New Yorker Blues

Last week a whole new crop of OTB citizen journalists / commentators weighed in the New Yorker cover featuring the Obamas as a terrorist First Couple. Most all of the commentary was negative, a citizen critique of the artist's efforts at satire. At least one writer suggests a "buycott." Dive in: the water's chilly!

Dwight Dunkley
The Joke Is 'On' Not 'In' The New Yorker
Like a tabloid talk show, the New Yorker cover was calculated to draw looks and sell advertising. But the so-called satire missed its mark.

Leonce Gaiter
The New Yorker's Fear of a Black President
It's hard to believe that the editorial staff of the New Yorker did not see this straight depiction of Obama and his wife as militant/Muslim terrorists for the Red State red meat that it is. Parroting is not parody.

Earnest Harris
The Cultural Politics Of The New Yorker Cover
Racism and bigotry are not intellectually free-floating topics for Blacks. It is easy to laugh and chuckle at such cerebral satire when your life is not impacted by the reality behind it.

Felicia Harvey
Baby Mamas, Fist Jabs, Magazine Covers: Media Gone Wild
Diversity is not a passing fad. References to all of the most negative and deplorable racial and ethnic stereotypes have got to stop. Satire or no, they play on fear and advance it.

Stephen C. Rose
MyBO And The New Yorker Cover
On the Obama Blog, the war against the New Yorker is in full force, people who have no subscriptions sending in unsubscribe notices. It's a loss for the New Yorker and a near-term loss for Obama.

Elizabeth Ross
Forget the Petitions -- Show Me the Money
How about a good old fashioned grassroots boycott to get our point across to the New Yorker?

Kristine M. Smith
The New Yorker Satire Blues
The unlikely saving grace would be if the controversial depiction of "all we fear about Obama as a relative unknown on the political scene" gets the fear-based voters to read the magazine's articles about Obama.

Garrett Socol
To Cancel or Not To Cancel My New Yorker Subscription
Personally, I do not care if my president is Christian, Jewish, Lutheran, follows Confucianism, Hindu, Taoist, Presbyterian, Chinese Universalist or an Atheist......and neither should you.

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Comments

[KathyIndiana]

The problem is, most Americans don't read the New Yorker. They're sure seeing the picture though, since it's on every news broadcast and web news site. If they don't read the article - satire or not - and only see the picture, what impression does it leave?

[ruthinking]

In the movie "Manhattan," the character played by Woody Allen argues with a (no doubt NYorker reader) woman who extols the impact of SATIRE to attack neo-Nazis. The New Yorker cover (cartoonist; editor) remind me of that silly woman.

[Thron]

Final point. I don't understand how those educated New Yorkers intellectuals didn't foresee the ambiguity of that caricature and his controversial character , and ultimately it would be seen by the average mind, as a confirmation, and for a sensitive part of the American audience, already confused and manipulated by some media like Faux news and others, not as a denunciation, but more like a controversial theme being used as a money maker.
Can you feel me people?

[SouthPrairie]

I know satire. Satire is my friend (I teach satire to 11th graders) , and that NYer is no satire.

Can't help but feel the Thorn!! ;^)

By the way, for something to be satirical it has to have the element of irony that critiques or mocks. There was no object of critique or irony there. Some thought it funny. That's fair game, but it is not satire. You would think that the editorial staff would have known that. Funny is a much lower bar than political satire. No if you had Rove dreaming that picture, that would be satire.

[Thron]

Most of the time satyrs are for the educated, those who reads intellectually between the subtlety of caricatured physical lines and personality.
Well this is where the paradoxical language to justify the purpose of the satyr stumble on a fact, that leaves the artist and the New Yorker in floating contradiction.
If the Satyr is suppose to denounce the way Obama is unjustifiably depicted, only the educated will see it, and I will go even further by saying, they might even not accept it.
First reason why. If you are educated, you know that this caricature will be used by the republican party and their brothers and sisters, conservatives, Faux news and others, to tell their blue-collard and uneducated white audience, " We told you so".
Second reason. The average, simple minded and others, still uneducated souls, will look at it just like a confirmation, by a well known Media, of a confused feeling or sentiment they have about Obama.
The third one, is about the caricatur.
This satyr is based on a caricature. We know quite well that a caricature is an exaggeration or an amplification of someone's physical lines or personality. So if the burning flag, the wife with the machine gun, the Ben Laden picture and the rest, is added to depict him in a way no one has dared to, .therefore we are talking about personality, the caricature tells us, this is who he is behind closed doors, beneath his subtle surface. ..

[barackobama4prez]

I want to read the article. The cover was so offensive and I can't even overstate how much. These people have no clue how much ultimately this hurt the Obamas to their heart. Whether they admit it or not, it had to hurt their heart. This is the dichotomy of trying to be simultaneously Black and Free in America. The fact is, If he was white that would be satire. Since he's not, it's bigotry.

Earnest Harris
The Cultural Politics Of The New Yorker Cover
Racism and bigotry are not intellectually free-floating topics for Blacks. It is easy to laugh and chuckle at such cerebral satire when your life is not impacted by the reality behind it

[SouthPrairie]

Again--see above--this is not satire. I agree wholeheartedly that it is easy to laugh when you do not live the biases and bigotry that many live day in and day out. I have often heard my white friends say flippantly, "I don't see color!" And I inform them that it is a privilege to not see color. Their head tilts and eyes roll, but after a time, when they think about it, the honest folks realize that in white skin you do not know what it is like to be treated like a black person, or like a Latino--especially close to the border. When you are the majority culture, you do not know what it is to be discriminated against. Some poor whites know what I'm talking about. But often times people who have been treated in a discriminitory way, discriminate. This is not to cast blame, but to show that when the hegemony of a culture enables and even rewards discrimination, it also perpetuates it.

So before one wags their finger at individuals who have had to deal with biases their whole lives, think for a minute what it would be like if you served your communities to the best of your ability for your whole life and a prominent magazine such as the New Yorker portraied you this way. Then and only then will you be able to understand why it is not funny.

[lovethesinner]

The publishers should take note of the reaction to it's cover by the media. Amongst the thousand words that picture was worth, there was hardly any mention of how wrong the slander of Obama was. Only about whether it was okay to present the cartoon. Whether the publisher "did the right thing."

If there had been a discussion of the source of the slander inside the magazine, in a story about Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and the lizard brain they seek to stimulate, then the image would have been seen to be constructive.

But, if the magazine had hoped to dispel the rumors about Obama, they failed. All it did was start a discussion of how hard it is for white people to talk about black people. Ultimately, the only thing we learned is that the MSM is culturally ignorant, if not bigoted, outright.

I've always been a fan of the writing and the art in the New Yorker and called myself a fan of the magazine for that reason. I no longer connect my affection for the product with the venue that presents it.

[mjc]

Lovethesinner, you say the only thing learned is how hard it is for white people to talk about black people, but actually it is very difficult for black people to talk about and to white people, judging from some of the comments on the HuffPo. So much hate/anger is expressed anytime Obama is even slightly criticized. One of the reasons I think...., and I am no expert...is that a black man has never made it this far toward being a nominee of the Democratic (or Republican) Party and the goal seems so close. Many of his fans cannot face or understand or even accept in any way his not getting the nomination. White people have been there before, although no woman. Perhaps one can see the problems for both sides. Those of us who have supported Hillary from the day she opted to run for the Senate and have spent many hours and a bit of money too to get her to the point of being president it is hard to just give up because we think she is very close to the goal as well.

[going2ireland]

While your opinion is well thought out and well put without any attacking, I disagree with you.

[soithoni]

"Diversity is not a passing fad."

I like that. It is an indictment on the rethugs that we should remember as we slug out these last months before November 4th.

Deep down below all the Chimp tarnish on the Statue of Liberty is a poem... something about "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Diversity was never a passing fad. It's time to remember why we're here, America. We *are* the light of the world. We need to light that lamp again. It is in our diversity that we are strong.

[mjc]

Have to disagree with the commentators. The cover was a funny spoof. Even non-political people thought it was only funny and many had no idea that Obama had ever dressed in Somalia attire or that his wife had made any comment about this country. That was when it first came out. Now, these same babes in the woods realize that it was pointing up remarks they had heard occasionally about Obama's Muslim father and what they knew of Jeremiah Wright's comments. Unless you really think there is something to any of the images in the cartoon, there is little to fear or be upset about. It's quite funny.

[olivia]

"Unless you really think there is something to any of the images in the cartoon, there is little to fear or be upset about. It's quite funny."

That's exactly why people objected to it. Millions of Americans are reading lies circulated by McCain supporters (and even some embittered Hillary supporters) and believe these things. For them, the cartoon reinforces their beliefs.

It was great fun for its small, narrow intended audience: New Yorker readers. Unfortunately everybody else will see it too.

The cartoonist should have put this illustration into a thought bubble coming out of the head of a Fox News analyst. Then it would qualify as satire. This last bit exists only in the minds of the more informed readers.

[mjc]

There isn't as great an audience for the New Yorker magazine as you may think, but even so there are many people who believe that Michelle really slings an ammunition belt over her shoulder or that the Obamas would have a picture of Osama bin Laden on the walls of the Oval Office. That is what is funny, the sheer impossiblity of what you see in the cartoon actually happening. That is why it is a form of satire. Millions of Americans aren't reading lies: they are reading a complete negative of an image or bunch of images that some bitter Americans might have in their mind but would know that what is being seen is the exact opposite. Protesting that the cartoon is a bunch of lies could actually make people wonder if maybe they were wrong in seeing something humorous instead of something quite out of context. You don't need thought bubbles if you are informed or uninformed to get the cartoon. That is the point. Period.

[mjc]

My post is missing part of a verb: ...there areN"T many people... Sorry.