THE NEW YORKER’S ‘SATIRICAL’ COVER: POLITICAL SATIRE, BUT, OBAMA IS NOT LAUGHING

MAGAZINE’S ‘SATIRICAL’ COVER STIRS CONTROVERSY

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama‘s campaign says a satirical New Yorker magazine cover showing the Democratic presidential candidate dressed as a Muslim and his wife as a terrorist is “tasteless and offensive.”

 

The illustration on the issue that hits newsstands Monday, titled “The Politics of Fear” and drawn by Barry Blitt, depicts Barack Obama wearing traditional Muslim garb — sandals, robe and turban — and his wife, Michelle — dressed in camouflage, combat boots and an assault rifle strapped over her shoulder — standing in the Oval Office.

 

The couple is doing a fist tap in front of a fireplace in which an American flag is burning. Over the mantle hangs a portrait of Osama bin Laden.

 

“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,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. “But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.”

 

In a statement Monday, the magazine said the cover “combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are.”

 

“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,” the New Yorker statement said.

 

The statement also pointed to the two articles on Obama contained inside the magazine, calling them “very serious.”

 

Republican John McCain’s campaign spokesman, Tucker Bonds, agreed that the cover was “tasteless and offensive.”

 

Already the cover was generating controversy on the Internet.

 

The Huffington Post, a left-leaning blog, said: “Anyone who’s tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who’s tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism — well, here’s your image.”

 

SOURCE:   http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jNPgefV9BiTHTv8K2VaxcvZbkjAQD91TLR0G0

 

 

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Political Satire, but Obama Isn’t Laughing

POLITICAL SATIRE, BUT OBAMA ISN’T LAUGHING

 

By Jeff Zeleny

Updated SAN DIEGO –- As he flies around the country, Senator Barack Obama has a fondness for magazines. The New Yorker is often among the titles at the front of his campaign plane.

 

 

The issue this week, though, is not likely to make its way on board.

 

The cover of the magazine depicts Mr. Obama wearing a turban, while he offers a fist bump to his gun-toting wife. An American flag singes behind them in the fireplace.

 

Asked about the drawing at a news conference here Sunday, Mr. Obama held his tongue, saying: “I have no response to that.” A campaign spokesman, though, was not so measured at a sketch that the magazine calls satirical.

 

“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,” the spokesman, Bill Burton, said in a statement. “But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive –- and we agree.”

 

The cover of the July 21 issue is entitled, “The Politics of Fear.” A news release to promote the magazine said artist Barry Blitt “satirizes the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the presidential election to derail Barack Obama’s campaign.”

 

Asked about the cover, Tucker Bounds, spokesman for Senator John McCain’s campaign, said: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign.”

 

David Remnick, the editor of the magazine, defended his choice of covers in an interview with the Huffington Post. He said, “Obviously I wouldn’t have run a cover just to get attention — I ran the cover because I thought it had something to say. What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama’s — both Obamas’ — past, and their politics.

 

“I can’t speak for anyone else’s interpretations, all I can say is that it combines a number of images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some, about Obama’s supposed “lack of patriotism” or his being “soft on terrorism” or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers. That somehow all this is going to come to the Oval Office.”

 

 

SOURCE:  The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com

 

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So, readers, do you think The New Yorker went overboard in its depiction of Michelle and Barack on its cover? Do you think the cartoon is racist and anti-Islamic? What was the New Yorker thinking with that “picture” of Osama Bin Laden in the background; what on earth did they hope to accomplish by doing such a thing? Do you think that Obama is “soft on terrorism”, that Obama is not “patriotic” enough to suit some weak-minded people? Do you think the portrayal of Michelle as a “Weatherman/Black Panther”-type revolutionary vilifies her? Would you say this caricature of her is highly inflammatory? And why show her with an Afro? Why insinuate that Black women who wear their hair naturally are automatically subversive terrorist threats to America?

 

Do you think The New Yorker really sought to portray Michelle and Barack as Muslim, militant, pro-terrorist (as if native-born Americans cannot be terrorists) and anti-American (I can think of many “anti-American” people and groups:  the KKK; White Knights of the Camelias; Bilbo; Blease; Thurmond; Bush, etc.)? Do you think The New Yorker front cover cartoon failed miserably to achieve its goal of lampooning and ridiculing right-wing caricatures of the Obamas? 

 

Where do you think the brains of Barry Blitt was (or was not) when he concocted this “satirical’ cover?

“The Politics of Fear,” July 21, 2008.

The July 21 cover of The New Yorker.

 

 

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UPDATE:  July 15, 2008

A commentor on this post, left some good contacts for those of you who want to protest this magazine’s cover. Much thanks to Black Women Blow the Trumpet (http://blackwomenblowthetrumpet.blogspot.com ), for providing the contact information on this article:

 

Phone number:
800-825-2510
(This is the number for the Subscriptions Department but people can ask to be connected to David Miller.)

Send a letter! Then, fax it!

David Miller
Associate Publisher
The New Yorker
4 Times Square
New York, NY 10036

And send a note!

david_miller@newyorker.com

Shouts & Murmurs:
shouts@newyorker.com

Fax: 212-286-5024