MyBO And The New Yorker Cover

The New Yorker cover is meant to be satiric, a criticism of the pervasive distortions of Obama, his family and his record.

Had this been true, the cover should have featured Sean Hannity and others and shown the folly of their ways.

The notion that it is satire to portray the Obamas this way is disingenuous and ultimately false.

Satire is supposed to challenge folly, vice and stupidity. This cover is an invidious and false picture which merely exaggerates a negative caricatures already out there.

It is an evocation of precisely what the Swift Boat folk of 2008 want people to think of when the image of Obama floats to the surface.

Surely the editors of the New Yorker understand that we are dealing with profound and pervasive mindlessness in a major portion of our electorate. One that is pandered to by our cable channels, already making sure their audience sees the false portrait multiple times, Rev. Wright style.

This prospect cannot have escaped the minds of those who gave us this cover. I am sure the readers of the New Yorker will understand the actual use to which it will be put.

There are two texts about Obama in the issue.

The first is a brief commentary which indicates that, compared to McCain, Obama is one who may change emphasis but hardly a person who, like his opponent, lurches like a cornered creature, between maverick reactions and scripted Bush positions.

The main piece in the New Yorker, by Ryan Lizza, is a journeyman treatment of Obama's rise, containing little that is new and essentially reviewing what most of us know:

Obama is ambitious.

Obama is smart.

Obama has liberal proclivities but a genuune respect for conservative ideas.

Obama does what is needed to win.

Obama plans before he acts.

Obama keeps a close watch over campaign strategy.

Obama, like other "moral" Illinois politicians, keeps his distance from the endemically corrupt precincts of Illinois and Chicago politics.

The article manages to turn up two enemies of Barack, a woman who liked him but thinks he is an opportunist now, and a fellow State Senator with whom he almost (once) came to blows. That is about the same record you might get from a pro ball player who is walking the straight and narrow. It is dwarfed by the instances in which McCain has been recorded as insulting his peers and doing bad things to some of his constituents.

Here is the worst the New Yorker article dishes out. A reasonably accurate judgment that might equally be applied to the rise of anyone who became conscious at an early age of a potential destiny.

"Although many of Obama's recent supporters have been surprised by signs of political opportunism, Preckwinkle wasn't. "I think he was very strategic in his choice of friends and mentors," she told me. "I spent ten years of my adult life working to be alderman. I finally got elected. This is a job I love. And I'm perfectly happy with it. I'm not sure that's the way that he approached his public life--that he was going to try for a job and stay there for one period of time. In retrospect, I think he saw the positions he held as stepping stones to other things and therefore approached his public life differently than other people might have."

On the Obama Blog, the war against the New Yorker is in full force, with even people who have no subscriptions sending in unsubscribe notices.

Sadly though, in the spirit of Dan Abrams, I call this a loss for the New Yorker and a near-term loss for Obama.

Why near term?

Because what happens when the Hannity forces of the world start loosing their venom in requisite amounts? Barack, like Clark Kent, does a switch.

He comes up with a speech, as in Philadelphia this year, that converts defeat into resounding victory.

Higher ground.

Beyond distraction.

Consensus-building.

The funniest thing of all is that the MSM, which the New Yorker has apparently joined, asks -- with a straight face -- why Obama is not running away with this election ... now!!!

As if they did not know.