The <i>New Yorker</i> Satire Blues

The Obama and McCain campaigns have expressed disappointment and disdain concerning the New Yorker cover. I'm not real happy about it, either. (In fact, I kinda want to scream!) But we live in America, and the New Yorker is making a very real point about "the politics of fear," with cartoon art pretty much guaranteed to sell the current edition of the magazine! (And really, isn't that what it's all about with any publisher?)

The cover's only saving grace will be this one: IF such a satirical, controversial depiction of "all we fear about Obama as a relative unknown on the political scene" gets the fear-based voters to look inside the magazine for the articles about Obama, each of the characterizations shown on the cover will be utterly dissed and debunked -- and that's a good thing!

I'm the last person in America willing to draw the exact line on the right to free speech. I find the cover offensive, racist, and utterly without merit -- just as I find the characterizations of the Obamas that compelled the cartoonist to draw the image without merit...

The New Yorker cover image reflects a compilation of the often-repeated-yet-utterly-false characterizations of the Obamas which will need to be overcome during the course of the next several months. The inside story will help do that.

But the incendiary cover will survive and, sadly, may even prevail in the minds and hearts of a segment of the population -- cruelly enforcing an utterly false, hurtful image -- and possibly even causing a mentally ill person to take it upon him- or herself to "nip the matter in the bud" with some senseless act of violence.

THAT'S what scares me.

We live in a dangerous world. Images like the one on New Yorker Magazine this month make the world incrementally just that much more dangerous...

...and I so want to continue to enjoy peaceful, non-violent transfers of power in America.