What do you think?
This is the cover of the new issue of the New Yorker showing Barack Obama in Muslim garb “fist-bumping” wife Michelle, with an assault rifle and ammo belt, in the Oval Office, a picture of Bin Laden on the wall and an American flag burning in the fireplace.
The New Yorker said in a statement: “The burning flag, the nationalist-radical and Islamic outfits, the fist-bump, the portrait on the wall? All of them echo one attack or another. Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that’s the spirit of this cover.”
Satire done right can be an effective tool and a powerful statement. I imagine the average New Yorker reader -- well educated, liberal, affluent, Democrat -- got a chuckle out of the cover. The magazine knows its audience.
But for many members of the general public, the image is inflammatory and insulting.
Knowing the way the world has shrunk and that anything one says or does in one niche or corner is going to be posted on the internet for the whole world to see, I’m shocked the esteemed editors of the New Yorker went ahead with this cover.
Seems to me that after lengthy discussions someone in authority and with some wisdom and sensitivity would have pulled the plug on this idea and opted for discretion and prudence; i.e., a totally different cover.
If they were going to push the envelope, they should have been equal-opportunity offenders and featured exaggerated caricatures of BOTH candidates -- Obama as a Muslim and, say, McCain in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank, AARP card, and a finger on the nuclear-war button.
However, this cover definitely has gotten the magazine a lot of attention, and maybe that was the real goal all along?

Toledo, Ohio
July 16, 2008