Self-Satisfied New Yorker Cover Fails

[Dystopian]

By Tommy Christopher
Jul 15th 2008



Unless you live in a cave, you have probably already seen the image to the right, the cover of the newest issue of The New Yorker magazine. Actually, some people who live in caves may already have it pinned to their wall.

David Knowles reported yesterday that the Obama campaign was not amused by The New Yorker's satirical cover, saying:

The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.
The McCain campaign agreed, and the cover has stirred enourmous controversy, plus an "answer cartoon" from cartoonist David Horsey, depicting John McCain as a demented, constitution-hating oldster with a pill-popping wife.

There seem to be two camps here: Those who think that the cover is offensive, and those who think it is a bold, clever indictment of Obamaphobia, and that the other camp are a bunch of humorless whiners who didn't get the joke. Case in point, The LA Times' James Rainey:
It seemed fairly obvious to me, my 8-year-old and, likely, the majority of readers of one of America's finest magazines that the cover drawing by Barry Blitt was a parody. In other words (for those still struggling with the concept), the joke was not on the Obamas but on the knuckle-walkers who would do them harm by trying to turn a couple of fresh-scrubbed Harvard Law grads into something foreign and scary.
That reminds me of a third camp: Those who think it is a brilliant satire of the Obamas. All three have a point, but camp #3 is closest to the mark.

Let me first say that I defend, 100%, The New Yorker's right to run the illustration, and my right to hate it. In their defense, The New Yorker knows its audience, and had no reason to think they would interpret the cover in any other way.

Unfortunately, that's also the problem. They can play the wide-eyed cherub at this publicity maelstrom, but they certainly had to know this cover would stir controversy, and that it would reach a much wider audience than their own. And that, I believe, was the point. The "cool kids" who read The New Yorker would all chuckle into their giant mugs of chai, while the rest of us "knuckle-walkers" twisted ourselves in knots, alternately denouncing the cover, or emailing it to 15 of our friends with the subject line, "I knew it!"

It's satire as global performance art, and I would be on my chair applauding if they had carried it off.
more:
http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/07/15/self-satisfied-new-yorker-cover-fails/?icid=100214839x1205506743x1200281993

[truedelphi]

1. I remember the OLD OLD New Yorker, the one that

brought John Hersey forward with his brilliant study of nuclear war ("Hiroshima")

And Rachel Carson brought her little ditty of an indictment against pesticides and their makers -The New Yorker serialized a portion of "Silent Spring"

Around the time I quit reading it, the NY had a praise piece for Robert Shapiro, the man who heads Monsanto.

In my view, they are SCUM!

And they don't really care about anything but circulation - and revenues.

If you look at the cover with those two things in mind, the cover was a success. People who never heard of The New Yorker before now own a copy!!

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. If you stopped reading the New Yorker in 1961 your opinion it has

less than no merit.

[truedelphi]

4. No I had to have been reading it within the last eight years

I think the piece on Shapiro and monsanto came out in 2000.

[LisaM]

2. No, it doesn't FAIL

It succeeded, brilliantly. I've never heard a cover discussed so much!

And frankly, I would barely have noticed it if it weren't for the phony (and I believe, orchestrated) outrage. It's very much in the tone that many New Yorker covers have been.

[aspergris]

5. False dichotomy

Most of the analysis I have read here and elsewhere makes this distinction

is it OFFENSIVE or is it (clever, good satire, etc.)

Those are not mutually exclusive

In fact, good satire, political commentary, and important speech is OFTEN offensive.

Remember those Mohammed cartoons?

etc.

Neither controversy nor offensiveness are necessarily bad things, ESPECIALLY in the arena of ideas.

[Uncle Joe]

9. So if during the 1930s Josef Gobbels posted offensive "satire" of the Jews

on German publications painting them in derogatory ways would that have been a bad thing or would it have served some "higher purpose"?

Now before you say the New Yorker isn't Gobbels, because Gobbels hated Jews and the New Yorker is sympathetic to Obama, does this include the corporate media's motivation as a whole?

While I agree satire can be offensive, the question arises as to who was intended to be offended?

If you believe the target was the bigoted or racist people of the general population and some members of the corporate media all with their own agenda, then this was the equivalent of going quail hunting with Dick Cheney. The vast majority of the American People will never see a New Yorker magazine, but they will see the cover as it's presented by the same corporate media that enabled Cheney/Bush to power.

If you believe the target was the Obamas, then the New Yorker becomes the equivalent of Gobbels in sheep's clothing and satire if there was any loses it's goodness, in spite of having the "quality" of offensiveness.

[Resuscitated Ethics]

6. Solid reporting never fails: keep it transparent

"self-satisfied"? Score one for the Rovian culture wars. Next thing you know anyone with glasses will be rounded up into the intellectualist camps.

The shock troops are warming up on this one to clamp down on any unpatriotic dissent. Holding a New Yorker in front of a pissed RepubliCon will be a crime, or at least getting the crap knocked from you to the floor will NOT be.

This anti good-reporting bent is starting to rile me. Just TRY to equate New Yorker- reading with ivory-tower latte sipping, you punks.

Now I've got to get back to Nightlife to see who might be coming to MY town. Sweet! Yaz has reunited!
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/events/nightlife/2008/07/21/080721goni_GOAT_nightlife

First they come for the covers, then they No-Fly the reporters, then the readers are herded....

[King Coal]

7. I think that cover is a hoot. If you don't, then you don't get it.

[Dystopian]

8. Good grief! Sorry....

:hi:
Sorry..
I just remembered I posted this....

I do get it...I put it up just for the different points of view...
Everyone has an opinion on this...opinions being neither right nor wrong...
Although I get it, I'm personally not happy with it...
This has been a dead horse beating thing...so maybe I should have let it go.

The only thing that troubles me, and it does trouble me...is that there are people who have never read The New Yorker before, or have never even heard of it until now.

It's true that there are many of them out there....
And for them, it's their first exposure to it...

My problem is with those who are not able to form their own opinion through no fault of their own.


peace~

[Raster]

10. The end of the editorial:

The problem, though, is that nowhere in the image itself is there anything embedded to let the viewer, knuckle-walker or not, know who is being satirized. If you saw the same drawing, without the New Yorker banner, how would you ever know that the drawing was not mocking the Obamas?

Of course, the "cool kids" will tell you that that's why it's so cool, man! It's like a mirror, y'know?

As a sometime humorist myself, I am vehemently against "hanging a lantern on it," (making the joke more obvious) but it is the job of the humorist not to muddy things up, either. The use of Osama Bin Laden's picture, and the burning flag, are so prejudicial that the burden is that much greater to execute the gag well.

Instead, what we have here is a pinup for every anti-Obama, anti-Democratic Party office, dorm room, or rest room, and a source of outrage for people who want their pictures of offensive stereotypes to be in service of a good joke, plus a reason for James Rainey to feel superior to all of us.

And in the end, there is also the disengaged voter, who has heard vague chatter about Obama from both sides, and wanders into that rest room. He gets that the picture is speaking in metaphors, but he doesn't know he's a knuckle-walker. He thinks he's just a regular guy who's too busy to watch hours of cable news. And the only context he has is, "Here I sit, broken-hearted..."

[Karenina]

13. Had the cover been a balloon thought

emanating from Rush's or Sean's head in front of a mic, with a trailer at the bottom saying *Catapaulting the Propaganda" it would have "worked' as TNY claims they "intended" it...

[kskiska]

11. What would they have thought

if they'd bothered to open up the magazine and looked at the cartoons inside?

[Resuscitated Ethics]

12. They might've thought "hmph, DOGS DON'T talk" nm

[flamingdem]

14. An Annoying Attempt at Being Relevant

I think that the cover failed artistically. Moreover, I've seen it posted on forums by right wingers and worse. They don't care what it is meant to say, it says what they want the low info voters to believe. Now that Fidel and cigar cover -- that was excellent.