David Remnick, the New Yorker magazine editor, explained the purpose of the July 21st issue's cover art, which depicts Barack Obama in Muslim garb and Michelle Obama as a black militant: "The intent of the cover is to satirize the vicious and racist attacks and rumors and misconceptions about the Obamas that have been floating around in the blogosphere and are reflected in public opinion polls."
I like to think that I have some understanding of political satire. And I do not believe in censorship, especially the internalized variety or censorship targeting artistic expression. I'm not a killjoy. I appreciate Remnick's intent to dispel the myths about the Obamas that right-wing web sites and talk radio have perpetrated. I am relaxed. I'm not calling for a course of action or proposing a "solution."
But I still don't like the potential political effects of the illustration. Remnick told Charlie Rose last night that he believes "context" is key. But the cover can be easily taken out of context. And it will be. Remnick acknowledges that some public opinion polls already show these myths have seeped into part of the electorate. They will continue to do so.
We have only two choices this fall, Barack Obama or John McCain. The New Yorker cover art depicts Obama in a way that McCain simply never could be. Obama is "the Other." Something "foreign" and "un-American." Michelle Obama appears with an Afro and an automatic weapon strapped on her side. She's "scary." No cookie recipes will come from her, (even plagiarized ones). A portrait of Osama Bin Laden hangs over a fireplace where an American flag burns. Pretty powerful stuff.
John McCain is a gray haired wealthy white man. When he stands up there in front of all those American flags at his town hall meetings he looks a little old but no one can deny that he looks "presidential." McCain's face could be pasted on a dollar bill and he would be immediately recognized as "a president" -- just like all the rest. Obama requires some imagination to see him in that light because this country has never before had an African-American president. Yes, racism is absurd and "vicious," as Remnick points out, but it is also as American as cherry pie. There's no question that McCain looks like "an American." He's the older white man Americans are semiotically trained to see as a president. Obama is just as "American" as McCain, but the Republicans are going to do everything in their power to convince voters otherwise.
How could the New Yorker satirize John and Cindy McCain in a way that turns them into "the Other." They're wealthy white people. I don't think it can be done. Just turn on the television: wealthy white people everywhere.
Right-wing radio shock jocks are already calling Obama a "radical leftist." The Internet is abuzz with the scurrilous misinformation about the Obamas, the myths the New Yorker wished to dispel. In the time period between the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, the September 11th commemorations, and the election in November, there's sure to be a cascading torrent of propaganda, a stream of well-coordinated smears against Obama aimed at eating up news cycles and making as many Americans as possible -- call them "low information voters" -- to see him as something other than "American."
It's just a cartoon.
But it will be taken out of context, denuded of its left-liberal satirical connotations, appropriated by the Right, and found to be "humorous" for all the wrong reasons. I'm sure Rush Limbaugh will have hours of hilarity from it. It might be placed on the windshields of cars parked outside the megachurches in swing states where the faithful gather on the Sunday before the election. Or perhaps it could be sent in direct mailings to micro-targeted groups of voters susceptible to racist slurs. White supremacist organizations connected to the Republican Party, like the Council of Conservative Citizens, could make good use of it, and expand on its themes with their own additions. And if anyone complains about its racist content the 527s distributing it can say: "Hey, this thing didn't come from us, it came from liberal elitists in Manhattan."
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The reason why satire can be problematic;
S.A.T.I.R.E. ----- Some- A**holes- Tacit -Ignorance-Repels-Enlightenment, ---- there in the rub lay.
It's the little things like this that can be so damaging. This should have at least required a second thought. Don't get me wrong, this is not a direct accusation, BUT. Who but one with a dark heart, could not see the implications of this cover. The other covers shown as "cover" for this cover depict people whose political place was secure, not the "First Black Man running for the Presidency."
I believe in free speech, but I hope The New Yorker loses on this one.
The cover is clearly a deliberate and sophisticated effort to spread the smears about Obama.
These are very smart people, the editor and cartoonist. The cover really has nothing to do with the article (I wonder what the writer thinks) which is serious and comprehensive.
It's not credible that these two experienced, media-savvy individuals just made a sloppy, amateurish "oops!" They have an agenda.
Jon Stewart does this all the time, repeating the "Muslim" tag over and over and then running the "only kidding" excuse. It's interesting that he came to the New Yorker's defense.
I agree with the author that it is SATIRE but not my cup of tea. To build in some conspiracy because the U.S. electorate only have an attention span capable of digesting sound bites is not the problem of those who can deal with debate. |To cry foul when someone disagrees with you is bordering on accusations of religious sacrilege only exposes your insecurities and serves to dumb the debate.
The New Yorker and Jon Stewart are definitely not out to get Obama. Among other things, there is nothing about him that is particularly radical or particularly threatening to the powers that be.
"Or perhaps it could be sent in direct mailings to micro-targeted groups of voters susceptible to racist slurs."
You can bet it will be. Besides your main point (not even being able to depict John and Cindy as "the other" the way this did that to the Obamas), this is the main problem with the cover.
My two cents:
Low information voters don't read the New Yorker and even if they hear something about this in the MSM, they will not remember come November. G. Gordon Liddy, Rush and the other right-wing, entertainer/blow-hards have limited appeal. They are in the entertainment industry, and are excellent at playing to their limited audience of like-minded nut cases. Regardless of whether or not this cover art ever got published by the New Yorker, these people would never vote for Barack Obama, for a wide swath of ridiculous reasons.
My other thought, is that this kind of thing is already out there in the minds of those with limited capacity. By co-opting the "message" in a fun way, it diminishes the power of the attack, sort of like recent discussions of the "N' word by Whoopi and that other woman from "The View." Think Dick Gregory's autobiography and the dedication that he penned to his mother about the use of the word. One thing that I've taken to doing, ever since the infamous "terrorist fist bump" between Barack and his wife, is greeting everyone with a fist bump, mockingly referring to it as such.
My main point I think (while I was writing this at 2 in the morning) is that McCain can never be depicted as "the Other." He can be depicted as a warmonger or an old guy or even as a goose stepping soldier or as JibJab did in a tiger cage, etc. But since he is a white old man, a rich white old man, he fits the mold for "president" and "American." Whereas an African American relatively young man with a name like Obama can easily be smeared as "the Other." It's a very important distinction in my view. If they put him on a unicorn flying among flowers, fine. But a Muslim with a militant wife and a burning American flag and a picture of Osama bin Laden -- it throws the stereotypes Obama has been trying to avoid in our faces -- which might work out well, I don't know,-- maybe Remnick is correct and the satire will push people away from these falsehoods by throwing it in their faces -- I think Susan Jacoby in her book The Age of American Unreason has shown there are tens of millions of morons in this country ("Low Information Voters" is just a euphemism for very dumb, functionally illiterate people who vote). The Onion did a fabulous satire of this in 2004 with a Dwayne Bickles character saying: "Yee Haw, My Vote Cancels Out Y'All's!"
Satire is not considered humorous by everyone, of course. To me, in certain cases, it can be entertaining without being offensive. The latest 'Jib-Jab' skit is one example of satire that is comical without being cruel.
I think the New Yorker cover might have been appropriate on, say, MAD Magazine but never on TIME, NEWSWEEK or US NEWS and WORLD REPORT.
That it appeared on the New Yorker cover was a choice of the publisher. Whether it was a wise choice will no doubt be determined by current or potential subscribers/readers.
This column is better than most in that it does not base its argument on a distortion of what counts as satire, but deals with the issue whether the cartoon will have a negative effect on the election. That is a real concern, although it is difficult to tell either way.
I don't listen to talk radio, but I do read the conservative opinion sites, and it should be noted that they are getting less material from the New Yorker cartoon itself then they are getting from the humorless response to it. If the opinion columns are an indication, they see more hope in pushing the Obama as untouchable, Liberals as humorless censors lines than anything they can directly get from a satirical cartoon in the New Yorker.
Lon, I appreciate your post. It challenges me to think before I blast it. (LOL) Accusations of liberals being humorless censors from the likes of those who blew a gasket when Obama implied that McCain was "losing his bearings" doth not a sympathetic convert make of me.
Seriously, though, don't you think the conservative opinion sites would have used this cartoon for their own political gain and talking points regardless of whatever the liberal response had been? If liberals had embraced the satire depicted, the repubs would have reviled Obama and us for NOT speaking out against it. We would have been accused of AGREEING with the caricature. Their latest smear is that we consider Obama as an untouchable messiah. And yet, it is THEY who have propogated that idea, not Obama supporters.
We have seen the results of ignoring swift-boating and Willie Horton-style attacks. If we do not defend our own, no one else will. Why should they?
This effectively plays into two anti-Obama memes. One is that he is running as a kind of messiah candidate who is supposed to be elected without his presenting any details. (I know this is nonsense and one can go to his website to see the mindnumbing detail, but this is an effective argument for the great majority who do not go to his website).
But that argument is actually most effective for giving cover to the argument that because Obama is black he needs to be treated differently. And if one puts Obama in the white house one will not be able to freely criticize the government without being called a racist. This is a very effective slimy argument because it maps onto the argument against affirmative action. Blacks don't want equal treatment they want special treatment. So people get to take their racism and pretend it is a highminded call for equality.
This last is likely to be the main effective argument against Obama, even more than the he has a funny name and is to much like a foreigner. And the response to this cartoon plays into this effective argument much more than the cartoon was likely to aid the foreigner argument.
Obviously the right will try to use whatever they can to get Obama, but what exactly was there in this ad that was useful to them. The G Gordon Liddy approach of saying the left is finally admitting it, or however this is exactly being framed is pathetic. It is possible that giving the cartoon circulation is a problem because it will be seen by people who don't know what the New Yorker is about. But it has been the liberal reaction that has made this such a big story.
With Willie Horton one had the story of a man freed to kill again. It was a distorted out of context story, but one can see why it was effective. The same is true of military people distorting Kerry's record. But a cartoon depicting nonsense on the cover of a magazine that the people being targetted don't read is hardly useful in this way.
By contrast, the way that this response has been used on the right is quite clever. The cartoon is grouped together with (I believe it was) Pallermo's earlier criticism of Jon Stewart for satirizing Obama as well as McCain, along with earlier criticism of Saturday Night Live when it briefly was thought to be favoring Clinton against Obama to present a picture of Obama as not open to being joked about.
It's basically just "swift-boating", but it's out there now, so rather than complaining, or ignoring it, Obama should try to turn it into an asset for educating those too ignorant to figure out the joke.
A JOKE IT IS NOT.
To laugh at this "cover joke" you might as well laugh at Mccain "rape joke" or the Mccain's "ugly chelsa clinton joke.
Racist jokes are never satire or humor.
You go, Joe! As a native Dallasite, I, among others, have long considered New York a mecca of creativity and energy. It can also be a toilet. It's a city of immigrants, then and now, since so many have taken their energy from the Heartland and have transplanted it to the Big Apple. The coastal liberals have joked about the "fly over states" without acknowledging the brain power that has found its way to those coasts. All this to say that the veneer of sophistication wears thinner each year, and in Mr. Remnick's patronising, it begins to show cracks. Yes, the cover was funny on some levels, but in his attempt at sophistication, the editor failed to understand its nuances, and flatly used poor judgement.
Liberal elitists in Manhattan make Freudian slips. They are so disconnected from other Americans in the everyday world that they have no idea whatsoever how their own "satire" will be received in Peoria, let alone in Tupelo.
It's already starting. G. Gordon Liddy, from his nationally sindicated radio show: "It's got Obama in his Muslim dress with a turban, and he's there with his wife. His wife has a 'mad at the world' afro, circa 1968, she -- she's got bandoliers and an assault weapon, and there in their fireplace is burning the American flag. The New Yorker finally got it right."
What is just starting? Do you think G Gordon Liddy has been saying anything different for the last few months?
The fact that Liddy is jumping on this could mean that this is an effective piece of propoganda for the right. Or it could mean that Liddy is so desperate for material to make Obama look foreign that he is reduced to this.
Given that this is a political cartoon, the latter seems to be the more likely explanation.
Yep. It just plays up the stereotype. I was actually shocked by how naive Reminick was when he claimed that we underestimate the intelligence of Americans. Do we really? Not long ago Bush started a preposterous lie about Saddam Hussein being behind 911. Within a matter of months, 7-8 out of 10 Americans agreed and supported the invasion! There are blowholes out there that still believe that Obama is a Moslem and even others who believe that he took his oath on a Quran. How smart is that? It was a foolish, cruel and tasteless joke.
Very nice post Joe. As usual, you rock!!!
Perhaps Jon Stewart, who I have been disappointed with lately, can read your post here.
Two nights ago he criticized the Obama campaign for reacting to what was "just a cartoon cover". Here is his quote in full:
"Really? You know what your (Obama's) response should've been? It's very easy here, let me put the statement out for you: Barack Obama is in no way upset about the cartoon that depicts him as a Muslim extremist. Because you know who gets upset about cartoons? Muslim extremists! Of which Barack Obama is not. It's just a fucking cartoon!"
Now that may be a tad chuckleworthy, but it doesn't erase the fact that the cover does nothing to dispel the lies and vicious innuendo about Obama's character, background, etc. And like you wrote, the cover will be taken out of context, again, and again, and again.
Thanks for bringing some more perspective to this Joe.
Exactly! I'm sick of smug white people telling us to chill out about this offensive cover because it is so ironic and sophisticated or whatever. Its the MOST offensive slander of a presidential candidate in the mainstream media I have ever seen. Depicting the Obamas as militant radicals because they are black is disgusting and pathological. Remnick should be fired.
Have you ever actually looked at editorial cartoons of Presidents and Presidential spouses? Senator Obama and his wife are not untouchable. I've seen equally (if not more so) offensive cartoons of the Bushes and, on numerous occasions, the Clintons.
It's part of the territory--and regardless of whether one likes the cartoon (I didn't, as it happens), it really points out the degree to which Senator Obama and his campaign are humor-challenged, and over-sensitive.
I've never seen a cartoon of any candidate or spouse dressed like a black militant terrorist burning the american flag. We white folks can make fun of blacks as radical and un-american because we're just being 'ironic.' Right. As far as being 'humor-challenged'? This cartoon is neither clever nor funny.
Easy for you to say, you weren't the target of every inaccurate and negative stereotype out there. I don't think the Obama camp over reacted at all. If you heard his interview on Larry King, he handled it masterfully, claiming that it was just a cartoon and there are much more important issues. A couple of years ago a conservative cartoonist featured Bush at the end of the barrel of a gun much like the infamous picture of a Vietnam secret policeman shooting an alleged communist conspirator at point blank range. He was rightly criticized, just as this Ne Yorker cover should be.
Yes, firing people because their sense of humor is not in line with yours, how very open-minded and progressive of you. Political correctness is just another form of censorship wilburrog, get over yourself.
Peace
Forgive me if I'm mistaken but I don't recall any of the criticism of this cover including a demand of anyone's firing. You are projecting. It's perfectly fine to express an opinion on a magazine cover, it doesn't mean we're screaming for the heads of those responsible for it's publication. This isn't about political correctness. It's about concerned citizens expressing their distate for a dumb "satirical" illustration, not a call for censorship.
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Posted July 17, 2008 | 05:35 AM (EST)