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 ^[1], 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.

^[1]

 

 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.