The New Yorker is a great magazine and I support them!

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

The New Yorker is one of the BEST magazines in America and has been for many decades. They are the spawning ground for many of the most noted writers, humorists and cartoonists in America. They have written about most of the major topics of the day in expansive articles that most of our bow-to-the-lowest-common denominator publishers wouldn't even begin to consider.

They have a book and CD you might consider purchasing that encompasses almost their entire publishing history. They were publishing articles about electronic voting devices before 99% of the people even knew they were inthe planning phases. They publish great articles about politics, people, and social mores, as well as fiction and gasp(!) poetry. You will find writers like Seymour Hersh, almost always otherwise ignored. Their cartoons and covers have ALWAYS been the gold standard in terms of topicalness and bite and satire.

Their covers are often both satirical and relevant to the hot topic of the day, week or month. I think the cover of Michelle and Barack is brilliant. It encapsulates exactly the lying disfiguring portrait that their detractors are attempting to paint of them through innuendo and slime and slander. You see Barack portrayed as the secret Muslim with the Osama picture and his wife as the Angela Davis type sixties Black Panther afro wearing radical who would probably pepper almost all of her speech with "Whitey" this and "Whitey" that.

I find it almost incomprehensible that anyone could misinterpret this cover and miss it's scathing commentary about those who would mischaracterize the Obamas.

[NattPang]

1. satire about religion and race just aren't funny these days.

I haven't seen another cover where anyone is helped,
by depicting them in the LIES that are told about them.

Do you have an example of one?

[bigwillq]

4. How do you feel about

satire about one's sexuality?

See the 10th one down.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6496158

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

5. I guess I'll have to jump on a research project about that for you.

I'll get back to you in a couple of years.

[KittyWampus]

7. It's called EXPOSING the lies for what they are. Do you prefer to have the lies hidden in the dark

and whispered? Do you really hope by just ignoring them, they'll go away?

That ain't how it works.

[woolldog]

22. Except nothing is being exposed.

People already know what the lies are. The image subtly reinforces the lies.

[Rabrrrrrr]

8. Absoutely! Hide your head in the sand! Hide your head in the sand!

Pretend it doesn't exist!!

Whew, now it's safe.

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. Yep - we got ourselves a shitload of people who never pay attention to it,

who now are telling us the "proper" way to interpret the way they do things.

Annoying as hell.

Just as bad as the jackasses who decided to interpret Jeremiah Wright the "proper" way, even though they know nothing of prophetic preaching and history of prophetic discourse, black churches, and Christian tradition.

You have to remember - the vast majority of people are really fucking stupid. One of the tests could be whether someone actually reads the New Yorker on a regular basis, and understands it - those that do are more than likely in the top 1%.

[BuyingThyme]

3. I'm with you, PL.

(So you might want to reconsider.)

[jonnyblitz]

6. I agree. k & r.

[Beregond2]

9. Unfortunately, humorlessness

seems to have become a prerequisite for being a liberal these days. We should be applauding the New Yorker for it's swipe at the right-wing boobs who believe this stuff, and mocking those who would take that cover seriously. But we are all SO SENSITIVE now.

[Skittles]

11. it's ITS, not IT'S as in "its swipe"

and DUers do see it's a SWIPE; they are disagreeing on the METHOD - it's got nothing to do with HUMOR

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

14. What about the METHOD do you disagree with?

It's a satirical cover exactly of the ilk The New Yorker is known for.

Is this a debate about pen and ink vs. watercolor?

[Skittles]

15. please, just forget it

I have neither the time nor the patience

[tishaLA]

10. well....

IMO New Yorker stopped being "great" when Tina Brown started editing it, but you're right: it's better than almost everything else (Harpers and Atlantic, I think, qualify as great). Sadly, despite Ms Brown's departure, many of her acolytes remain at the magazine and David Remnick has not given it a strong voice or returned it to the intelligence it had pre-Tina.

That being said, the article about Sen Obama is wonderful.

[msanthrope]

12. It's a fantastic cover, a great article and a very good publication.

Frankly, the collective pearl-clutching on some other threads makes me wonder if satire is no longer taught in high-schools anymore.

[Skittles]

16. I know satire

and I know BAD SATIRE

[hlthe2b]

13. One can condemn one cover without condemning the entire mag

Yes, I am a New Yorker Magazine fan from forever, basically.... I understand and appreciate satire. But, as with comedy, timing is everything. Timing on this is incredibly bad... Had they run it after the election and especially after winning (we can only pray), thereby using it to parody some of the nonsense, after the fact, it would have been ok, I think. Now, the timing is just wrong...

If we are lucky, something good can come from it, though. That's what I'm hoping...

[frazzled]

17. As a 25-year subscriber to the magazine, I do not support them in this failed effort

Satire holds up to ridicule or scorn some idea or concept. If the idea were to hold the right-wing conception of the Obamas up to ridicule, it should have contained the key to the underlying concept: a right-winger.

As I suggested in a post, they could have shown granpappy McCain in his Barcalounger with a dream-bubble over his head thinking of this scurrilous scene. That would be satire. What the NYer editors allowed on the cover was ambiguous at best and open to the worst kind of reification of right-wing memes, not satire of them.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

18. Because you would need to have that image of a wingnut in a Barca lounger

to know that Michelle Obama doesn't really have an afro or wear a machine gun and a gun belt and cami pants and that they don't really have a picture of Osama and a burning American flag in their living room? Are you for real?

[frazzled]

20. Yes, honey, not only am I for real ...

I am an editor. And I would have sent that toon back to the drawing board in a heartbeat, because it does not read as satire of a right-wing meme. It is ambiguous and open to misinterpretation.

Are you for real? Remember when forty-some percent of the American people believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

21. Honey? ! Why would you address me that way?

You must be a very knowledgeable, wonderful and sensitive editor, who is attuned to all the many ways that someone can say or write something that might be misunderstood.

Now, I know that in order for you to clearly get my meaning from that last statement, you require this:

:sarcasm:

If I were able to help you even further, I would draw myself in a Barca lounger with a thought balloon making that statement.

[frazzled]

26. For the same reason you asked if I were for real

And my use of honey was indeed satirical. Perhaps you can see now why satire must be so finely honed in order to hit its mark. Perhaps you can understand why people might miss the point about Michelle Obama with an AK-47 and an American flag burning in the fireplace.

P.S. I'm a woman.

[KittyWampus]

27. If you were an editor, you'd have noticed Obama's gaze out to the viewer in that cartoon.

You'd also understand that artists and writers are communicating with their target audience. Which the cartoon does.

[Ian David]

19. Republicans don't read. They just look at the pictures. n/t

[Avalux]

23. "I find it almost incomprehensible that anyone could misinterpret this cover"

Not everyone will get it. "Low information voters" living in rural PA won't get it. I find it almost incomprehensible you don't get that the cartoon with be shown ad nauseum on all the MSM outlets and spun crazily.

Not everyone thinks like us.

[spag68]

24. Have they done any covers

With McSame's finger on the nuke button?

[Canuckistanian]

25. I get the satire and the point, but this is dangerous territory

Because there are MILLIONS out there who literally believe this represents the truth.

And then there are others who AREN'T SURE what the truth is AND don't understand satire too well.

And all of these people vote.