The New Yorker and Obama
Paula: The July 15 New Yorker has as its cover a satirical sketch of Barack Obama dressed in Muslim garb beside his wife in battle fatigues, rifle, and Afro hair, reminiscent of a ’60s-style Black Panther. New Yorker editor David Remnick and cartoonist Barry Blitt say their goal was to parody the way the couple is portrayed by the right wing press. But the cartoon has upset Obama supporters who feel it reinforces prejudicial views about their candidate.
Robert: I like the New Yorker. And I don’t want to accuse them of astonishing misjudgment, but my sense is that this is an instance of astonishing misjudgment.
Paula: My first impulse is to say you’re being over-sensitive. What’s wrong with a strong visual satire like that? Readers of the New Yorker will get it. And is it really necessary for them to think about those who won’t? The whole point of satirical wit is to be unexpected, edgy. Most of the New Yorker covers lately really bore me.
On the other hand, for that reason perhaps, it’s a bit odd, I admit. The magazine hasn’t pushed the envelope very often, at least not in the liberal direction (although I do recall that famous cover years back of the Hasidic Jew kissing the black woman — but that had a very positive if explosive charge to it). So in this case, it seems like someone’s quirky idea that they decided to run with. I don’t see how it’s so offensive, though.
Don’t you find more offensive the fact that so many people feel they have to walk on eggshells and can’t make fun of Obama or perceptions of him? Maybe, because we’ve never had a black candidate run for such high office, there’s a problem of proportion operating in this domain — a kind of satirical dyslexia.
Robert: OK — the New Yorker cover is funny — at least when I looked at it with the comments of the New Yorker editors running through my mind. The drawing of a militantly Islamic Barack Obama and his machine-gun toting wife Michelle, sporting a 1970’s, Angela-Davis-style Afro, is clever. The expressions on the faces of Barack and Michelle, the smiles of satisfaction (over having fooled America) are the true give-away. The smiles mark the cartoon as satire as does the fist bump. But I hope the cartoon is taken as satire and I hope it doesn’t needlessly harm Obama’s campaign or add credence to the poisonous rumors spreading on the Internet about Barack and Michelle Obama.
Sometimes the most effective response to ignorance and prejudice is all-out satire. Instead of tip-toeing around the rumors that Obama is a Muslim, that he hates America, the New Yorker lampoons the rumors. Instead of earnest defense, they go for satire. This cartoon points up something that Obama’s supporters could do to more effectively defend their candidate. They could turn attention to the rumor-mongerers and all the foolish folks who have succumbed to the rumors. Satire seems the best method for this as it avoids the problem of inflaming the discussion.
But here’s the problem. The ignorance about Obama out there in large segments of the public is a serious thing. It is a poison. And it’s not clear to me that this dilutes the poison in any way. Of all the problems I would have anticipated Obama encountering as he made his historic quest for the Oval Office, I never imagined that the allegation that he was a Muslim would be one of them. National Public Radio and the Washington Post both recently interviewed people who have succumbed to this ignorance and xenophobia. What was so striking to me was that these folks so calmly and evenly defended their views and the way the reporters seemed confused about how to respond to these voters.
But there is something missing from the cartoon. The New Yorker cartoon needs to have a reference to “Middle America.” The cartoon needed to refer to the folks who see Obama this way or fear he will reveal himself as a radical Muslim as soon as he enters the Oval Office. Without the reference to Middle America (and all those folks who believe Barack is a Muslim), it’s not clear that this is a satire of Middle America. In fact without such a reference in the cartoon, the cartoon is NOT a satire of middle America. It’s a satire of the Obamas.
Still, the cartoon may yet work. But only if it puts all the folks believing the rumors on the defensive. And we haven’t yet gotten to the other prejudice that underlies all this: the prejudice against Muslims.
Latest posts by Paula Marantz Cohen (Posts)
- Thoughts on the Henry Louis Gates incident - July 25, 2009
- The importance of Obama’s election: Art conditioning life - June 20, 2009
- Student writing: Is it bad? Is it good? Does it matter? - February 16, 2009
- Political entitlement — liberal hypocrisy? - December 22, 2008
- Jewish grandchildren and Obama - November 6, 2008
Print This Post
This might be edgy satire by New Yorker standards, but it’s tame campared to South Park and lots of stuff online. Obama needs a thicker skin if he wants to be president. Have you seen what people have said about the last couple of presidents? Anyway, the object of the satire is crystal clear, and it isn’t Obama. But he isn’t off-limits to satire and if his supporters think this cover is outrageous, they’re in for a long few years if he wins.
But I don’t believe the outrage on the part of the Obama campaign is genuine, especially the concern that the cover will spread the rumor that Obama’s a Muslim. Who reads the New Yorker that isn’t already going to vote for Obama? Its audience is mainly highly educated liberals — they’re not voting for the Republican candidate and they don’t believe that Obama is a Muslim. And the audience is a tiny fraction of the electorate. The New Yorker seems big and important to people in the media and academia because they all read it. That cover could in no way harm Obama’s campaign.
Do you think people in Kansas are seeing the cover of the New Yorker in their local Wal-Mart? The only reason people in “Middle America,” or whatever term used to mean “uneducated bigoted hick masses,” have even seen the cover, is that Obama’s campaign has seized it as a useful device. If Obama’s campaign hadn’t made it the topic of conversation, no one otuside of the New Yorker circle would even know about it.
It was smart of the Obama campaign to feign outrage and take to the airwaves. Now millions more people than ever read the New Yorker have had several days of their local and national news networks, news websites, and newspapers reminding them that Obama is not a Muslim.
Also, see what Christopher Hitchens wrote about the response to the cartoon, which I found via Books, Inq.
Several months ago the New Yorker ran an hilarious cover cartoon showing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sitting on the john of a public toilet with the feet of his stallmates on either side creeping toward his. The look on Ahmadinejad’s face is priceless. Maybe there are homosexuals in Iran (or Idaho) after all.
If you have to “explain” the reference to Sen. Larry Craig (R., Ida.) then half the joke is lost. If you have to explain why an American magazine chose to show the leader of a fundamentalist Muslim state in such demeaning position (Persian prince on the crapper!) the joke is dead at birth.
Ha! Ha! Try it sometime. It is an inarticulate combustion in reaction to something that strikes a person as funny. It’s OK to laugh at something that makes you feel a little queasy. But trying to guess how many people won’t get it, and offer that as a reason not to tell the joke or print the cartoon only gives the power to the knuckleheads.
I remember when John Kennedy was elected president and my older brotjer showed me the new quarter coin that was to be issued by the first Catholic president . Someone had doctored a regular quarter with red nail polish showing George Washington wearing a papal beanie and looking remarkably like Pope John XXIII. It was ludicrous and it was funny. And I’m sure it scared the bejabbers out of uptight Catholics who thought some Protestant would take it seriously.
If and when Barack Obama becomes president, expect the equivalent of a Def Comedy Jam every night on Leno, Letterman, Conan, Jimmy and that English guy on late night TV monologues. “Did you hear the latest scandal out of the White House? Topless photos of President Obama’s grandmother appear in the current issue of a large circulation magazine. (. . .two, three) National Geographic.”
Get used to it.
Clark, that National Geographic or the equivalent joke will never happen on mainstream late-night TV. Some corners of the Internet will cross that line. But respectable television comedians, dependent on advertising revenue and corporate oversight and wanting to be liked by the entertainment community, won’t. (That it’s a bad joke is not the reason it won’t happen.) Leno, Letterman, Conan, all of them — yes, even Jimmy — are just as scared as everyone else is of being thought of as a racist. Maybe one of them will skirt that line once or twice, but generally they’ll be really tame and gentle with Obama. You think they’ll deliberately make racial jokes? They don’t want to join Michael Richards. Some radio host — a Howard Stern type — might go there, and maybe get fired if his audience and revenue aren’t big enough.
This New Yorker flap shows that many comedians and satirists have been neutered or at least that scissors are near their testicles when it comes to Obama. Look at everyone at the New Yorker rushing to explain that they weren’t making fun of him. He’s off-limits. Plus, mostly they’re rooting for him — he’s their guy. Less dangerous and more to their political liking to make fun of the old guy.