The upcoming Presidential election is certainly the most important election in this country in decades. The whole world will be watching to see what road America will take into the heart of the 21st century.
This July 21 New Yorker magazine cover defends itself as obvious satire, showing how many ridiculous rumors have been circulating about candidate Barack Obama. Ham-handed at best, insidious at worst, one can only wonder about what goes on around the editorial table at this venerated magazine.
Did nobody question the taste of this cartoon? Did everybody laugh uproariously? Surely the staff is versed in what satire is about; surely they've all read Swift's A Modest Proposal, the mother of all satires. How did this fourth grade, Howard Stern-like joke pass muster?
The damage has been done, and copies of this will circulate throughout the crude and bigoted segment of our population.
Unlike Swift's biting satire, this cartoon will prompt the very action it purports to decry. For shame, New Yorker!
From Fox News
Aides to Barack Obama are blasting a New Yorker magazine cover that depicts �President Obama� in the Oval Office, wearing a Muslim-style outfit and doing a fist-bump with his wife, Michelle, who is dressed in camouflage with an automatic rifle slung over her back.
A picture of Usama (sic) bin Laden hangs above the mantel of the fireplace, which has an American flag burning in it.
The July 21 cover, titled �The Politics of Fear,� is intended to be a parody, an attempt to show how �scare tactics and misinformation� are being used to try to derail Barack Obama�s campaign, says cover artist Barry Blitt.
�I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous,� Blitt wrote in an e-mail to the Huffington Post. �It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.�
The Obama campaign has had to fight an intensive e-mail spam campaign that claims Obama is secretly a Muslim, and his wife is a black radical. Campaign spokesman Bill Burton called the New Yorker cover over the top.
�The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama�s right-wing critics have tried to create,� Burton said.
�But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.�
Obama did not reply to a question about the cover when he answered reporters� questions on Sunday in San Diego. John McCain�s campaign also slammed the cover as �tasteless and offensive.�
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