Tuesday, July 15, 2008

"THE Cover"

Okay, everyone has seen by now the infamous New Yorker cover, so we don't need to go into a lengthy rehash of it.

I was an English major in college lo these many years ago, and one of my "specialities" was satire. And I can tell you, without a hint of reservation, that this cartoon was NOT satire. It was at best a lampooning juvenile parody, more suitable to the pages of, I don't know, the National Lampoon (although I'm sure that even they wouldn't have published it) or Mad Magazine (same caveat applies).

If it were, however, as the mouthpieces for the New Yorker have been all over the MSM declaiming, in actuality, a satire of the wingnuttery's impressions of the Obamas, there was absolutely no context to indicate that.

If, for example, they had shown Rush Limbaugh stretched out on an opium couch with the cartoon as his drug-induced hallucination, then it would have been satire. As it was, it was nothing more than a semi-skillful illustration of the Moron-American voting bloc attitude that reinforces their already-elevated prejudices against the Obamas.

It's disgusting -- and appalling -- and the editor and publisher of the New Yorker ought to be ashamed. It's especially disingenuous for them to try to explain it away ("our readers are too sophisticated", etc.) when they don't run a corresponding cover on McCain, showing him as, say, a zombie "Manchurian Candidate" by way of Night of the Living Dead, and his trophy wife as a charity-thieving trollope-dressing c-word dope addict.

Anybody wanna bet on when that's gonna happen? Yeah, I didn't think so.

It makes me wish I'd been a subscriber, just so I could inflammatorily cancel my subscription.

5 Comments:

mrln said...

The editors of The New Yorker think their readers are sophisticated enough to "get it"? Hell, the New Yorker editors aren't even sophisticated enough to get it RIGHT!! They forgot to include the object of the satire!! An apology is in order! And they're pro-Obama? GOD HELP US!! With friends like these, who needs enemies?

nunya said...

Yep, I must agree with you on this one OPOV

jae said...

"If, for example, they had shown ..."

HA! Exactly!

The issue came up over dinner with my one lifelong friend that taught me what 'Bleeding Heart Liberal' meant. She said she hadn't seen it. I told her I had. She asked me what I thought and I told her that as left as I lean that I felt the artist and publisher had stepped over a line that I myself would not have crossed.

It's a horrible depiction. And yes, the 'terrorsit fist jab' news blurbs are -in my opinion - on the same level of horrible.

But I am wondering when can we make a point without stooping to the same low level that those who find our point of view deplorable?

Anonymous said...

I always thought parody was like characture - exaggerating what is there. That involves truth. The only truthful thing in that cover is the fist bump. Everything else feeds on the myths/lies that people have heard about the Obamas. I've usually stayed away from The New Yorker magazine, pretty much because the tone of the editorials and underlying assumption is that they are far more sophisticated than the majority of the population - that no one outside of Manhattan literary set would understand. Well, this time they're right. No one but the Mahattan literary set would/could understand this cover. Like the typical clique in teens-overcoming the-mean-ones movies, the New Yorker editiors have finally proven that they are no longer ALL THAT.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, and their cartoons have always been stupid--
New York Sneering Smartass: "You're just not sophisticated enough to understand them."
Me: "Fuck you. They're still stupid and they're not funny."