the public mind, and U.S. opinion still so anxious on the matter of terrorism, with Democrats perceived as weak -- that the Obama campaign, and we as a nation, just can't handle images like this, because they might be interpreted the wrong way.

Really? No one worries that TNY's readership will take it literally. Fox will show it and chortle, but hey -- it will likely only confuse conservative viewers inclined to think of Obama as a Muslim terrorist dupe. Why are the liberal elites advertising Obama's subversion, mocking it? The image itself is an absurd jumble of terrorist iconography -- Black Power, al Qaeda, flag burning, etc.

Seven years after 9/11, after an onslaught of bad-faith political manipulation over terror, and with the threat of al Qaeda now quite debatable, Americans can certainly handle a little jokey imagery about terrorism and politics. Free expression is a bulwark of American liberalism, part of what makes it what it makes it superior to political philosophies that rigidly enforce what words can be uttered and images can be shown. When liberals start policing the "poor taste" of cartoons so that some people don't get the "wrong idea," it only reinforces the notion that all the fearmongering was effective, and perhaps right -- and also shows how weak and tenuous Democrats fear their position on terrorism remains.

www.johnmcquaid.com/blog

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Comments

[TimFredrickson]

Satire that works best should focus the light of the criticism on the villain not on the victim. The caricature seems to do the exact opposite. Oh, do not get me wrong, I understand what the magazine was trying to do, they just did not do it very well. I do not blame the Obamas or their supporters for not being amused by this badly executed attempt to point the finger at those that wish to take advantage of the ignorance and bigotry in our nation. What the New Yorker ought to contemplate is that they have made ignorance and bigotry that much easier to promote.

[cnick]

You are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!!!!!!!!

[AnAussieSlummingIt]

And now for a view from the outside looking in:
What a beat-up.
One of the very few admirable things about the American system is the right of every citizen to 'freedom of speech'.
You don't get only half of a freedom. You don't only get freedom to hear just what you want to hear.
I reckon the cover is funny and confronting.
Any American who tries to use it as propaganda will look like a complete dill - so where is the damage?
The greater damage would be to challenge the right of the NY'er to publish whatever they want - isn't that the bigger picture story?
Settle petal. It was funny! Remember funny? Laughing? I seem to remember that a few of you guys used to engage in this odd behaviour in the years before an election was held.

[GoletaZeke]

So, propaganda is just a fun game with no rules and no consequences. Put downs, whether true or not, never hurt anybody. You know .. sticks and stones etc, but words? And pictures? Just laugh a little and don't be so serious. After all it was just a joke. Maybe that's why the publiic is still having such a hard time understanding that Sen. McCarthy was just a comedian who really didn't mean to harm anyone.

[FloridaGeek]

Its interesting. If the threat of Al Qaeda is "debatable", that means that Bush's policies have arguably defeated the terrorist threat. Otherwise the threat is still there.

[DLeeA]

"Americans can certainly handle a little jokey imagery about terrorism and politics.

[...]

it [the liberal criticism] only reinforces the notion that all the fearmongering was effective"

News flash: the fear-mongering WAS effective. How do you think Bush won re-election? Your article misses the point, even though it sums up the argument of thoughtful liberals quite well:

"Underneath that are liberals' more practical fears about the cover's impact on Obama's campaign. This line of thinking goes: Obama is so new and different, his image so unformed in the public mind, and U.S. opinion still so anxious on the matter of terrorism, with Democrats perceived as weak -- that the Obama campaign, and we as a nation, just can't handle images like this, because they might be interpreted the wrong way.

Really?"

Yes. Really. And for proof why don't you peruse the statistics on how many people actually believe Obama is a Muslim who attended madrasas in his youth. I think that's pretty good evidence that this type of image is detrimental to his campaign. How about a shred of evidence for your own argument, that Americans can "handle" images like this? You obviously don't have in mind the same parts of Americas as the cover's critics.

[mimsnpips]

Agreed. thx

[CWWest]

The cover was obviously making fun of the lunatic right, and acting all offended and outraged just makes the Obama camp look weak and overly sensitive. Yes, they have to go after smears from the right, but stuff like this you just have to say, "we didn't find it funny" and move on.

The right wants Obama to look like an angry black man. The Obama defenders have to be smarter, not louder, or they'll just play into Rove's game.

[JimR]

"The cover was obviously making fun of the lunatic right, and acting all offended and outraged just makes the Obama camp look weak and overly sensitive.­"

LOL

Uhh... I wasn't "all offended and outraged." Confused, yeah. It was not at all obvious they were making fun of the lunatic right, that was the problem. They do great cartoons! But they screwed this one up.

[pfc1369]

The targets of the would be satire are totally absent from the representation.

That is why the cover fails as satire.

[JimR]

Bullseye.

[pfc1369]

Sorry John, you're reasoning just doesn't cut it in this case.

[aront54]

II tried to post a comment but it was too long, so instead I wrote a piece on this topic:

http://israelblog.org/1216076441/index_html

All this being Offended is hypocritical. It is also a stupid tactic, since it is taking away the limelight from Obama's intelligent op-ed piece in the Times today. Or perhaps that is the point - maybe Obama supporters think the American people are really stupid and won't be swayed by Obama's positions?

[mimsnpips]

how much coverage did his oped get with the msm drooling over the picture?

[ProPsych]

In the end, I think this cartoon will not hurt Obama. My first inclination when I saw it was to send him some money, so I think it will serve to remind his supporters that they need to support him. I think the crazy people who want to believe this stuff about him will look for every opportunity to do so and this cartoon will make no difference. The fence-sitters are not trying to figure out if he's a terrorist or not, but rather where he stands on issues, so I don't think this cartoon will make a difference, one way or the other.

However, I still don't agree with McQuaid on this. The cartoon was disrespectful to a presidential candidate, more so than anything I have ever seen before. I felt similar to the way I felt when I saw a picture of a shirtless Obama in a bathing suit in a US Magazine article about men with hot bods. I just don't want to see my future president compared to Brad Pitt and Matthew McConaughey.

Beyond that, in order for something to be funny, the people perceiving it have to be capable of "getting" the humor. I'm sure that would include most of the people who read the New Yorker, but not most of the people who saw the cover splashed all over the internet today. Irony is not ironic if people are confused about it.

[JimR]

We have freedom of the press in this country, which I believe in strongly. The New Yorker can be as disrespectful to any presidential candidate as they want to be. Period.

But, that wasn't their intent! They just screwed up the whole concept.

[HeadCheese]

The NY'er is not always going to get it right. This is one of those times. In fact I thought some of their other covers in bad taste. But how systemic is this bad taste towards African Americans? I am a bit curious. I lack the time to follow up, but what of the question of race?

I mean, would they have Ehud Olmertz in a Kaftan shooting a rifle into the air or posing with "Hezbollah" "comerades?" Or even wearing a suicide bomber's dynamite belt?

I think that part of what makes this "incendiary" is how many of us believe we are still at war. What with people (known popularly as soldiers, less so as contractors) shooting guns at perceived (rightly or wrongly) hostile forces (many, many civilians by last count--but the MSM is not counting).

The problem rests within the MSM itself. The core mythology being crafted by the right wing is a Rovian gambit for consumption in small drips and drabs through the MSM. These, like the swiftboating of 2004 do not suffer examination, but instead require a sound-bite treatment of only a few seconds. This is why this cover 'art' suffers so: It really plays the game of the MSM fully, by creating a smorgasbord of drips and drabs of subtle infamy with which to smear Obama just like the right wing seeks to do.

[starboymikey]

I was very surprised to see the New Yorker's cover. I thought it was pretty sure that Obama is not a Muslim, but if a liberal magazine like the New Yorker thinks he is, I don't know .... I'm really confused right now.

[Joseph A. Palermo - Huffpost Blogger]

There is no equivalent way to depict an old white guy like John McCain in that way -- it's a racist cartoon I don't care how "jokey" it might have been intended to be. Right when Obama is trying to reach out to the white working class, and spam emails are going out by the millions claiming he's a Muslim and Limbaugh tells 20 million people a day that Obama is a "terrorist" and friends with the "bomber" Bill Ayres -- Obama is trying to become the first African-American president in U.S. history this kind of stuff does not help him.

[rationalthought1]

I don't care about "poor taste". I'm not black so I don't wince at having racial stereotypes put out there as satire. I do think the Right was given a great way to promote their continued LIE. This image will be put out there on every media outlet and help reinforce the ignorant's prejudice and fear (they tend not to read much, by the way, and aren't that attuned to subtle satire). Does a powerful image have a insidious effect? I think all the money spent on advertisement research would show that it has quite an effect on the subconscious, indeed. Of course, the people who read the New Yorker will understand and appreciate the satire - they're oh so sophisticated and also tend not to be black, too.

[publicspeaker]

I believe that it DOES help him. By displaying every nuance of the right wing attack on Obama, this little bit of brilliance shows exactly how ridiculous those attacks are. This cartoon is the innoculation against those millions of spam emails, and it may even convert a few haters by embarrassing them with their own foolishness. Those who can't be embarassed were never going to vote Democratic anyway.

[Bluejay00234]

Agreed!

[JimR]

It is not racist. They are lampooning, or more specifically, they were trying to lampoon, the very thing you just pointed out - that emails are claiming Obama is a Muslim terrorist. They just missed the mark.

[Keith52]

Yikes. Why don't you ask what someone in West Virginia or Kentucky what they see in that "satire"? I don't think you will get an intellectual analysis of "bad taste". You might however get "Right on... see? He IS a muslim and she IS a terrorist!"

This "illustration" going to show up on ToothlessBigot.com and viewers are going to say things like "he don't even know the pledge of allegiance­..." or "I'm tired of HUSSEIN, I ain't votin' fer no HUSSEIN."

[mimsnpips]

As a resident of PA I knew gov. Rendell was right when he said there were dems. in his state that wouldn't vote for Obama. The ol' boy just didn't have the guts to say why. keith52 you are sooo right!

[DLeeA]

So true, and well-said. ToothlessBigot.com ... LoL

[mjc]

Think you underestimate the voters in Appalachia completely, and they would certainly understand you and your prejudices; I don't. What's more, I don't Obama will understand them either. If this is strictly a cartoon, absolutely not in any way a depictrion of the real Obama and the real Michelle, then just move on. Laugh even. IT IS A SPOOF! Anyone who doesn't get that, you don't want them voting for your side, no matter which one it is.

[Mij13]

Does the word elitist mean anything to you?

[Hadok]

Hmmm. I'm from West Virginia. What I saw in this was satire that is too clever by half. I figured this would stir up some problems.

By the way, why do you single out West Virginia and Kentucky? You wouldn't be holding to a few misguided stereotypical views of your own, would you?