In a new issue that will hit newsstands today, the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza has an interesting piece on the political identity Barack Obama forged in Chicago. It’s 15,000 words long, and adds details and insights I haven’t seen anywhere else.
But before anyone gets to the article, there’s the issue of the magazine’s cover to deal with.
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.
Those closer one looks at the cover — entitled, “The Politics of Fear” — the more there is to find. Above the fireplace where an American flag burns, there’s a portrait of Osama bin Laden. Michelle Obama, carrying an AK47, is shown with her hair exaggerated into a ’70s-era afro. (I’m not going to post it here, but the cover is not hard to find. The Huffington Post published a large, easy-to-examine image of the cover.)
Asked about the cover, Obama demurred at a news conference, saying, “I have no response to that.” Soon after, campaign spokesperson Bill Burton said in a statement, “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.”
In a rare display of agreement between the two campaigns, McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds told reporters, “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”
Now, I know what the New Yorker was doing here. It’s intended as satire. The image isn’t endorsing the insane smears made against the Obamas; it’s mocking the insane smears made against the Obamas. I get it.
But there’s clever, poignant satire, and then there’s ham-fisted, garish satire that’s in poor taste. The New Yorker cover falls comfortably into the latter category.
Rachel Sklar noted:
Presumably the New Yorker readership is sophisticated enough to get the joke, but still: this is going to upset a lot of people, probably for the same reason it’s going to delight a lot of other people, namely those on the right: Because it’s got all the scare tactics and misinformation that has so far been used to derail Barack Obama’s campaign — all in one handy illustration. 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.
Exactly. Smear artists running a scurrilous right-wing magazine would presumably run the exact same image of the Obamas on their cover, too. That we know the New Yorker is poking fun hardly makes matters better.
Barry Blitt, the artist behind the cover, told the Huffington Post, “I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous. It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.” New Yorker editor David Remnick added that the cover targets the “absurdity” of the baseless rumors circulating about Obama.
I genuinely understand the concept; the problem is in the execution. The cover doesn’t really skewer anything — it just lists the attacks in cartoon form. Instead of highlighting the stupidity of the right-wing attacks against the Obamas, the cover advances the attacks. I’m hardly an art critic, but it seems to me that successful satire, especially in a single image, should surprise the audience with an image they hadn’t considered or thought of. The New Yorker cover falls short because it’s a cliche filled with cliches.
What’s more, there were ways to drive the point home. Kevin suggested, “If artist Barry Blitt had some real cojones, he would have drawn the same cover but shown it as a gigantic word bubble coming out of John McCain’s mouth — implying, you see, that this is how McCain wants the world to view Obama.” I was thinking something similar — maybe putting the image of the Obamas in a thought bubble above Rush Limbaugh’s head.
Instead, we see a clumsy cover that tells the joke without delivering the punch-line. I can appreciate what the New Yorker was going for, but I don’t think the editors thought this one through.
Post Script: Isaac Chotiner makes the case that the Obama campaign made a mistake in responding to the cover, thus making this a story. I’m not sure if that’s right. I don’t have an exact timeline, but I’m fairly sure that the cover was making the rounds among mainstream journalists and bloggers before the Bill Burton statement was issued. This one was going to be a story, whether the campaign commented or not.
