I posted in reply to some earlier comments. Reading forward, I see that Nick Anderson, with a much bigger microphone, made the same point that the cartoon should have clearly portrayed those images as existing in the mind of a very vocal opponent.

====
Little Hawk, you said "They assumed they were putting that image in front of only their usual audience.....a group of intellectual and liberal people who think the same way they do....but instead they inadvertently put that image out in front of the entire society, most of whom do NOT think the same way as some clever liberal intellectuals who habitually read the New Yorker. They blew it.

They unintentionally handed the right wing something it would be delighted to have planted in all those impressionable minds out there."

I agree with all that except for the "inadvertendly" and "unintentionally" part. At the very least they acted with callous disregard for how the cartoon would be perceived and by whom.   The New Yorker folks obviously know their magazines are ubiquitous in places like the waiting rooms of doctors' offices, auto mechanics, etc., not to mention airport newsstands, libraries, etc., and that all sorts of people would see the cover -- especially if the major "news" media picked it up.

=====
Jack the Sailor: "The idea of a "liberal media" is a creation of propagandists on the right to cause us to distrust sources of news and opinion and to give equal weight to their propaganda in the name of "balance."

BINGO!