Satirical Malfunction: The New Yorker And Its Obama Cover

By now you might have heard about the Obama cover on The New Yorker, and if not you can see it pictured above. There's already been a multitude of stories and comments on it which you can read here, here, here, and here, as well as listen to an NPR round table here.

My take?

I'm a free speech advocate, and I love satire. In the political arena - no matter who that candidate is - no one should be exempt, and rightly so. We've built our country (in part) on being able to openly criticize not just politicians and public figures, but those who support as well as denounce them. In that way I have no problem with The New Yorker and their magazine trying to satirize something within the political landscape.

But I'm also an advocate against racism, stereotyping, xenophobia, ethnic humor gone wrong, and people who don't take historical context into consideration.

To be honest - I'm a little torn.

Here's what The New Yorker editor David Remnick had to say:

What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama's — both Obamas' — past, and their politics. I can't speak for anyone else's interpretations, all I can say is that it combines a number of images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some, about Obama's supposed "lack of patriotism" or his being "soft on terrorism" or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers. That somehow all this is going to come to the Oval Office.

The idea that we would publish a cover saying these things literally, I think, is just not in the vocabulary of what we do and who we are... We've run many many satirical political covers. Ask the Bush administration how many.

If the piece is about the misconceptions that people have (or blatantly lie about) towards Obama, where in this cover are they being represented? How are they being lampooned? Without them in the cover the absurdity between what's being said about Obama and his wife versus who they truly are within the context of this campaign is lost in some ways, and to that effect it can become less of a satirical piece versus ammunition to perpetuate Obama myths based on the cover alone regardless of their base audience.

I think in a lot of ways we all get what they're trying to say - but I think the execution wasn't as good as it could have been because it focuses only on the image versus the people creating that image and I think that's key in what they're trying to say because the image being portrayed is only 1/2 of it - and if you're not satirizing the people who are actually creating and believing the false information about Obama, it begs the question of if they really thought this through versus just going "Let's put this up because it's kind of incendiary and it's going to draw attention to our magazine".

And in a lot of ways I think that's what they did do - and to that end - in a lot of ways it makes it nothing more than fodder for miscommunication and misdirection which is the same thing they were in fact satirizing.

Obama, Faith Based Initiatives, And The Church Of Bongwater

I'm still coming around on this one - and I'm still not sure (and may change my mind later on) - but right now if $500 million gets him the vote so be it - even if it does muddy the waters even more between the government and faith based groups and the typically conservative base that backs them (and how that will play out in future elections).

In that sense, I'm willing to take one for the team, because you have to do what you have to do to get the big seat.

I just don't want to hear anyone whining when the Churches of I Love Bongwater, and I Have Three Wives, or the Gay Buddhist's Chapter gets some federal funding.

Not a peep.

And I especially don't want to hear squat when the Agnostics On The Fence Maybe It's Just Cheese In The Sky and the Church of I Have A Right To An Abortion get theirs either.

I mean if this goes down, just remember that "faith" doesn't mean anything other than that.

Obama, Raw Racism, And Getting A Clue

Washington Post

While I'll have to BushWhack Clinton if she drops out of the race - because you don't go this far to drop out when there hasn't been a winner - nothing gets to me more than good people working on a good campaign who have to put up with dumbasses.

Here's a snippet from the Washington Post article Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause:

In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

Get a clue people.