The Newyorker is...

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Despite we normally don't sink in the 'news cycle' I was curious about what you siblings think of this:

Is this the classic case of unforeseen consequences, or a calculated publicity coup?

[Opsa]

If I had just seen it at the news stand without hearing all this hollering about it, I would probably have just thought it was a pretty weak bit of satire all the way around.

It looks half-hearted to me. Like Blitt wasn't really into it. I think the controvery was pre-designed to benefit The New Yorker. Feh..

[Alpaca]

Here's another New Yorker cover from back during the primaries:



I thought that one was funny, and this one's funny, too. The New Yorker is a magazine with a readership that really does consist mostly of "elitist" liberals, I think. The target audience understands the joke, I think, understands what it's a commentary on, and though reaction may be varied, I don't think many people who subscribe to the New Yorker were genuinely offended. Unfortunately, the mass media latched onto it, and people who had no idea about the New Yorker's usual political platform and preferred form of satire got all wound up.

Politically, though, it can't do Obama any harm.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

That one is funny, but I see the current one as a tool that some in the right will use to say that even the new yorker thinks Obama is a muslim terrorist or something of the sort. Leave it on internal pages with the title of an article about the nonsense and it works perfectly, but leaving it on the front page with no caption, and you get the average passerby reading it in a completely different context.

Actually I would love to read letters from regular readers on the subject to gather how 'on target' was the cartoon.

[Alpaca]

That one is funny, but I see the current one as a tool that some in the right will use to say that even the new yorker thinks Obama is a muslim terrorist or something of the sort. Leave it on internal pages with the title of an article about the nonsense and it works perfectly, but leaving it on the front page with no caption, and you get the average passerby reading it in a completely different context.

I disagree. The media frenzy has made the intentions of the cartoonist perfectly clear to the public, and the debate has moved away from that. No way the right could use it, except to convince more uneducated rednecks they already have convinced anyway.

Same for the average passerby - even without the media coverage. I see three possible responses:
1. Ha, that's funny, it parodies the false rumors the right has been circulating about Obama.
2. What terrible racism and ignorance that picture exhibits!
3. See, cousin, I told you he was a Muslim!

Responses 1 and 2 do nothing to detract from Obama, and there's no hope anyway for the one that responds with 3.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

No way the right could use it, except to convince more uneducated rednecks they already have convinced anyway.

I wouldn't be so sure, although I was surprised to see O'Reilly condemning it. In politics everything is valid (remember the so-called boat veterans on '04?) and I bet Hannity will be placing the cartoon as a background very soon...

[beagle]

...not as funny as when they had Charles Addams on cartoons.

[Sibling Chatty]

3. See, cousin, I told you he was a Muslim!

Shouldn't that be "See, CousinSisterWife, I..."


======================

It's satire, aimed at the New Yorker's demographic. Lots of them evidently didn't care for it, though. Maybe the commentators that have said that there's little room left for satire when the Right Wing has misunderstood it and trampled it underfoot so long, are right.

I do like the little touches there in that Oval-ish Office. The OBL portrait, the burning flag...

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I heard this on NPR's Talk Of The Nation the other day.

Linky

It's worth listening to, if you've the time.

You can hear what Mike Peters (of Mother Goose & Grimm and his political cartoons fame) says about it.

Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Mike Peters, the man behind the Mother Goose and Grimm cartoon strip, speaks with former New Yorker staff writer and artist Art Spiegelman about whether the magazine's cover missed the mark and reinforced stereotypes, or if it did its job.

[Swatopluk]

The problem in my view is that it is not over the top enough. As "weak" as it is now, it can be used to reinforce the stereotypes, not demonstrating them as ridiculous as they are. Obama could sprout some little horns, have a speach bubble saying "Yes! We have overfulfilled the monthly abortion quota by 666%!" etc.

There is btw a demand that they should do a Son of Cain cartoon on the next cover for balance.
Something like this

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/thebigblog/library/horseymccain.jpg

[goat starer]

I dont understand what it is trying to say.. are there people who actually think Obama is a muslim? Who is the lady? what are they doing?

[Swatopluk]

For his detractors he is a faithless man(?) of many faithes and faces. He's an atheist heretic Christian Muslim Hinduist Jewish anti-semite. Also a gay child-molester ravishing our virgins. Some say, he's the Antichrist but that opinion is opposed by those that expect him (the AC) to be female. Not to forget that he's just black enough to qualify as a n-word but too white to appeal to the other n-words. He is also rumored to have fathered black children.

[goat starer]

can we have another option on the poll for

goping straight over my head because i have no idea who these people are or what they are doing

[ivor]

I dont understand what it is trying to say.. are there people who actually think Obama is a muslim? Who is the lady? what are they doing?

From what I understand from talking to one old fart in Florida most people over 70 are certain that Obama is a Muslim.  Reverend Wright is actually and Imam regardless of the fact that he's a "Christian."

The youth vote really needs to get out, especially in Florida. 

[Darlica]

I see my self as a pretty well educated European, but it is through contact with people like you here on TFM I've come to know a bit about the way of the New Yorker.

I know it's satire but to a lot of Europeans (I guess at least if you look away from the British isles) The New Yorker could might as well be a magazine like the Economist or perhaps Der Spiegel who also have caricatures on the front pages now and then, most of us doesn't know what kind of magazine The New Yorker is.

This picture had a huge media coverage even here but there was no background information about the Magazine at all. Some media here has even drawn parallels to the Danish so called Muhammad caricatures which shows that even the journalists seem to have missed the point with the picture.

I think, like Swato, that the satire is too weak. It looks much more like a scurrilous portrait made by his (more fanatic) enemies to show what will happen if he wins than it look like a high end caricature from a magazine making fun of peoples prejudices about him.
Ambiguousness can be great fun as an instrument in pictures but it is a tool hard to master.

I find this picture crude and not funny at all but not due to any of the poll suggestions.
Caricatures are difficult to draw (even the kind one can have done for a € or two at a fair or a side walk) political caricatures especially those who doesn't just want to make fun of for example a presidents sexual conquests or flaws in appearance or personality in general, but want to make fun of others using the caricature as a laughing mirror on the audience are extremely hard to execute well and this one simply doesn't cut it.