bluevoter4life's Journal - We're Not Laughing with you, or at you

From the New York Times Editorials:

Last week, in the aftermath of The New Yorker’s now notorious cover cartoon depicting Barack Obama in Muslim dress and his wife in ’60s-style black militant gear — the two sharing an affinity for Osama bin Laden and a penchant for burning the American flag in the Oval Office — the country was abuzz with a question that is generally the preserve of doctoral candidates in English literature and cartoon-enraged Islamic militants: Are some subjects off limits to satire? Some people went further and asked if the magazine’s cover qualified as satire at all. That is more to the point.

This is quite possibly one of the worst things the New Yorker could have done. Because they published a cover, in which the vast majority of Americans will not understand the joke, they just helped the RW reinforce the smear tactics they have been using by trying to paint him as a Muslim terrorist. Check out the bolded excerpt below. Lee Siegel is right on the mark.

Contrary to what some critics have said, the New Yorker cartoon did not lack for ridiculousness. The idea of Michelle Obama with an AK-47 slung over her shoulder is ridiculous. An Obama-inhabited Oval Office with a portrait of bin Laden hanging over an American flag burning in the fireplace is patently absurd. The problem is that the cartoon accurately portrays a ridiculous real-life caricature that exists as literal fact in the minds of some people, and it portrays it in terms that are absolutely true to that caricature.

Only the people the New Yorker caters to will understand. The average individual will see the cover on a bookstore magazine rack and then question if that is the truth behind the man running for president. Again, Siegel was right on money when he states that the fatal error the New Yorker made was not satirizing the right wing

The whole article can be found here