Classy

By BJ

The sophisticates at The New Yorker have come up with a cover that is sure to get the magazine a lot of attention. Negative attention. From their friends.

An illustration by Barry Blitt depicts Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and his wife Michelle in the Oval Office, revealing their "true" selves: Michelle is in full revolutionary garb, an enormous afro making her look like a millennial Angela Davis, holding an automatic weapon and wearing military pants.

In the cartoon Michelle is giving dap, or fist-bumping, with her husband who is wearing a turban and is dressed in garb perhaps more appropriate for a madrassa in Lahore than the Oval Office.

A painting of Osama bin Laden hangs above the fireplace, where the American flag is being burned.

Granted its satire, at least coming from the New Yorker one assumes it is, but not exactly in the best taste, and you can bet more than a few folks passing the newsstands will internalize the image as believable.

Nice job.

Update By Cernig

My pal Nico Pitney at the HuffPo asked artist Barry Blit about the controversey generated by his cover art. Blitt's reaction: "The magazine just came out ten minutes ago, at least give me a few days to decide whether to regret it or not..."

Nico has some nice art to illustrate his piece - the last three new Yorker covers which show:

1) Ahmadinajhad toe-tapping in a lavatory stall.

2) Dubya as Cheney's housemaid.

3) George W. and cabinet in an Oval Office waist deep in s**t.

Update By BJ

The images in the article Cernig linked to do an excellent job illustrating my point, (though I’m not sure if that’s what he intended). Take a look at them and see if you find yourself nodding your head at the rather accurate portrayal of the subject’s circumstances. Cheney the real boss? The administration hip-deep in crap of their own making? Both very well-established memes. The Ahmadinejad cover is a different kind of mockery, but all three are clearly not intended to be complimentary to the depicted subjects.

Now, the artist contends that the cover is intended as a mockery of nut-cases who portray the Obama’s in the exact same way he did. As Kevin Drum notes, there is no context to make that mockery clear. Instead, the artist assumes that the target audience will see the caricature as being outrageous and figure out that it is targeting the people making the characterizations rather than the people being characterized, quite unlike the covers Cernig linked to. And the target audience might, but the image is going to go, and has already gone, far beyond The New Yorker’s intended niche audience.

I have seen aspects of that same imagery already in a few satirical cartoons from the right, and you can bet this will open the floodgates, as the Republicans join in on the satire without whatever “ironic” edge the New Yorker intended. Before I posted this last night, I wandered through a few right-wing sites, where they were discussing the accuracy of the images and mailing it out to their distribution lists. There was even talk about making it into a T-shirt. Copyright issues aside, I can see this becoming the same kind of fashion statement for this year’s Republican convention that the Purple Heart band aids were in 2004.

And all the while the right will be able to defend it as “just satire”, because, “hey, even the New Yorker thought it was funny.”

Basically, he's handed the right a visual accompaniment for all of their smears. Every image on the cover is now fair game, and as is true of real satire, capable of being exaggerated further.

So I say again, nice job.

Comments

[Cheryl Rofer]

Satire is supposed to be in good taste?