The shoes! That alone is unforgivable.

That is a reference to the photo Kenyan/Somali headress, it is not an arabic keffiyeh.

A very funny cover.  Unlike the Ahmadinejad/Craig cover, it is also politically incorrect, so it offends all the right twerps too.  

Get on the Umbrage Express! Be the first on your block to express moral outrage! Show your Politically Correct sensitivity to all things "insensitive". Get a grip. If we needed sophistication to grasp satire, Saturday Night Live would have never left the starting gate.

This cover falls entirely within the realm of satire regularly done by The New Yorker,and especially by this artist.

Once again, it is politically incorrect to satirize Saint Obama.  Even when the satire is in his defense, for God's sake.

I sincerely believe the New Yorker owes Barack and Michelle Obama an apology.  This is not conventional satire, as I argue on the J-PAC website at greater length (j-pac.squarespace.com/news).  

The "victims" of the "satire" are nowhere to be found in the cartoon - Certainly had that been his primary aim, the formidable Barry Blitt could have come up with an idea that incorporated the primary targets of his satire in the piece.

Instead what we have is a case of "satire once removed" which, while obviously tasteless and perhaps even worthy of boycott, also raises some much less obvious questions.  If this new "genre" of "satire once removed" is legitimate might then we be tempted to draw the Pope in a Ku Klux Klan robe, thereby satirizing all those silly folks who believe the Pope is evil? There's a laugh.  Perhaps we can satirize all those conspiracy theorists by showing a cartoon of President Bush ordering the 9-11 attacks '...and Dick, make sure it looks like Osama did it.'  Hick, hick.  Funny stuff.  

Or we could draw a cartoon of The New Yorker cartoonists dressed as buffoons or prostitutes  in order to satirize, not the The New Yorker cartoonists, certainly not,  but rather those silly souls who equate The New Yorker cartoonists with such occupations.  Now wouldn't that be clever?

No - satire that does not call out it's intended target and needs to be "explained" by "outside commentary (i.e. rationalization)" is not true satire.  A joke that needs to be explained is certainly not a good one, and in this case the explanation comes not to elucidate some missing piece of information but rather to give the diametrically opposed message of the joke itself!  Had the cartoon somehow managed to capture that within it's own borders with a little bit of humor this would have been fine and well within conventional norms of satire.

But in this case, the message that Obama and even his wife are actually Al Qaeda terrorists resonates with all to many people in this country to be humorous, no matter how many "outside explanations" for the joke's "true meaning" are offered.

This cover is the product of a small cultural world in which the ridiculousness of the anti-American / crypto Muslim smears on the Obamas is simply taken for granted. The humor is presumably supposed to stem from the fact that the various allegations represented are all so self-evidently silly that no reasonable person could believe them.

The problem is that while the smears represented are self-evidently silly to everyone at the New Yorker -- and to most of its readers -- they're *not* necessarily self-evidently silly to a frighteningly large number of Americans. Anyone who knows that is going to have a hard time finding this very funny. It's not offensive so much as blithely clueless and in rather poor taste.

Once again, we see why the Talkback section of TNR is th best in the business.  Both Channy and Gavriel Meir-Levi have terrific points. When I saw the cover I felt a bit of both.

But my instincts are with the artist.  Political cartoonists have a specific place in our discourse and they have been (with some exception) much too tame for my taste these low last eight years.  I agree with our wise friend Gavriel that satire that needs to be explained is not satire.  But I also think that satire that provokes such a great dialouge is a rare and welcome sight.  Political satire should shock every now and then, bare its teeth. I heartily welcome the spirit of fearlessness and anger in this cover.  

What deserves to be mercilessly mocked more than the pathetic level of FOX news discourse towards the Obamas on the lame brained right?  Effective mocking is the quickest way to delegitimize anything, especially ideological thought.  The woman who came up with the "terrorist fist jab" comment was immediately fired - not for being offensive, but for being so embarrassingly idiotic.

Roger Ailes is no dummy.  Something that stupid that can so quickly become shorthand for the shallow brain-deadness of the poltical discourse on the right immediately weakens him.  This cover carries on that opening given to the artist by FOX news and their ilk.  Mock away!

Wandrey says:

"But my instincts are with the artist.  Political cartoonists have a specific place in our discourse and they have been (with some exception) much too tame for my taste these low last eight years."

I agree completely.  

Neil

My main objection to the cover is that it's too easy.  I would have rather seen Obama fleeing an enthusiastic kaffieh-clad supporter.  Or Obama looking on while the Secret Service checks Jesse Jackson for sharp objects.  Or McCain campaigning from a Budweiser truck.

Right on, Androscoggin.  The average New Yorker reader is sufficiently versed in ironic humor to get the joke.  The problem with the cover, though, is that Blitt unwittingly uses that sense of irony to trade in the kind of offensive stereotypes that the Fox News crowd would love to use against Obama but know they could never get away with .  This simply provides them with an opportunity to spread bigotry in the guise of "news" in a way that allows them to avoid the storm of outrage that would follow if they issued such slurs themselves.

I didn’t renew my New Yorker subscription.

I liked the TNR cover that showed a composite of BHO and HRC. Time for a repeat-- only this time, given Obama's steady movement toward adoption of McCain's Iraq position, TNR should do an Obama-McCain morph.

Or maybe an Obama-W morph.

Re The New Yorker's thinking, hey, no such thing as bad publicity. They say TNY in the Remnick era makes money. Probably because they're willing to take risks like this, and make fun of what's become a ludicrous political process.

tep - I appreciate the difficult plight of print publications in the Internet age.  But does anyone honestly believe that a cover like this will lead to increases in ad revenue and/or subscriptions?

I guess it's never too late, but I'm still disappointed Rick Hertzberg hasn't authorized a cover illustration depicting Joe Lieberman eating matzos made from Palestinian children's blood, manipulating the world's finances, and gleefully crucifying Christ. Obviously we know those are just horrible myths about Jews, but there are people who actually believe those things, and a cover like this would help bring those beliefs into the open so that a healthy dialogue can occur, right? And since Joe Lieberman is a prominent national politician and former Vice-Presidential candidate, I'm sure the ADL and B'Nai Brith would have no objection to such a timely cover, and no doubt Rick Hertzberg would be praised extensively at his synagogue. I'm sure that there would be those who would be uncomfortable, but to them we'd say, "jeez, it's just satire, don't be so damn sensitive!"

Satire: the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

Nearly everyone in this commentary seems to accept that this cover was "satire."  But it's damned poor satire if it is, since the intent is evidently not to convey that the Obamas are fellow travelers with Islamic terrorists, or United States-hating radicals, but rather to ridicule those who do think this.   Had the artist portrayed Rush Limbaugh with a cloud around his head containing this image, thus suggesting that he thought or fantasizes about Obama, unreasonably, in this fashion, that would have been satire.  Conversely, portraying the image as a demon or fire with a some sort of exaggerated Obama attempting to destroy the demon, or douse the fire, would have satirized Obama as hyper-sensitive to such innuendo.  But as drawn, this is simply bad art conveying a slander, and not satire at all.

bingo, waynejm. You make exactly the point I was discussing with my husband this morning. Now THE story is that cover, which will be seen by millions of people who will never read the piece or get the irony. The New Yorker being a recognizable and reputable publication, this cover just legitimizes all that "Obama is a Muslim" garbage out there.

Channy, how would you feel if they put McCain behind a walker in a pair of depends, satirizing his age? uh, yeah, i thought so. And can you imagine a Conservative magazine ever offering up such "satire", oh right, I forgot Conservatives don't do or know satire, but if they did they sure as hell wouldn't satirize his age.

The cover is in bad taste and isn't remotely amusing, I am not condemning the artist, just saying this was just to flat and obvious to be worthy of the cover of the magazine.

More than anything else, seeing that cover remind me of how a reporter once characterized the "logic" that propelled the Patty Hearst kidnapping SLA into its fatal shootout ... he called it a perfect example of the Left's inability to know when its won.

Who cares. There's a lot more important things to be getting upset about.

tep, vis a vis Iraq, huh? Obama is not morphing to McCain. Obama wants to leave Iraq and set out a timetable, and so does the Iraqi government want us to leave Iraq and set out a timetable, Obama is only remaining open to the timing, McCain otoh is vowing to stay regardless of what the iraqis and the American people want. To claim the positions are morphing is just silly.

listen, i think in the end they will both do about the same thing, but in the end it will look a hell of a lot closer to Obama's position than McCain's.

tep, vis a vis Iraq, huh? Obama is not morphing to McCain. Obama wants to leave Iraq and set out a timetable, and so does the Iraqi government want us to leave Iraq and set out a timetable, Obama is only remaining open to the timing, McCain otoh is vowing to stay regardless of what the iraqis and the American people want. To claim the positions are morphing is just silly.

listen, i think in the end they will both do about the same thing, but in the end it will look a hell of a lot closer to Obama's position than McCain's.

The Democratic nominee is shown in the Oval Office wearing a turban and giving a "terrorist fist-jab" to his Afroed, machine-gun-toting wife. Ha … ha?

You know what,

I would bet that the marjoirty of the people who "don't" think this is a big deal or not african american or muslim american.  

I don't blame the artist, it's the editors of the new yorker who decided to run with this caricature.  But I can't say that I'm surprised.  The New Yorker mag subscribers are the mainly white liberals, who may see the satrie in this, but I would bet if the New yorker had a larger number of african american subscribers, then they would have thought twice about putting this image on the cover.

The sad thing is that being an African-American myself the idea that we are supposed to not be upset "because it's satire" is bullshit!!  If this image was on the cover of "the national review" or on the front page of some right wing hate site, then would we still be told to "see the satire" in it.

I've learned that there are 2 types of funny when it comes to racial insenstivity: 1) funny HAHA, and 2) funny, sad.  to most african americans who woke up this morning to hear/see this cover, it's definitely not funny HAHA to us.

Besides, to some people the Sambo image was satire too.  Should I not be upset by that either.

lamh - I don't find the cover funny or terribly cute-- it's badly drawn, ugly, witless really, if you asked me-- but I also don't see any specific RACIAL component to it. The trappings and symbols portrayed here are all political in nature. Michelle's outfit could mark her as a Sandinista or another Patty Hearst: she's wearing not a dashiki but fatigues, the uniform of every counterculture or other "militant" in the western hemisphere. Barack is of course dressed like a wahabbi jihadist. Last I checked they weren't exactly sympathetic to African or African-American issues of any kind, especially not those dark-skinned Africans of southern Sudan....

The Left proves once again, it has no sense of humor.  Especially when the humor is aimed at the Left.  Even when the humor is obviously satiric in intent and in support of a Leftist.

If Obama is the "new" kind of politician he is held out to be, more intelligent, more nuanced, then why is the response of the campaign to this so conventional?

What Obama's people ought to have said-- in contrast to the outrage they espoused-- is that they realize that the intent of this cover was satiric.  That they are also cognizant that The New Yorker pretty generally supports the Democratic Party.  Problem is, their satire, in this instance, would easily be misunderstood.  Particularly by people likely to be against them.

But, nooooo,  You heard nothing that sophisticated from Obama.

Why don't you dudes admit, this guy is no different than any other politician.  And he's being exposed for a hypocrite for claiming that he was.

Don't know about that Tep. The AK and, especially the Afro are meant to make her look like a Black Panther.

And, Gavriel Meir-Levi, what a tortured critique of a joke.

Only an academic could so mirthlessly waste a day on such tripe.

Give it a rest and if you can't take the heat, get out of the political kitchen.

Jeeez!

lamh31, drop the white-black crap.  As someone on his side has pointed out, Obama is not running to be president of Black America.  He's running to be president of the United States.

Obama says his candidacy transcends race.  I take him at his word.  Unless someone aims racial attacks on the man, he has to take criticism and ridicule like a man.

And so do the rest of you supporting him.

Liberals, once again, reveal themselves to be a bunch of wimps and babies.  And you want to run this country?  And defend us against the worst tyrants and radicals on the planet?  You're not passing the vetting procedure, that's for sure.

Iggy - if memory serves the panthers were into black leather, tight bell-bottoms and zipup boots with heels, not baggy fatigues and combat boots. Huey and Bobby had style sense if nothing else.

Suppose so. Still, why the oversized Afro.

Chan, didn't get to do that jump, runway was waterlogged. Sorry about posting that here but I'm Boneidle when it comes to Facebook.

Stuff it, Chan.  Empty and pointless name-calling only reveals the utter bankruptcy of conservatives.  You can do better.  

Before I did my name-calling, cspencef, I backed up my critique.

It is fitting and prop;er that it took a Leftist publication, The New Yorker, in trying to support Obama, to show how thin-skinned is the Obama campaign.

And, more importantly, that Obama and his people have pretensions and assumptions that they are above all criticism except of the mildest variety.

I've beenlistening to Bush called "Hitler" and "Tyrant" and "moron" and "fascist" for eight years.  Never saw him cry about it.  

Obama has to take the same kind of criticism and ridicule that all national candidates are subject to.  The New Yorker-- that very same cartoonist-- have done many major cover jobs on G. Bush.  Never heard the equivalent ruckus.  And certainly never some claim of "racism" etc.

Either Obama is running as a man or he's running as a black man.  he damn sure better let us know now which it is.

i am so sick of the clever shits in this culture.  i wouldnt subscibe to the new yorker for that reason.  but finally it seemed cheap enough and there you go, vomit time.  for me, this is just another example of liberal boys having fun and at whose expense.  there will be a price to be payed for this i am sure.  and i hope it is remnick,  the ultimate geek.  god, i hate these guys. so getting rid of the subsctiption and perhaps ny review will be a good thing...

If Obama is smart, and he is, in his next speech he will apologize for having left his dashiki at the cleaners, and for Michelle for having left the AK at home.

In the meantime, what's the big deal?  Magazine editors show bad judgment regularly.  Even leftie pubs like the New Yorker.

I think the afro underscores the cartoon's original conceit, which is the utter ridiculousness of the BHO-as-jihadist meme.

Maybe also how this lame line of attack doesn't square int he slightest with the reality of a hyper-ambitious candidate who will reposition himself in any way necessary to get elected

IggyPop, was at Lompoc with my son for the Piper Cub fly-in this wdeekend.  There was a Cessna Caravan turboprop taking off and landing every fifteen minutes dumping a bun cha people out over the field.  At $100 a pop, I think he was making money.

Sorry, everybody, for the aerosport digression.

Hey, gang, I figured it out.  He's not Saint Obama.  He's not Jesus Obama.  He's Mohammed Obama.  

Because the slightest criticism of the man-- or employing his image, even in his defense-- sets off a firestorm of outrage from Obama acolytes.

Talk  about protesting too much!

Gavriel Meir-Levi, did you ever read Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" written and published in 1729?  In it, he suggested as a solution to the "Irish Problem," consuming Irish babies in a very Irish stew.

Satire by definition takes the most extreme positions and attitudes of ones opponents and stretches it a few inches further to show the inanity or absurdity of such attitudes.

The New Yorker cover, aimed at a presumed sophisticated audience, was doing that very thing.

Clearly, many in the audience ain't too sophisticated.

I'm on the other side, and I get it.  But then, Stalinists are always executing their allies as traitors.

Gavriel Meir-Levi, I just read your blog at J-Pac.  Your suggestions on how The New Yorker could have made their cover more tastefully and impossible to misunderstand may be one of the funnier things to emerge from this affair.  

But, I don't think P.J. O'Rourke or Christopher Buckley have anything to worry about from you yet.

Androscoggin, to your point, if Obama did not have so many questionable associations, the attitudes the cover is trying to satirize would not have come to exist.  

And the cover itself would simply have raised a big "huh?" or irrelevance.

Even big lies have to form around the irritant grain of some truth.

Another issue of which this kerfuffle reminds me are the recent spate of attempts to remove "Huckleberry Finn" from public libraries.  

And, on an even dumber level, the recent "black hole" blowup where an elected official thought that a fellow county commissioner or somesuch was making racial aspersions by the use of such a term.

I think his response was, "Oh, yeah, well  you're a white hole."

Devo was right.  Our educational system is going right down the tubes when such idiocy is so widespread.  People are definitely getting dumber.

Channy is on a rampage here, but he has a point.

Why all the defensiveness and racism charges over what was clearly offered as a mockery of the right-wing nutters who actually believe Obama is a flag-hating Muslim?

I'm amazed.  Obama is going to win this race with plenty of room to spare - there are better fights to pick than this silly quarrel with The New Yorker.

Neil  

neil, yer right, I have been huffing and puffing on this one.  But, mainly because the irony cuts so deep.

It is the Left that prides itself on all it's stiletto equipped humorists and comedians.  It is Obama and his camp that claim to be bringing new intelligence, sophistication, and nuance to dumbass politics as usual.

And what happens with this?  The Left goes off its rocker at their own side.  And the Obama campaign puts out a statement that sounds just like every other willfully dumbass politicians you've ever heard in the last generation.

Even as a member of the opposition, I expect more from Obama.  I'm ready to believe his claims of intellectual advancement.  He does have all those fancy degrees and expensive people behind him.

channy, of course you get it, it plays right into Conservative stereotypes. But say one thing against McCain and his days as a war hero, satirize that, and expect a firestorm from the right. Clark said the truth but didn't sufficiently genuflect and say 10 Hail John McCain's before he mentioned that his being held prisoner is not in itself reason to elect him. And no one anywhere is calling for the magazine to be burned or anyone to be fired, if we can't give our opinion in an opinion magazine without being labelled hypersensitive then you are being ridiculous.

I think the cover is weak and being that it is part of the New Yorker especially so, but if South Park would do something similar I wouldn't care. And for that matter for months John Stewart played the theme song for Jesus Christ Superstar whenever he mentioned Barack's name, the liberals laughed at that.

And after PJ O'Roake, tell me a great modern Conservative satirist.

It appears that this so-called satire is entirely dependent on a title that says "the new yorker".  Make the title "fox news" and the joke disappears.

This is the height of tone deaf stupidity that only so-called liberal leftists that live in an echo chamber of their supposed wit and condescension would think is hilarious.  Hope you enjoy patting yourself on the back.

one last thing Channy, on one hand are you admiting that Liberals are superior people, noted for their wit and tolerance so that you can lament their not living up to your high standards of them? if you are admitting that Liberals generally are superior people, then that is a big admission on your part. However, I doubt that is your intent. There are thin skinned people of every political persuasion, and they tend to be the loudest complainers. And for people to be thin skinned about bad taste? You are lamenting that? You can't have it both ways Chan. You can't criticize people for upholding your own values of what is good taste simply because the bad taste is directed at a liberal. Bad taste is bad taste. And if you think this cover is good satire, hell that is just weak.

The latest New Yorker cover has been a topic of debate on the blogs, both for its non-illuminating satire

I'm sure that in the long term this cover will be remembered as "the beginning of the end" of all the smear against Senator Obama. Nothing worse could be said and it has already been drawn here. Don't forget: sooner than later Mr. Blitt will be a guest of honor at the Obama White House and he'll be offered to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. Wanna bet?

"[A] reader would have to have a fairly sophisticated understanding of each outlet's ethos to immediately intuit the intended ironic distance," says Eve Fairbanks.

Well, actually, no. Most people get the meaning of cartoons pretty well, despite what the sophisticates may think. Even complex cartoons, if they're any good, are pretty easily decoded by the average Joe or Jane. And even someone who doesn't suspect that a magazine called "The New Yorker" may have a liberal bent gets all the visual cues they need from Blitt.

The pundits who are treating this drawing as if it's some kind of sneaky PhotoShopped fraud need a refresher course in Comics Appreciation...or an introduction to it.

Good observation, dmishkin.  A lot of the hue and cry over this from "intellectuals" is the assumption that their lessers-- you know the great unwashed in flyover country-- are just too moronic to get irony.

So far, it looks like its the elite Lefties who are particularly overwrought.  But, the right, either out of discretion, diplomacy, and smart politics, or their own willful obtuseness are joining in.

I would reiterate, the intelligent reaction to this ought to be, obviously The New Yorker intended this ironically.  Everybody knows that The New Yorker is a Lefty pub and supports Obama wholeheartedly.  Some people, smart or dumb, do not have an ironic sensibility and won't get it.  But, get a grip everybody.  It was a joke, obviously a joke, and the Ku Klux Klan won't get much mileage repurposing this covere.

Meanwhile, as an aside, maybe this isn't the funniest, most brilliant cover The New Yorker has ever done.  (The New Yorker hasn't had a great sense of humor since that English woman, whatrzername, took over.  In fact, their cartoons have gotten way lame ever since, though not as bad as under her editorship.)

What I love, especially, is the Left being revealed for what it so often is:  risibly pious, and lacking in a sense of humor about itself.  So, to all the Lefty twits out there, please keep fulminating.

blackie, re "And after PJ O'Roake, tell me a great modern Conservative satirist."

In another thread under THE PLANK, on this topic ("Was the New Yorker cover gutsy?") waynejm wrote that right wing humorists was an oxymoron.

I replied, "I agree with you that Right Wing Humor is an oxymoron and regret that it is so ham-handed.

There are exceptions:  P.J. O'Rourke.  Christopher Buckley (who is kind of in the middle, really).  And, to a great extent, SNL, which if you'll consider their targets over the past 35 years, often hits the pious and the pieties of the Left as much if not more than they cream the Right. And the National Lampoon has often not been nearly as Lefty in its sensibilities as the college from which is sprang."

Earlier, you wrote, "channy, of course you get it, it plays right into Conservative stereotypes."  No, I got it because I subscribe to The New Yorker, I'm familiar with that cartoonist, and I've seen similar stuff he's done on Bush and Cheney and others.  

But, you don't have to be too brilliant to get the joke because that guy draws ironically.  Forgetting that, unless you don't read much, you sure as hell know that The New Yorker is a Left wing publication.  So the intent of the caricature was easy to apprehend.

As to, "...But say one thing against McCain and his days as a war hero, satirize that, and expect a firestorm from the right. Clark said the truth but didn't sufficiently genuflect ..."

I think making a joke about someone being a prisoner of war for five years would be like making a joke, as part of a political attack, about a guy losing his leg in a war.  Pretty hard to pull off gracefully.

Clark didn't say any glaring truth.  He tried to belittle McCain's heroism.  A heroism of the most difficult sort because it had to be maintained in solitude for years.  (Notice Clark's saying that McCain was just "riding in a jet".  He was flying it as a Navy aviator, in itself a high accomplishment.)

Nobody claims that McCain's being shot down qualifies him to be president.  McCain himself has made jokes about that.  But hd did in that circumstance demonstrate he was willing and able to make a very high sacrifice for his country.  

And that bespeaks of very commendable character and the quality of endurance.  If he'd done nothing else, he would not be a nominee for president.

I didn't say you couldn't express an opinion on a magazine cover.  I said that there was a lot of hypocrisy and plain silliness in the reaction from the Left to visual commentary that was quite clearly a joke in SUPPORT of Obama.  If people had simply said it was a joke that didn't fully work, fine.  But the reaction was much more incendiary.

Blackie, you go on to say, "...on one hand are you admiting that Liberals are superior people, noted for their wit and tolerance so that you can lament their not living up to your high standards of them? "

I don't think I wrote anything of the kind.  What I have no trouble saying is that creative people in general tend to skew Left.  

And the softer kind of creativity that comes from the unconscious or less analytical and articulate part of the brain (acting, painting, songwriting etc) tends to skew Left.  Certainly a lot of talented comedians of our era have been Left.  Although, frankly, Jay Leno is pretty middle of the road.  And a lot of Letterman's harsh type of humor would be more associated with the Right then the Left.

For myself, I'm a Tory Anarchist.  Which I recently discovered Orwell also so described himself.  I'd say that Orwell, Swift, and Voltaire were all simultaneously seditious and conservative.  And satirized certain kinds of institutions but attacked even more effectively the pretensions of revolutionaries.

John Lennon expressed similar mistrust in "You say you want a revolution..."  If someone says they want to burn all the bureaucracies, I'll join them  at the barricades.  If we just had the Departments of State, War, and the Treasury plus the post office, we'd be a lot better off.

TNR started off the week by trouncing The Atlantic at softball and settling in for a Sunday read of Ryan