http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorblog/103How About a New Yorker Cover with the Editor's Head Up His Ass?
Submitted by mark karlin on Tue, 07/15/2008
THE BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG
Mark Karlin
Editor and Publisher
July 15, 2008
I tried my mightiest not to write about the appalling and inexcusable New Yorker cover that provides a racist, right-wing stereotyping caricature of the Obamas. From our view, knowing a thing or two about public relations, the decision of The New Yorker editor to run the cover probably included the likelihood of massive free publicity: mission accomplished. So I didn't want to help them out.
But I got a call yesterday from a long-time reader (since 2000) who occasionally e-mails us tips and with whom we have grown close in that Internet sort of way. (I won't reveal his name because he is in the media business in Manhattan and his feeding of information to BuzzFlash could cause his professional life a setback, to say the least.) He was distressed by the cover, in fact in pain. He was concerned that, given that there was no context to the so-called parody (The New Yorker could have had Rush Limbaugh popping pills and hallucinating the image of the Obamas with a contented druggy smile on his face, but the Conde Nast empire and its owners, the Newhouse family, probably doesn't want to offend Rush and his backers), and that a display of bigoted images on newsstands around the country (without any indication except inside the heads of the cartoonist and New Yorker editor that they were meant as "parody") could help further incite racism and a fear of Obama.
snip//
If the Obama cover were not so radically devastating in fanning the flames of racial and political stereotyping, it would be something to move on from. But the cover of the July 21st New Yorker (weekly magazines dateline themselves a week ahead so that they appear timely on the newsstands) will be seen at bookstores, magazine stands, airports, doctors' lounges, etc., for quite sometime. This is not short-term damage to civility, but a contributing factor to the inflaming of the crackpots in our nation and the nurturing of the lies behind the caricatures. In short, the images on the cover don't debunk or sneer; they promote the lies themselves.As one blog that a reader posted on BuzzFlash.net suggested: "Well, The New Yorker has published some of the great cartoons of our age. Here's an idea for a new one: a cartoon about a cartoonist penning a cartoon, and editors approving it, all with their heads up their ..."
Sometimes the insularity of Manhattan can be as confining as small town prejudices. Living and working in the world's most self-important city doesn't give one the right to act irresponsibly.
It just may mean that your head is stuck up your ass -- and you can cause great harm due to your smugness and a desire for some free publicity by creating a gaper's block that can harm the basic civility of our nation.
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