Breaking Irony: Obama New Yorker Cover Proves America Losing Brain Cells AND Sense of Humor
The controversy over the cover of New Yorker magazine depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as Islamic terrorists shows not only how grim and uneducated Americans are about politics, culture and media, how vicious, lying and anti-American right wingers still are, but how this country has utterly lost its sense of satire and irony- not to mention freedom of speech.
The drawing was designed to show how stupid the accusations against the Obamas are (the article it promotes is titled “The Politics of Fear”). Anyone who’s ever read the New Yorker knows their political lean is substantially left. But instead, many critics have responded exactly how the New Yorker expected them to react: stupidly, emotionally and with transcendent irony. Sadly, the left has responded exactly the way the radical right wing- led by Limbaugh, Fox News and the usual suspects- wants them to. Which is too bad. I thought liberals stood for liberty.
It’s classic political satire- a fairly typical cartoon reminiscent of Bill Mauldin, Herb Block and the greats. It’s also a classic invocation of the First Amendment. But perhaps more than anything, it’s indicative of the dying magazine industry straining to do anything to sell product. In Rovian fashion, the fascist flamers have jumped all over this one. McCain and his reluctant but wired right wingers are not stupid. They will use the magazine art as an icon with which to beat on Obama and his supporters- not because they don’t get it- but because they look for anything that distracts voters from real issues and gets them to think irrationally, emotionally and out of fear while stretching the rule of law to the breaking point (think Rush’s Operation Chaos). Which is why the New Yorker’s art and article are right on the money. They knew this would happen and sure enough it did.
Bloggers, political and media experts know what’s going on here. We’ll have a good chuckle, write a post and move on. Hopefully, in the days and weeks to come, Americans will tune out the 24/7 cable drones and Limbaugh clones and finally get the joke: It’s on us and the right wing poison propagandists. And the New Yorker’s point will have been made: we can’t handle the truth and perhaps don’t even recognize it anymore. Hopefully for the struggling magazine industry, who need a major backbone transplant, the New Yorker will laugh all the way to the bank.
Given the current, dire condition of America’s banks though, they better hurry.