As many of you probably know, the New Yorker Magazine has generated a
huge uproar over the cover of its latest issue which depicts Barack
Obama dressed up as a Muslim fist-bumping his wife who has a machine gun
on her back and a bushy Angela Davis type afro. Here’s one fairly
typical response from the liberal left, Don Hazen the publisher of Alternet:
"New Yorker magazine hits the newsstands today with a shocking cover — a
caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama depicting the presidential
candidate in a turban, fist-bumping his wife who has a machine gun slung
over her shoulder, while the American flag burns in the fireplace. The
cover is shocking in that it depicts the Obamas in bizarre, caricatured
images and associations that reflect the very stereotypes with which the
conservatives, particularly Fox News, have been trying to frame both the
Obamas. Thus, instead of satire, the cover becomes a political poster
for conservatives to reinforce their messages. Sen. Obama was shown the
cover image by a reporter covering the campaign on Sunday, and while
seemingly taken aback, he declined to comment."
Predictably, centrist opinion has urged Hazen and other complainers to
lighten up since it was clearly a joke. For example, Slate Magazine
chided the left as follows:
"Calling on the press to protect the common man from the potential
corruptions of satire is a strange, paternalistic assignment for any
journalist to give his peers, but that appears to be what The New
Yorker’s detractors desire. I don’t know whether to be crushed by that
realization or elated by the notion that one of the most elite journals
in the land has faith that Joe Sixpack can figure out a damned picture
for himself."
Meanwhile, David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, tried to explain
himself in an interview with Huffington Post, another outraged
liberal-left outlet:
Q: Prior to greenlighting the cover, did you consider that it might be
co-opted by Obama opponents as anti-Obama propaganda? If so, did that
possibility give you pause?
A: It always occurs to you that things will be misinterpreted or taken
out of context — that’s not unusual. But I think that’s the case of all
political satire, whether it’s Art Spiegelman or Thomas Nast or Herb
Block or Jon Stewart. I bet there are people who watch Stephen Colbert
and think he’s a conservative commentator, or maybe they did at first….a
lot of people when they first saw Colbert said, “What is this?” What he
was doing was turning things on [their] head.
Missing from much of the discussion has been the magazine’s politics
which Hazen accepts as “liberal” based on the title of his article: “The
Bad Frame: Why Are the New Yorker, Salon and Other Liberal Media Doing
the Right’s Dirty Work?” The complaint with Salon has to do with an
article they wrote “Barack is a Muslim and other stories” that depicted
him as a paper cut-out doll next to Muslim garb.
While Salon is arguably part of the “liberal media”, it is much harder
to make that case for the New Yorker. Indeed, as Daniel Lazare pointed
out in a May 15 2003 Nation Magazine article titled “The New Yorker Goes
to War”, there was little to distinguish it from Fox News and the
Murdoch press when it came to the “war on terror".
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/the-new-yorker-cover-cartoon-of-the-obamas/
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