The president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, Nick Anderson, has weighed in with comments about the cover. His criticism is the same as mine, which I posted earlier. If the image is not supposed to satirize the Obamas, but rather the smear critics of Obama, then it failed. It did not make the distinction clearly.
Quote ""I think, as a piece of satire, it utterly fails," Anderson told Politico. "The artist and the New Yorker editor [David Remnick] have claimed that it is so over the top that it is clearly absurd. But it's not sufficiently over the top. It is merely depicting what the whisper campaigns have been suggesting."..."It would have been even stronger had they shown an enemy of Obama painting the picture, or imagining it in their head," he said.

Go back a day or so and you'll see my comment that it should have shown this image of the Obamas being created or held up by a Karl Rove type to really be a satire of those telling the lies.

"There is a constant and natural tension in the creation of satire," Anderson said. "The delicate art of satire is suffocated by heavy-handed elucidation. But, if the satirist fails to make the point clearly enough, the whole enterprise backfires in unintended misinterpretation."