July 15, 2008
The Controversy Over the New Yorker Cover of the Obamas
By now most of you probably will have seen the cover of the latest New Yorker. And most of you will have noted the brewing storm. Bill Carter in the NYT:
The New Yorker faced a different kind of hostility with its cover this week, which the Obama campaign criticized harshly. A campaign spokesman, Bill Burton, said in a statement that “most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive — and we agree.”
Asked about the cover at a news conference Monday, Mr. McCain said he thought it was “totally inappropriate, and frankly I understand if Senator Obama and his supporters would find it offensive.”
The cover was drawn by Barry Blitt, who also contributes illustrations to The New York Times’s Op-Ed page. David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, said in an e-mail message, “The cover takes a lot of distortions, lies, and misconceptions about the Obamas and puts a mirror up to them to show them for what they ar
e.
“It’s a lot like the spirit of what Stephen Colbert does — by exaggerating and mocking something, he shows its absurdity, and that is what satire is all about,” Mr. Remnick continued.
[Kevin Drum's reaction at Washinton Monthly]:
I had two reactions, myself. To be honest, my first one was that it was kinda funny, a clever way of mocking all the conservative BS that's been circulating about the Obamas.
But at the risk of seeming humorless, that reaction didn't last too long. Maybe it's because this kind of satire just doesn't work, no matter how well it's done. But mostly it's because a few minutes thought convinced me it was gutless. 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.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 11:40 AM | Permalink
Comments
Americans, in general, do not understand irony or satire. They need to be led through it like children, as the idea of a McCain thought bubble suggests. Foreigners are either friends or enemies. Everything must be either black or white, including Obama's race, which is, in fact mixed. Forget about nuance or subtlety.
Posted by: Jared | Jul 15, 2008 11:56:22 AM
The problem with the cover is that it is not satire. It doesn't actually satirize anything. It just depicts in one convenient locations several smears that have been made against the Obamas.
Posted by: blah | Jul 15, 2008 1:42:43 PM
blah,
I disagree. The cartoon satirizes the ridiculous claims of Obama's opponents by exaggeration, a standard satirical technique. (For example, see Swift's A Modest Proposal). Obama's opponents say he isn't patriotic, and the cartoonist shows him burning the flag in the Oval Office. The cartoonist is obviously not criticizing Obama. But thank you for confirming my point about how many people do not understand satire or irony.
Posted by: Jared | Jul 15, 2008 1:57:16 PM
It doesn't work as satire because it isn't really exaggerating the smears - it is depicting them. I don't see how it makes the smears seem any more ridiculous.
It would be like Swift saying that the Irish were dirty papists that deserved to be pushed off the land and allowed to starve.
Posted by: blah | Jul 15, 2008 2:36:21 PM
People need to step back a bit...is it really plausible to suggest that the New Yorker is in John McCain's camp?
Posted by: D | Jul 15, 2008 2:38:12 PM
Jared:
Good to see you in fine form today.
The problem is not so much that the New Yorker didn't mean this as satire but that it is too much of an "insider" attempt at satire. Good satire takes a grain of truth and exaggerates it for humor or irony that most poeple will understand. The New Yorker cartoonist obviously is satirizing Obama's slanderers and not the Obamas themselves. However, missing that balloon over the head of McCain (or Rove or Fox News anchors), it is not entirely clear what they are satirizing and whether or not they agree with Fox news and their "terrorist fist jab" version of things. Most people who see the cover on TV, on blogs or in the newspapers don't read the New Yorker.
As my co-blogger Anna observed astutely, "The thinking may be that what it means to be a New Yorker is that we're all so hip, we can make fun of racists by making tongue in cheek use of their stereotypes... however, it seems ill-advised, to say the least."
But what the heck! Better now than in October.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jul 15, 2008 2:40:01 PM
People need to step back a bit...is it really plausible to suggest that the New Yorker is in John McCain's camp?
No. But it is plausible to suggest that the New Yorker is run by people who are a bit insulated, do not have Swiftian talents for satire, and showed poor judgment in using this cover.
Posted by: blah | Jul 15, 2008 2:48:28 PM
Well, gee, it's no worse than the New Yorker’s summer of '98 cover, showing Monica on all fours under a Pinocchio-nosed Bill's desk while Hillary, in the background, tiptoes through a doorway with Vince Foster's body slung over a shoulder muttering "Out, damn spot,"! Right?
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Jul 15, 2008 2:57:53 PM
I agree, Jared. It's satire, plain and simple. I think Obama probably agrees as well, and rejected it not because he is personally offended, but to diffuse any notion that he trades in victimization.
Anyway, I like the (fake) National Review cover better, mostly because there is more truth to it.
Posted by: ghostman | Jul 15, 2008 3:01:52 PM
Ruchira,
When you say "it is too much of an "insider" attempt at satire", I see your point. But remember, the cover of the New Yorker is intended for New Yorker readers, not CNN viewers. That it was misunderstood and picked up by the mainstream media is not the fault of the cartoonist or the magazine. Much of the material in the New Yorker is tongue in cheek, reflecting an intelligent approach to the world that would otherwise depress us all to hell.
Posted by: Jared | Jul 15, 2008 3:03:40 PM
"When the finger points out to the moon, the idiot looks at the finger."
Chinese proverb i think.
As an aside, Jared's comment reminded me of what my American girlfriend (soon to be my wife) remarked a long time ago: we just had had our first fight and i was trying to be friends again. In typical European fashion, i made a joke about the situation rather ironic and "second degree".
Well, what do you know—she freaked out! i had just made the situation worse. When we were able later to talk through the situation and clear the bad air, it turned out that she had totally taken the joke at face value. i tried to justify myself and kept repeating i did not mean what i said, i was only trying to make her laugh. Her retort? "If you don't mean it, why do you say it?" Beats me!
Posted by: jean-paul | Jul 15, 2008 3:16:45 PM
Jean-Paul: c'est simple - les americains, ce sont des cons.
Posted by: aguy109 | Jul 15, 2008 4:10:49 PM
Jared, Ghostman, Jean-Paul and others:
To be perfectly clear, I am not at all suggesting that the New Yorker shouldn't have published this on its cover. I am just commenting on the possible fallout. I feel that it isn't going to help Obama with at least some CNN watchers. (Fox viewers don't need any reinforcements) It may be fine to sneer at Americans who are context free literalists like Jean-Paul's girlfriend as an intellectual exercise on 3 QD. But with many voters who are already conflicted about Obama, the New Yorker (which they don't read) isn't helping.
For example, just yesterday a friend forwarded me an email from a person who is supposedly a Democrat! Read it and you'll know why Anna and I are worried. Again, as I said before, better now than in October.
Don't believe the rhetoric that Obama expounds during his presidential campaign. During their campaign, every political candidate says the things they think people want to hear but once they are elected they always revert to their real agenda. The only truth that Obama keeps repeating is "change" and the following makes clear exactly what his real agenda is and what he means by "change!" This man is a threat to our country! I am truly scared!
Think you know who this man is? This possible President of the United States !! Read Below and ask yourselves, is this REALLY someone we can accept as the President of our great nation!!!!
Below are a few lines from Obama's books; In his words!
From Dreams of My Father: 'I ceased to advertise my mother's race (she was white) at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.'
From Dreams of My Father: 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race.'
From Dreams of My Father: 'There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.'
From Dreams of My Father: 'It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.'
From Dreams of My Father: 'I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.'
And FINALLY the Most Damming one of ALL of them!!!
From Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.'
* If you have never forwarded an e-mail, now is the time to do so!!!! We CANNOT have someone with this type of mentality running our GREAT nation!! I don't care whether you a Liberal or a Conservative. We CANNOT turn ourselves over to this type of character in a President. PLEASE help spread the word!
Posted by: Ruchira | Jul 15, 2008 4:44:14 PM
FYI: from Jonah Goldberg of the the National Review at National Review blog The Corner: " What I find interesting about the New Yorker cover is that it's almost exactly the sort of cover you could expect to find on the front of National Review. Roman Genn could do wonders with that concept. Of course, if we ran the exact same art, the consensus from the liberal establishment could be summarized in words like 'Swiftboating!' and, duh, 'racist.'"
Posted by: Robin | Jul 15, 2008 4:51:55 PM
Ruchira,
In 2004, 11% of 'Democrats' voted for George W. Bush. My grandfather, a registered Democrat for 60 years, has voted Republican for the last 30. There are a lot of 'Democrats' — such as these, as well as the one who forwarded you that email — who in truth are no such thing. I don't for a second deny that racism and xenophobia still exist within certain segments of the Democratic party; but if a person so readily believes depictions of Obama that any average-minded American would (and does) identify as outlandish, then that person is not someone who has been looking forward to a Democratic administration.
More seriously, that person is not innocent or ignorant — no, I accuse them of desiring such depictions, and frankly their willingness to promote them, and the unbridled energy with which they do so, leaves no doubt as to their eagerly meditated complicity.
Posted by: ghostman | Jul 15, 2008 6:52:47 PM
To clarify, Ruchira:
I didn't mean to indict the person who forwarded you the email, but rather the person who forwarded said email to the person who forwarded it to you.
Which, when you write it down like that, sounds an awful lot like the rumors about the 'Whitey' tape: I heard it from someone who heard it from...
Posted by: ghostman | Jul 15, 2008 6:59:33 PM
After reflecting 24 hours or so, I have come to the opinion that it was rather silly of the editor of the NY to run the thing, but that it won’t do much to either harm or help Obama.
The opinions about him that it depicts seem ridiculous to virtually all readers of 3QD (and readers of the NY), I’m sure; we don’t need to see them satirized to understand how ridiculous they are. The people who actually hold those opinions don’t consider them ridiculous (or themselves as such), and this cover won’t convert them, I’m positive of that. So it won’t make any impression on either of these camps.
It might give liberal-minded folk another occasion to pat themselves on the back for being superior human beings to the beetle-browed rightists, nativists, and racists in the population, but we don’t need that.
Will it sway the people who honestly haven’t made up their minds about who to vote for yet either for or against Barack? Maybe a few, but not enough to show in the polls.
So what was the point of running it? Search me. I often don’t understand the point of what the NY people regard as humor.
Much more important is Lizza’s article inside. Is it the truth or not? I’ve seen both opinions expressed. Some supporters and opponents of Obama think that, if it’s true, it’s very damaging. I don’t think so; it shows him to be a very talented and resourceful politician, but we all knew that he was not a “saint.”
Posted by: JonJ | Jul 15, 2008 6:59:52 PM
It was just a way for them to generate interest for the piece and I think the contemplation necessary before deciding whether its humorous or just shameless media-whoring also settles the question. How is that for irony NY?
Posted by: Phillip | Jul 15, 2008 7:15:15 PM
I think somehow the tone of this is "un-New Yorker like"... it's more Mad magazine. Everybody in the media game is looking for "the edge". Sadly it's "The Family Guy" thats winning.
Posted by: Sal | Jul 15, 2008 7:49:46 PM
Ghostman:
That email is not an endless chain letter with an obscure source. It is written by a "real" man with a name (my friend knows him) who read Obama's books and took the trouble to pick out the relevant lines and is now sending out his "message" to the Obama supporters he knows. And he is indeed a Democrat, at least a Democrat who wouldn't vote for a supposedly, "black, Muslim, radical" candidate of his party.
Jon J, I agree with you for the most part. I hope you are right about the relative lack of impact of this cartoon on voters.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jul 15, 2008 8:01:25 PM
Ghostman:
That email is not an endless chain letter with an obscure source. It is written by a "real" man with a name (my friend knows him) who read Obama's books and took the trouble to pick out the relevant lines and is now sending out his "message" to the Obama supporters he knows. And he is indeed a Democrat, at least a Democrat who wouldn't vote for a supposedly, "black, Muslim, radical" candidate of his party.
Jon J, I agree with you for the most part. I hope you are right about the relative lack of impact of this cartoon on voters.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jul 15, 2008 8:02:14 PM
Ruchira,
The email you received, which you claim is not "an endless chain letter with an obscure source," is precisely that. A simple google search of some of its text reveals that:
It was posted as a comment here, on July 14, 2008, at 4:56 a.m., by this person; it was also posted here, on June 23; and in the comments here, by a commenter called Grammy Barb, on July 2 at 10:54:02 p.m.; and here, comment #299, made by mvpeach10 on July 6; and here, on June 30 at 4:59 p.m., by a commenter named pacopaco; and I could keep going, but I think you get the point.
Don't be deceived. The email wasn't written by your friend's 'Democratic' friend (who, in your own language, is first "supposedly a Democrat", then, upon challenge, "indeed a Democrat". On the contrary, it's precisely what you claim it wasn't: an endless chain letter with an obscure source.
Posted by: ghostman | Jul 15, 2008 8:35:24 PM
Are we judging the cover by whether it's likely to be negatively impactful -- whatever the cartoonist and the editor may have intended -- or by what they must have been thinking, regardless of the cover's impact?
The job of the New Yorker is to be read and talked about. Going with whatever would enhance that effect is not a decision they have to lose sleep over there. The stakes are high in this election, however -- are they not? If you're a Democrat, you kinda sorta want to give no comfort to the enemy. The trouble is, if you're hip, educated and over 45 (hello, New Yorker readers, many of whom identify as intellectuals), you may be so dumbed up you don't know who the enemy is, exactly. Your finger may not be on the pulse, exactly. And maybe you don't even know your sense of humor is, at least in part, the product of a rather exclusive process. This means you might be tone-deaf on a few important occasions, so that it would be better not to make your little joke then. Not "Freedom of the Press" better -- although there are surely even higher values than that -- just better in the sense that by doing less harm you forfeit no more than a titter. They say in the theater there's such a thing as a "bad laugh." That's when you destroy a scene to get a laugh -- and you get the laugh anyway. Someone should explain this to David Remnick.
Tacitus writes about the Emperor Augustus, telling how he decided whether to give battle. I give battle, the emperor said, whenever there's more to be won in the winning than lost in the losing. It's a sound principle for deciding the worth of your wit, too.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 15, 2008 10:00:57 PM
It amazes me how seriously people take this race between Obama and McCain when, in reality, they are both completely owned by the corporate elite. As evidence, you need only look at Obama's flip flop on the wiretapping bill to give immunity to communications companies that were breaking the law. I personally would rather have Obama than McCain, but I recognize the difference between them is really very minor. Will Obama bring in Canadian style universal health care against the interests of health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and the AMA? Will he slash the military industrial complex budget? I will get exited about him the day he does these things and not a minute before.
Posted by: Jared | Jul 15, 2008 10:34:39 PM
Certainly, the New Yorker cover of Michelle and Barak Obama can be viewed as satire. Political satire, by definition, requires knowledge and sophistication to both recognize and appreciate. The fact that some people won't 'get it' is not necessarily a legitimate criticism of political satire.
The carton could be seen, also, as caricature. Political caricature, by definition, is an exaggeration of real traits for easy identification and serves to either enhance the object of the caricature or to ridicule and criticize.
The problem with the New Yorker cover is that it is more easily perceived as caricature than satire.
Posted by: Norman Costa | Jul 16, 2008 12:37:17 AM
I think, whether or not you feel humour in the (attempted) satire, what this brings into play is our (American) uneasiness in dealing with anything Islam. It is our reaction to seeing someone portrayed as a Muslim that disallows us to see the satire and humour.
Posted by: sasha | Jul 16, 2008 4:47:48 AM
Ghostman:
You were right. My friend and I were taken in. The email is indeed a chain letter - popping up on the Internet. My friend's friend just inserted his own editorial comments. He probably hasn't even read the books. But he sure found it fit to circulate.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jul 16, 2008 9:57:55 AM
Ruchira,
I actually tried to post a comment last night showing some of the places around the web this exact email has popped up, but the 3QD filter decided my response was spam and refused to post it... which is strange, considering you posted a lengthy excerpt of real spam without problem.
Anyway, bravo on scooping out the truth. I think it's always safe to assume that any 'Democrat' who can call the Democratic nominee for President "a threat to our country", while ostensibly having no qualms about the truly scary Republican candidate, is a fraud.
Posted by: ghostman | Jul 16, 2008 10:50:39 AM
Jon Stewart has this flapdoodle nailed .
Do the journalists reporting on this cover have no responsibility for how it is received? Why are we treating its appearance on CNN as an inevitability? It seems like a form of passive-aggressive fatalism to me. Why beat up on the NYer for what it can or cannot do in good faith, but ignore the cable news talking heads for what they can or cannot do in bad?
Ruchira, I appreciate your publicly acknowledging your friend's email as a ruse cooked up by right wing agitpropists. But doesn't this vindicate the cartoon, which after all was about the way we cower in fear, needlessly, about how things might be misconstrued?
So often the devil we fear most is without substance. Huzzah to art that embraces this fact.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Jul 16, 2008 11:20:00 AM
The hysterical hypersensitivity to all things political has past the point of absurdity and become pathological. It reminds me of the Chinese cultural revolution, when everything was a political act and no one dared to laugh. Presidents come and go, but the New Yorker and it's style of humor will always get my vote.
Posted by: Jared | Jul 16, 2008 11:24:55 AM
Jared, I don't know if the cover was meant to be humorous — I think it was more of an indictment, even if it made me laugh — but I'm with you in support of the New Yorker, and of art and artists in general. I have always believed that our creative energies should take precedence over our strictly political ones, if we are forced to choose. Anyhow, you brush alongside the idea that you can't joke about Obama.
I want Obama to win. Badly. I really, really do. But I refuse not to laugh at him, or at jokes about him, or especially, for god's sake, a well-drawn magazine cover satirizing his most despicable opponents. Because at the end of the day, he's a politician. I don't agree that his differences with McCain are "minor" — I think on many issues (though not all) their differences are vast and important — but at the same time, Obama is not a god. He is a human and a politician. He will most likely be President. He must be satirized. He must be laughed at. That those who traffic in odium deserve the same should go without saying.
Posted by: ghostman | Jul 16, 2008 11:55:54 AM
Jared--
The cartoon humor and Covers are the New Yorkers high points.
How many short stories placed in the Hamptons can one really digest without getting extremely bored?- or articles that are apologist for market capitalism.
My wife has a subscription, and I thought the Obama cover was great.
Your point on the cultural revolution is well taken, and this attitude brings on censorship.
As Lenny Bruce said "If you can't say F*ck, you can't say f*ck the government"
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Jul 16, 2008 11:59:58 AM
What I meant by this striking me as more "Mad magazine" is that it's just not sharp and penatrating enough to be the New Yorker. I mean Norman Mailer or Tom Wolfe( while not cartoonists) in their primes had insights that were usually a good few steps of ahead of the general public. For instance Tom Woolfes piece about the Black Panthers and Leonard Berstein about Revolutionary chic. Who's filling the shoes of these types of writers?
Posted by: Sal | Jul 16, 2008 12:28:38 PM
Elatia:
I think "negatively impactful" is a problem usually linked to not having enough fiber. You might try ex-lax for a quick fix. But in the long run, you're going to need to start eating those Wheaties.
Je suis americian, et beaucoup des gens me disent que je suis con. Mais on n'est pas tous con, si? I mean, some of us can take a joke, even if it's a bad one (although our women usually can't).
Satire, after all, doesn't have to be funny. I like funny satire more, and I found the New Yorker cover to be not-so-funny, but it's still satire. I think Norma Costa is right in saying that we're getting our genres crossed with caricature. But that's not necessarily the cartoon's fault.
Silly and preening is what it is to criticize the "appropriateness" of irreverent humor directed at public figures, or directed at the accusations which surround them.
Posted by: Phillip Harvey | Jul 16, 2008 12:40:57 PM
Phillip, if I ate Wheaties, I couldn't preen -- so you see the problem. It might also mess with my French to the extent I'd be 3-letter word-challenged. I'm sticking with croissants.
About the "appropriateness" of humor. Please show me where I used that word -- it's one I've purged. I am concerned only that the cartoon isn't funny enough for the harm it may do chez Fox and such places in an election that may not be a landslide for Obama. You know, was it trenchant enough to be worth it? Where is it on the cogency scale? Why isn't The New Yorker sending up the sense of humor of its readers -- me and all the others -- rather than jiggling the pathetic yet binding anxieties of its non-readers? One of the hallmarks of humor is that no one runs an appropriateness check before they burst out laughing. They laugh or they don't laugh, and only later they think: Was that even funny?
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 16, 2008 1:32:59 PM
Actually it's just not funny. Not in an "I'm offended"-type way, but just not funny.
Without any extra graphics, we imagine that it's not John McCain's thought, but the thought bubble New Yorker humorists who's 1/8 of a laugh humor is depoliticized and sheltered (and, since mostly black pen on white pages, suspiciously de facto about white people!).
Posted by: Joe Milutis | Jul 16, 2008 1:46:47 PM
Elatia, forgive me. I in no way meant to suggest that you were preening (And, although I do hope you do enough of it to at least be hygienic, I'll never understand what your diet has to do with your grooming. Come to think of it, I don't want to know.) But actually, everything beginning with the sentence in French was intended for the general audience. I'm sorry for being terribly unclear.
In fact, the only thing I wanted to poke fun at you for was "impactful," which is not a word. Peut-être que c'etait les croissants qui vous ont dérangée.
But to answer your questions, I don't think a magazine should be responsible for divining the impact of their content on an election result. And even if it were possible, it just shouldn't even be an editorial consideration.
As for the cartoon itself, I think you're right. It's neither very funny, nor remotely trenchant. like Joe just said, "it's just not funny. Not in an 'I'm offended'-type way, but just not funny." And when I saw it, I laughed. Oh, I laughed alright; at the magazine for thinking it so clever that they not merely ran it, but ran it on the cover.
Posted by: Phillip Harvey | Jul 16, 2008 3:17:35 PM
Usually, Elatia's comments are positively impactful on me.
Posted by: Jared | Jul 16, 2008 3:42:36 PM
Thank you Jared! Phillip, you have attended to my ravitaillement, my toilette, and even shown concern whether I am entierement raisonnable in the mot juste department. Quelle tendresse! Clearly we should be married, if you're going to act like a husband.
I think it's fine to use words that don't exist -- they will do someday, and in the interim everyone knows what you mean. I reluctantly accepted "impact" as a verb three decades ago, deciding, at the time, that it would actually be more fun to be in the vanguard with vile new usages than otherwise. That I may be unsure of the meaning of a word, or that it may in some lexicographic sense not precisely exist, never inhibits me. Rather, it keeps my active vocabulary ahead of my passive one, in that I am free to use words whose meanings I might not recognize if I first spotted them in someone else's prose. Yes, it can be messy, but when one thinks about it -- how else does the dictionary grow?
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 16, 2008 4:52:16 PM
Golly, Elatia! Would you really like to marry? I hardly know what to say. I have, like Jared, always appreciated the impaction of your comments... notwithstanding their lexis.
You know, contrary to your accusation, I'm rarely short on three-letter words. You should see me in Scrabble. (Although, I'm sure I couldn't hold a candle to anyone who can make up nine-letter words on the spot like that.) And yet, your proposal has rendered me speechless. But I think Grammar Girl has made the most cogent argument recently for preferring standard English when writing. Check her out--while I continue searching for my words--to see where this came from:
Hipsters, flipsters and finger-popping daddies,
knock me your lobes.
Cordiallement,
Phillip
P.S. I think "lexical" was the adjective you were looking for. "Lexicographic" is much longer and more impressive, I know. But, while it does precisely exist, its precision deals with the dictionary itself, not exactly with the words therein. But I do wish you and your word-smithing vanguard good fun!
Posted by: Phillip Harvey | Jul 17, 2008 4:39:03 AM
Phillip, up to now you have displayed only that impulse to correct The Beloved that one associates with male courtship behavior. Encrypting in French naughty words, gender-based observations, and questions about lucidity, I mean. But now I see you have moved on to those behaviors -- sarcasm, references to other women who are more grammatical than The Beloved, and waffling on commitment -- that are the province of the long-married male. Before we can be said to deserve our own New Yorker cover, let's take this private...
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 17, 2008 10:43:40 AM
Yup,,, "dumbed up" should just about be the last word here. Thanks for playing!
Posted by: Sal | Jul 17, 2008 11:13:47 AM
No, no, no, Phillip and Elatia! Don't take it private. Please carry on right here although I don't understand French.
BTW, I happen to be one reader who loves Elatia's lexicography, lexicality and even her choice of laxacality via croissants rather than Wheaties.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jul 17, 2008 11:48:30 AM
Phillip,
Only dullards think that dictionaries define words, rather than the opposite. But in either case Elatia's usage was correct: whether not a word appears in the dictionary is surely a lexicographical matter, by any standard.
Some tips for your offline correspondence: I think your friends and associates may need a talking to, since they seem to have persuaded you that your condescension is charming. If you are going to woo a woman of Elatia's caliber you are going to need to arm yourself with that classic French contrivance, courtly humility. As no kind of gratitude, self-doubt or modesty seems to inhere to you, one might recommend the letters of Abelard and Heloise as a starting point.
Elatia,
"Impingent" might attend to the Latin structure better than "impactful," but if the folks in Vatican City don't track these kinds of things any more, why should we?
I can't get off this purported cartoon impactivity, as it turns out. The more I think about it the angrier and more frustrated I get.
Maybe we'd all feel better if the cartoon had been tucked safely inside the magazine, instead of right on the cover where Wolf Blitzer could see it. Maybe the NYer should come wrapped, like Juggs and High Society, in brown paper, since it's clearly not for everyone's eyes.
But isn't the very point of the cartoon about anxiety and fear? And isn't it funny (even if the cartoon isn't) that the general reaction to the cartoon is one of, well, anxiety and fear? "This is going to play right into their hands!" Well, maybe. The more certainly so if we continue not to discuss the deeply instilled sense of inferiority and weakness that Democrats seem to re-discover every election cycle.
Jared earlier mentioned that both major parties are implements of corporate power, and this is true, though not so true that almost all of us don't have a clear preference. But what strikes me as the greater similarity is the addiction both major parties have to appealing to the worst in human nature. Remember when Obama's campaign was supposed to challenge that fact? it wasn't that long ago.
Whatever trepidation we may have about the way the right wing slime machine makes use of every advantage, however vile, we only strengthen that machine by fretting about what they might do next. I'm not totally sure what sorts of magazine covers liberals and leftists are allowed to support; all I know is it feels like a mighty tight standard.
Rather than work so hard to be on our most unimpeachable behavior, is anyone interested in actually defending what is defensible about that cover, (which to my mind is substantial)? For starters, how about talking about what a great demonstration it is of our profound insecurity?
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Jul 17, 2008 1:54:41 PM
"For starters, how about talking about what a great demonstration it is of our profound insecurity?"
Chris, now we getting at the heart of the issue--
It makes some a bit uncomfortable, and they can't quite put a finger on it.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Jul 17, 2008 7:47:38 PM
I'm ambivalent about this one. On one hand is Elatia's idea of exercising caution with art, on the other Chris's idea of pushing the limits with art.
I see this cartoon to be of a piece with recent trends in American art, with a disproportionate focus on the shocking, notorious, sensational. Wonder how many on their board of directors drooled over the effect this cover would have on their sales. The New Yorker is sufficiently part of the establishment for me to not give them a benefit of the doubt. Remember editor David Remnick's support for the Iraq war? (“History will not easily excuse us,” he wrote, if “we defer a reckoning with an aggressive totalitarian leader who intends not only to develop weapons of mass destruction but also to use them.”) Who are these people?
Posted by: Namit | Jul 17, 2008 8:06:14 PM
Urgh. Should read "for me to give them a benefit of the doubt".
Posted by: Namit | Jul 17, 2008 8:34:05 PM
Thank you Chris! It's just that he's deeply in love. Thank you Ruchira!
Namit, Chris is right, and we should be relieved Damien Hirst didn't get a hold of the Obamas (and won't be allowed to approach the dog they're planning to adopt...) Art should not have to be cautious, has almost an obligation to dig at our insecurities -- and a really great political cartoon counts as art. Ghostman is right, too -- we should be able to make fun of Obama. I can't wait to make fun of him once he's sworn in. Diet, ears, politics -- it's all good then.
I can think of Hillary cartoons that would be irreverent and funny on the cover of the New Yorker, if she were likely to occupy the White House -- again. The one depicting her as a formerly closeted /whatever-the-rednecks-suspect/ who can now reveal herself fully and ride roughshod over her tormentors, for instance. If that hypothetical cartoon made the sexual preference joke equivalent to the ethnic-racial joke in the present, actual cartoon, however, it might be taken as a pretty unfunny comment on the kind of woman it took to shatter the glass ceiling and garner 18,000,001 primary votes.
PC, I know, and therefore trite -- but the reason to be "sensitive" here is not that sensitivity is an orthodox genuflection before a black supreme achiever, but that this is not really art. Barry Blitt is not Goya, or even Daumier -- and he sure isn't Art Spiegelman. This is just about hip yucks, and laughing at people who are stupid. And buzz, and sales. Ask Barry Blitt. He knows what he's doing.
I think, however, in externalizing all those idiots who might be put off their proper vote by a cartoon that spoofs yet fans fears of the Obamas' otherness, I am leaving out the one I know best -- the Southern girl within who saw, as a child, the vote given to African Americans over the protests of everyone she knew but her parents. Hm. If I'm externalizing, then so is the pundit class of my own or an earlier vintage. Maybe this kerfuffle is about the struggle for progressive values on an all too familiar if conveniently cloaked battleground.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 17, 2008 9:36:48 PM
You make an interesting point about a possible Hillary scenario Elatia. On the other hand you should keep in mind many of these young white Obama supporters were raised on South Park, so they obviously got the jokes the right way. Dave Chapple could make the scenario on the cover funny but maybe that's why he ran out on his show.
Posted by: Sal | Jul 18, 2008 9:27:16 AM
Love makes fools of us all, Elatia.
I think Blitt's cover is more than hip yuks (though it can be that, too). I like his work, and as there are only so many Goyas and Spiegelmans, the alternative seems to be running a lot of plain white (or black) covers, like those generic beer cans of yore. But at least then we wouldn't be giving anybody fodder for anything.
I take your point on the satirical Hillary-as-Dyke cover; it would be widely embraced by misogynists everywhere (just like the hilarious SNL sketch with Kristin Wiig as Speaker Pelosi was taken by right wing blogs--ridiculously--as a hit on the Dem Congress.) But I continue to believe that we need to treat these undercurrents of bigotry and fear directly, and that humor is often the best way to do so, sometimes opening up a flash of recognition in the same way a zen koan suddenly illuminates a paradoxical truth.
I also think that NYer covers have another function, though this may be a private understanding on my part. I tend to see the covers as an attempt to digest the zeitgeist of the week. To me personally this is a more sophisticated and fulfilling function than the satirical one, and Blitt in particular does it well. Sometimes I laugh at the covers too.
Watch the Jon Stewart piece on this, if you haven't already. It's a gem.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Jul 18, 2008 12:23:16 PM
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