>>."I was being satirical."

Jack - unless everyone and their cousin can understand the satire it's better to not be satrical at all. That's what the New Yorker is finding out.<<

Maybe you can tell I was kidding in my previous post. I use Irony here quite a bit. Maybe some people have picked up on that.

On the other hand, past New Yorker covers seem to employ little or no irony.
What the New Yorker, perhaps, should be learning is that people can't be expected to interpret all of their cartoons as exaggeration, except for one, that because they say so, we must interpret as ironic exaggeration.

As good cartoon can be interpreted on the face of it. We shouldn't need to guess about the meaning based upon the history of the magazine. We should not need a secret decoder ring.