BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?

Subject: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 11:21 AM

If someone has already mentioned this, I hope joeclones feel free to combine this thread with the other.

I have respected the New Yorker Magazine as one of the 'serious' and trustworthy sources of information but is the current cover, in your opinion, satirical? Or is it inflammatory?

Americans are routinely charged with not understanding satire; I, of all people, recognize that I tend toward the literal. Thus, to me, this is not satire but something that plays into some voters' deepest fears and prejudices, something that will inevitably affect the election.

Is this Satire?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Wesley S
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 11:28 AM

I think it's a hoot. People have already made up their minds. Those who believe the internet rumors arn't going to get it. But those who have two brain cells to rub together will. It's not going to turn anyone against Obama.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 11:28 AM

When lies about Obama and his wife abound, all this cover did is feed the lies even more. Sick. Yes, the New Yorker has lost my respect.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Wesley S
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 11:39 AM

Don't worry Alice. It's only the New Yorker. No one outside of Manhatten believes anything in it anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 11:40 AM

Its just another bigoted smear.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Enid Blatant
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 11:43 AM

The woman looks kinda old-fashioned, in a fuzzy-haired sorta way.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 11:57 AM

YEs, it is intended as satire. But good satire has to both stir up the illogical thing it is satirizing, and add enough humor to cause the illogic to be rejected. In this case, the satire was obvious but was too pale to cause (IMO) the reader to reject the ridiculousness of the satirized thing. Thus, bad taste instead of a cracking good cover; and it was a close call, too, really--the eds at NY were surprised all to hell when they got the backlash.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:00 PM

As a cartoonist I thinks this is excellent satire... not a bigotted smear.
I have suffered the slings and arrows of such attacks for my satire.
This is what I have learned about sucj satire....
The best defintion of satire is:
smart people get it, linear minds do not.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:03 PM

I have done editorial illustration and satirical cartoons, and my response to this one is
FAIL!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: CarolC
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:03 PM

It might have been somewhat amusing inside the magazine, on the same page as the article, but on the cover it's just the promotion of a malicious smear.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:10 PM

Thats the point.... Thats the point...

The Republican Rush Limbaugh smear is malicious.

What better way to show it for what it is... a bad cartoon of the truth.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: artbrooks
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:20 PM

Since both the Obama and McCain camps say it was tasteless and offensive, who am I to disagree? Even my wife, a long-time New Yorker subscriber and much more "liberal" (as the word is defined by the right) than I am, says it was a bit much.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:20 PM

Obama's campaign is calling it "tasteless and offensive." I think they're right. It's tasteless and offensive.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:20 PM

Satire is supposed to make the subject look foolish.
The viewer or reader has to be able to know immediately WHO the subject is, who is being made to look foolish.
The cartoon DOES NOT CLEARLY MAKE THE POINT that the subject is those who believe such things about the Obamas. In the end, it has just made the New Yorker itself look foolish.

Now, if it had shown a puppeteer like Karl Rove behind cutouts of muslim dressed Obamas, THEN it would have been clear that the satire was directed at Republican campaign smear tactics. Karl Rove would have to be labeled with the name Karl Rove, as most people would not recognize his caricature. Again, I say it was a
FAIL!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:21 PM

The problem is that Americans don't really have much of a sense of humor or absurdity.
I see the absurd idea being represented here as something that would receive a giggle
rather than a smear if the American public weren't so ill informed and had such a star-struck crush on Obama. The idea that Obama is any kind of "terrorist muslim" is so absurd that I don't understand how people can take it seriously. It speaks to the real ignorance
of the American public that they even entertain such an idea.

I think the New Yorker overestimated the sophistication of the public to receive this image
in its proper context, a complete ridiculous idea fostered by some malicious and ignorant
idiots on the GOP side. If Americans were more educated and less indoctrinated, this
cartoon on the front cover of the New Yorker would have been taken as satire and not
some smear.

The problem is that Americans are being inundated by so many smear tactics that they have become hyper-sensitive. It reminds me of the absurd and dangerous reaction
given by some members of the Muslim community to the cartoon in the Danish newspaper which prompted insane murders.

Why can't Americans grow up?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Wesley S
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:22 PM

The folks who think that Obama is a Muslim don't read The New Yorker. It has too many big words. Now if this had been in People magazine or Readers Digest that would be different.

"The woman looks kinda old-fashioned, in a fuzzy-haired sorta way."

Maybe Angela Davis??

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:29 PM

My cartoon deals with the Republican claim that NO ONE KNOWS WHO OBAMA IS...

I picture him with a paper bag on his head. with a small presidential seal on the bag.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:32 PM

and McCain is in the background trying tovover his nakedness.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: SINSULL
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:33 PM

I am a New Yorker and find this totally tasteless on so many levels. Had it been a cartoon within the story, it would have been satire. On the cover it is tasteless.
CarolC pointed that out.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: CarolC
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:36 PM

The reason I think it might have been ok inside the magazine along with the article is because people reading the article would know who was being ridiculed by the cartoon. On the cover, it looks like it's the Obamas who are being ridiculed because there is no context on the cover to inform people of who the cartoon ridicules. And that's why it acts as more of a smear by itself on the cover.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:39 PM

In my opinion, the posters who say/feel that I, as an ignorant, intellectually challenged, star-struck, humorless American, just don't get it, are the ones who don't get it.

The cover, to my mind, is as tasteless - and harmful - as a cover depicting John McCain as a prisoner of war sitting at a table plotting the defeat of America or of McCain as a doddering old fool of a president gleefully pressing the nuclear button against Iran.

As CarolC said, if the cartoon had been inside the magazine illustrating the points that some Americans choose to believe about a presidential candidate it would have been clearly satirical and as Wesley S said, a hoot.

Keep in mind that the people who don't "have two brain cells to rub together" do vote. In my opinion, there are people out there who will tell each other that national magazines don't buy the disclaimers about Obama and are using this means to get the truth across to voters.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:44 PM

Wow, that is next month's cartoon !?! How did you know?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:44 PM

yes, if it was clearly part of an article about smear tactics, next to the headline inside the magazine, the subject would be more clear.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:48 PM

Satire works because of its offense. This cartoon will do much to dfuse the the rumor monger campaign that Barack is muslim.

This is the kind of reverse propoganda that I admire for its long reaching effect to help progressive truth.


Go ahead and be offended... it still helps to undermine the Hannity types.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,In My Humble Opinion
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:52 PM

The New Yorker hasn't been funny since Conde Nast purchased it, the days of Harold Ross, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley et all are long gone.

As Harold Ross said " if you can't be funny, be interesting" The New Yorker is no longer either.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:52 PM

That was the intent, Donuel, but I don't think the balance of the cartoon was done well. If, for example, there had been a picture of a redneck at a computer in the lower right corner, dreaming up these fantasies, it would have been much less ambiguous.

As it is, it speaks successfully only to a narrow audience of educated New Yorker reader types. Humour has to be a little further-reaching than that to work.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:54 PM

I don't agree that this cartoon will diffuse... anything.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:54 PM

If you have this high minded impression that the New Yorker is some sophisticated analyst of   world opinion, only read by an educated elite. then the cartoon was proper and in good taste and Donuel is not out of line, and completely missing the point, for calling people who don't agree with him "linear".

On the other hand, if you think that The New Yorker is a commercial magazine on news stands across the country and if you realize that the purpose of a magazine cover is to sell magazines and if you realize that a lot of people with buy that particular issue because it reinforces everything that they believe and want to believe about Obama because they are racist or because the are so partisan that they do not think straight, then you may find it tasteless and offensive.

As folks here have pointed out, satire needs to make a point, an accumulation of negative stereotypes is just and only that and can cut both ways. The New Yorker clearly made a business decision not to make a clear statement so that they could sell magazines to Obama supporters and Obama haters.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:56 PM

Yes Amos, it should have been sketched by Tom Toles.

Hell, even I could do it better but it seems as a minority of one, I believe it will help more than it will hurt.

If it had watermellons, fried chickens, drugs and guns with Barack grabbing his crotch,, even I would have thought it was offensive.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Big Mick
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:11 PM

The problem with it, for me, is that the context is hard to ascertain. I surely understand effective satire, and perhaps the point was to leave the context ambiguous in order to cause one to look inside and flesh out the story. All it does for me is cause resentment, but I absolutely will be reading the article so that I can get to that.

On a related subject though, Americans (no matter their political stripes) are so tied to their preconceived notions, stereotypes, and cliche' driven politics, that everything looks like an attack. We move immediately to defending our position no matter what the issues being raised are. It makes for a stratified political debate with very little hope of effective solutions and progress. We seek out only that evidence that buttresses our own positions. Judging from the "proof" that comes everyday in the email, otherwise good people on the right and the left are perfectly willing to manufacture lies to do this. Time to wake up, folks. For the first time in our history, we have a real chance to make progress using 100% of our talent and brain trust. For all the impact this land has made on the world, most of it for the better, some not for the better, it has been accomplished using these timeless ideals, a novel new version of democracy, and only 40 to 45% of our braintrust, namely white males. For us to turn this moment into a seminal time, we must drop our cliche's, look to real solutions, understand that demonizing one another simply blocks real progress, and fight like hell for the soul of our nation.

Sorry for the digression.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:13 PM

The New Yorker humor is legendary for being droll.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:27 PM

Manhattan on The New Yorker cover. Typical New Yorker. Just like the current issue.

This newest sly cover is aimed at thinking people who are tired of the view put forward by Limbaugh and his right wing loonies. It illustrates the absurd view they try to insinuate with the contrived 'slip of the tongue' we hear from bigots when they call in to radio talk shows and discuss "Osama. . . er. . . Obama." They would dismiss the man as damaged goods and hope to paint this kind of image in voter's heads. Now The New Yorker has done it, it's over the top, it's funny, and it's illustrating the sheer stupidity the bigots are trying to suggest. I can't wait until my copy arrives and I'll read it.

Now if non-thinking people pick up The New Yorker hoping to find verbiage that reinforces their bias, they will be disappointed. They won't understand the magazine and probably won't read the poems or laugh at the rest of the cartoons, either. They'll also have $5 less to send to McCain for his campaign.

This explanation won't soothe the whining over-zealous Obama supporters who left their sense of humor and perspective, along with their Kucinich buttons, at home.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:29 PM

Personally I find it offensive that Bush just signed a law making every beach and coastline of the US to be opened up to drilling for OIL. He said that the high cost of fuel is the liberals fault for fighting against unlimited drilling.

We don't need every beach to become oiled imho

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:30 PM

by the way it is not a law but an executive order

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: mg
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:30 PM

I would not go around feeling superior and calling people rednecks at the same time. Yes, the cover was tasteless and offensive. I have tried, yes tried, to read the New Yorker, because someone gave me her old ones and I would drop them off at CHildren's Hospital, where they would languish for months while the Good Housekeepings etc. disappeared in minutes. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:35 PM

Yes the magazine is a bit egalitarian since it is primarily for people who happen to live in Manhatten.

Their famous cartoon of the US map as envisioned by a New Yorker says it all.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:44 PM

One could happily conclude that the New Yorker is a lot like Obama, elitist.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:46 PM

WHich certainly proves, does it not, that Good Housekeeping is a better magazine? :D



A

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:47 PM

Remember the tasteless and offensive claims that a editorial cartoon about General BETRAY US required apology and retraction?

guess what...General Petraus has been removed from his Iraq command and promoted. His duty to deliver the good news about the escalating SURGE without question or dissent was done.

Regarding issues of satire it is better to think in terms of chess than checkers.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: john f weldon
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:58 PM

Love the New Yorker. Loved the cover. Loved the one, a few years back, with the Easter Bunny crucified on a tax form. That got lots of people's knickers in a twist, too.

Lighten up, folks.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 02:13 PM

Satirical cartoon? Try Gerald Scarfe.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 02:14 PM

"WHich certainly proves, does it not, that Good Housekeeping is a better magazine? :D"


                Well, I'll have to admit, that's satire that works.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 02:32 PM

I subscribe to the New Yorker, but didn't receive this issue in the mail. I was wondering why I missed a week. Coincidence? Who knows...

I am not offended at all, and I'm pretty sure that anyone who actually reads this particular periodical understands the satirical spirit in which the image was presented.

Of course, it might have been more appropriate as an illustration on an inside page, clearly connected to an explanatory article. As has been pointed out above, many people of varying points of view and levels of sophistication see the covers of magazines on newsstands, including covers of magazines that they never read.

Some such folks would probably have gotten the wrong idea; but I seriously doubt that anyone who might otherwise have voted Democratic in the upcoming general election would have changed their mind because a magazine cover ~ of a notoriously left/liberal/artsy magazine featuring a lot of big words ~ made them believe all those heavy-handed right wing lies about Mr. Obama.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: SINSULL
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 02:48 PM

I recently chatted with a native Mainer while waiting in a doctor's office. He told me that Obama is a practicing Muslim and intends to introduce the reading of the Koran in all public schools.
When I pointed out all the bruhaha about his Christian pastors' remarks, he was speechless. "You mean he is Christian?"
That man will see that cover and nod knowingly. More proof.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,In My Humble Opinion
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 03:01 PM

"WHich certainly proves, does it not, that Good Housekeeping is a better magazine? :D"

Are you being satirical....?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 03:07 PM

Barry Blitt, the cover artist, was asked about the outcry and what he thought in retrospect... his answer, in today's news, "The magazine just came out ten minutes ago, at least give me a few days to decide whether to regret it or not..."

Like the Mainer Sinsull met, I saw a Latina on a panel discussion on PBS news talking about Obama being muslim... saying, he shouldn't keep changing churches. First he's muslim, then says christian, then he left the church because of the pastor.

Well, having worked in illustration and marketing for many, many years, I know how obtuse most Americans are. In general, Americans are so literal in their thinking, they don't get subtlety, they don't get satire, they don't get irony.

I still say, bad choice as a cover. Inside next to the article, might have worked.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 03:07 PM

Washington Post:

Posted at 10:40 AM ET, 07/14/2008
New Yorker Cover Not So Funny

Lots of Internet frenzy this morning over The New Yorker's cover, showing Obama in a turban, his wife armed with an AK-47 and her hair in an Afro, the two of them fist-bumping in the Oval Office with Osama's portrait on the wall and an American flag burning in the fireplace.

Complete blog is here.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,In My Humble Opinion
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 03:12 PM

The cover isn't offensive.the humour isn't even droll, to para-phrase Harold Ross, once more, it's neither funny nor interesting.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 03:15 PM

re link: When I post links to the Post, they seem to go bad after a week, and the whole point is lost. There are several threads that start with links, and those links are now invalid, making the entire thread a mystery.

This is the BS section and there is no need or desire to retain everything for posterity. If the Post articles disappear its likely that by the time they do the discussion will either be over or will have drifted off topic altogether. In any case beardedbruce, you have been told repatedly not to do this. Please stop this practice now.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: jacqui.c
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 03:33 PM

As a Brit I must admit that I did not see the humour in this cover.

Unfortunately this will be seen on newstands by people who won't buy or read it but who may see it as confirmation of their own take on Obama.

Quite often the New Yorker is one of the magazines that I see laying around in medical waiting rooms. Again, it is less likely that this would be picked up and read, but the cover will be seen and that image carried away by any number of people who would not be considered as part of the demographic for whom the magazine was intended.

In my opinion this was highly irresponsible.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Wesley S
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 03:45 PM

"Unfortunately this will be seen on newstands by people who won't buy or read it but who may see it as confirmation of their own take on Obama."

Exactly - and those people were never going to vote for Obama anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:01 PM

I think the point is that voters are influenced by misinformation and lies. It is not true that all the voters have made up their mind one way or the other at this point in the campaigns.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:10 PM

"Exactly - and those people were never going to vote for Obama anyway."


             What about the Latino voters addressed a few posts above? Many of them might not have made up their minds. This might make their minds up for them.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:11 PM

being neither funny or interesting may in fact be the intended meaning of the word droll.

I still think more good will come of it.

People who feel they must inform you that they have a sense of humor are covering up the fact that they don't.

I trust the cross section here to be old and wise enough to have a well thought through opinion over time. Knee jerk opinions occur in a vacuum of other new considerations. In a couple years many of you will come around. ;>?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:16 PM

Several of you, stop and think what you are saying: Smart people can't poke ironic fun at stupid ideas because stupid people won't understand it and it will confirm their stupid ideas. They might act based upon their stupid ideas because this cartoon appeared.

Duh. There's no excuse for stupid ideas except mindless media, an incompetent education system, and parents who aren't paying attention to teach critical thinking skills when they raise children to one day be responsible civic-minded adults. This is no reason for everyone else to stop having intelligent conversations and to not practice highly visible illustrations to poke fun at those stupid ideas.

Did you think The New Yorker was ever going to change their minds? That if they saw a kinder and gentler Obama cartoon on the cover, they'd warm up and vote for him?

These arguments are circular logic, and amount to a Tempest in a Teapot.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:16 PM

Donuel, the point is that many Americans vote based on knee jerk opinions. The issue is NOT Mudcatters' opinions of the cover. The issue is those voters who will be swayed by misconceptions. Remember the Swift Boat campaign? Ask John Kerry if he thinks voters are well informed when they go into the voting booth.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:31 PM

Several of you, stop and think what you are saying: Smart people can't poke ironic fun at stupid ideas because stupid people won't understand it and it will confirm their stupid ideas. They might act based upon their stupid ideas because this cartoon appeared.



Not at all. The point is that they must do it well and strike cleanly with the blade of satire--not just wheeze and hack. This cover, unfortunately, is ham-fisted so the satire fails, just by a narrow margin, and it becomes tasteless instead of biting, for lack of a little more wit.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:39 PM

If you want to show someone a distorted image a funhouse mirror, first you need to make it perfectly clear to them that they are, in fact, in the funhouse. Otherwise, when you laugh at that distorted image they'll think you're crazy. Since they don't know about the funhouse, they'll think you're laughing at some poor schmuck who really has a three-foot long neck.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Wesley S
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:42 PM

"This cover, unfortunately, is ham-fisted so the satire fails, just by a narrow margin"

But who gets to be the judge of wheather it fails or not? Satire like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So satire should not be used unless we're positive that everyone is going to get the point? Even the folks in Oklahoma?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,In My Humble Opinion
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:53 PM

Thanks LTS!


A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.
- Dorothy Parker (one time employee of The New Yorker)

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:53 PM

Wesley:

It fails my standards, is what I was saying.

Chacun a son mauvais gout as the French always say.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:57 PM

Whether everyone gets the satire would not matter...
But, we are looking at 4 more years of the BUSH Agenda if lies about Obama turn voters to McCain.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 05:00 PM

Then you should have voted for Hillary while you had the chance.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 05:08 PM

I watch CSPAN to hear from the candidates and the voters themselves.
I recently saw a focus group of voters on CSPAN.
The misinformation about Obama held by most of the voters was amazing.

election focus group

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 05:09 PM

Yeah, I agree with SRS.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 05:09 PM

The cartoon makes fun of the propoganda of the right wing that claims Obama is a Muslim.


The true elite also claim that he is an elitist and unknown.
Elite has been made to be an evil thing by right wing think tanks.
They did it to the world liberal until iberals gave up and used progressive. Elite used to mean the best at the top.

Note that these claims come from the TRUE elitists. Remember, we're only talking in the US about six or seven families. They changed their names and interbred, but they are the descendants of the bankers who took over the Fed in 1913.

I have to go back to that old era to find the data, but in 1918 the ten richest men owned 70 percent of the economy.

So we're talking very few people who are like kings, and control most of your money. You don't see them. They hide behind this elaborate camouflage you think of as your economy.

The sheer audacity to make a cartoon of the elitists calling Obama elite Oh my Oh my. tsk tsk

Some of you remind me of Muslims offended by a Mohammed cartoon.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Gervase
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 05:14 PM

I thought it was rather droll. But perhaps a little too sophisticated for most; ergo, should have been kept inside and not put on the cover, for fear of frightening the servants.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 05:20 PM

I'm sure the New Yorker is happy to be making more sales of that issue just because of the controversy. But will it be worth it to them in the longrun? I wonder how much negative backlash they will get from their already dwindling subscriber list.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 05:28 PM

Unfortunately for Dorothy Parker, by today's standards paprika is a bland and dull spice.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,In My Humble Opinion
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 05:32 PM

Yes well, I'll take Dorothy Parker as a source over most of what I've seen on Mudcat so far. By the way I hadn't realised the the New Yorker was available in Britain.....

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Gervase
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 05:39 PM

Certainly is - I used to read it regularly, until I found better cures for insomnia. It actually made Punch look lively.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: In My Humble Opinion
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 05:43 PM

As I said in an earlier post when as a "Guest" I came, New Yorker has long since lost its way., that happens when you're owned by a corporation (in this case Cond Nast)

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 05:55 PM

It is an excellent example of satire... which will be missed by most Americans, unfortunately! And therefore, may have been a dumb idea...

Oddly enough, I first heard about this from the French press!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 06:05 PM

Donuel, you made my day:

People who feel they must inform you that they have a sense of humor are covering up the fact that they don't.

Politics, satire, and stupidity aside, THAT is the most insightful comment I've encountered in a good long while!

I agree with the more pessimistic contributors to this thread that a frighteningly huge portion of the American public is incredibly stupid and easily (mis)led. However, I do not share their opinion that this magazine cover is going to make anyone believe that Osama is a Muslim or a terrorist, or whatever, who has not already bought that pack of lies from the right-wing propaganda machine. Any extraneous discussion prompted by the appearance of this cartoon can only serve to cause some folks ~ maybe only a few, but some ~ to look a little closer and maybe learn something.

Nobody, absolutely nobody, is going to look at the cover and think "Gee, it never occurred to me that Mr and Mrs Obama might be terrorist Muslims, but now that I see this picture, I suddenly realize the awful truth!"

The perpetuation of false accusations depends upon unquestioning and unthinking acceptance. Anything that prompts questioning or thought of any kind can't hurt, can only help.

By the way, I just now realized that the reason I haven't gotten this issue in the mail is that it's still on the way ~ it's the current/newest issue. I usually receive it on Saturday, didn't get it this past weekend, and will probably find it in my mailbox when I arrive home this evening.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 06:16 PM

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Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 06:28 PM

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Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: heric
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 06:31 PM

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Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 06:48 PM

Which is an ad in really bad taste, but otherwise appears to be a hijack-this-thread post.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: heric
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 07:02 PM

yeah Donuel

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Tasteless and Offensive
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 07:23 PM

And I'm craven, too!

The only person with a right to be offended by this cover is Angela Davis.

Put me in the column marked "Americans are too stupid and lazy to get it".

"Some of you remind me of Muslims offended by a Mohammed cartoon."

I think you will find the group of people who find the cover offensive to be the same group of people who will be voting for Obama.

But just to prove me wrong, if you find this cover offensive and plan to vote for McCain, please raise your hand.

If you think the New Yorker is painful reading, whatever you do--steer clear of Huffington Post. Wretched stuff.

I find those who are offended by the cover are far too easily offended. We've Mississippi river flood damage, Bush lifting the ban on off-shore oil drilling, hungry and homeless people in our very midst, the economy tanked, multiple war fronts in a pointless, useless war...

And you are offended by a not very clever New Yorker cover?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Bobert
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 07:46 PM

Well, if this had been the cover of "People" then I would find offense but it was "The New Yorker", for cripes sake... And I will guarentee that 100% of regular readers of "The New Yorker" got it the way it was intended to be gotten because they are intellegent people...

Face it, Bubba not only doesn't read this magizine but ain't never heard of it before it hit the NewsLiteTV tonight...

I thought the cartoon was a hoot...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 08:00 PM

The only problem with the above analogy is, a whole bunch of people who never have and never will read the New Yorker will certainly see the cover.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 08:08 PM

That will broaden their horizons, won't it?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 08:10 PM

I think the cover only succeeds in focusing a lot more attention than the magazine deserves on the New Yorker itself.

Other than that I find the cover "offensive and tasteless" (just to be different). However, if the editors had run the same cover after Obama had been elected I would then find the cover "amusing and tasteless." The difference has something to do with the fact that we are now in full campaign mode, and at the very least the discussion generated by this cover will distract many voters, including ourselves, from gaining a better appreciation of the issues which divide the candidates.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Tasteless and Offensive
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 08:21 PM

"...we are now in full campaign mode"

That may be overstating things a bit.

In reality, I doubt most people are paying attention to the election much at all right now.

Full campaign mode doesn't begin until after the conventions, school is back in session...usually voters start paying attention sometime around October. Before that, it's blips on the radar.

Now the Brangelina twins...

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 08:28 PM

We are about in the same mode as we were October 2004.
Certainly we are here in North Carolina where Obama ads are being run every day and people we know have been emailing us some of the very slurs depicted on the New Yorker ad.
It is full campaign mode by standards of the past.

But I expect things will intensify by October this year.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 09:53 PM

Hey maybe now I can proudly sell my rejection letters from the New Yorker for my cartoons.


My cartoons are far more offensive tastless vulgar licentious vile and therefor lifelike.

;;;
I have Barack with his pants pulled half down by Limbaugh and OReilly while Cheney and Huckabee hold guns and McCain awkwardly weilds a red hot branding iron that says "ELITIST" backwards

;;;;;;
Deep in the bowels of the Tony Snow Conference room the McCain campaign genius' are hard at work:

Biff Dupont: "OK what do we have on Obama?"
A staffer looks at the seperate piles of files on each democratic candidate, as he peers over a four foot tall stack labled DIRT ON HILLARY and fumbles through a few leaflets on Kucinich and Gravel he picks up the hlaf inch thick folder on Obama, "well sir we really don't know much about him."
Biff: "Great, we'll go with that!, What else?"
Staffer for CIA: "Well he may have muslim terrorist roots?!"
Biff: "SUPER, what else?"
FBI staffer: "Umm his wife looks like a 60's agitator"
Biff: "Not bad but I was hoping for more links to Sharpton or Willie Horton or an executed felon,   Homeland Security , what have you got?"
HLS Staffer: "We only have soft Xray security pictures of Barack at the Airport"
Biff: "Good, send it to FOX so they can show every God fearing American Christian...
HLS staffer: "Its huge sir."
Biff: "How big is McCain?...oh dear. Gentlemen we are in an uphill struggle"


::::::::

Hillary has meeting to solve the Bill liability factor:

Picture of Hillary shaking hands with Tony Soprano.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 10:23 PM

I know people at work who seem to be reasonably intelligent people most of the time, but confess to having grown up in either Catholic or Baptist homes. When the topics of "a woman's right to choose," or that of "teaching Creationism in the public schools" come up they are given to say, "intellectually we are pro-choice and/or pro-science. But they will tell you when they're really pressed that their childhood learning returns and they can't totally positive.
               Many of these people have said that they are pretty certain that because Obama's father followed Islam, if really pressed Obama will follow Islam too. I think the majority of these people, if they saw the cover of the "New Yorker," would be more convinced than ever that Obama is a closet Muslim. And they're coming to these conclusions is a direct result of their own childhood experiences.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 11:12 PM

This cartoon will end up being the best thing that has happened to the Obama campaign. The New Yorker understands it's readers, and most of it's readers "got" the cartoon. Now as others puff up their chests in complaint the explanation of the cartoon will be spread widely, helping those misguided ones understand that the very things illustrated in that cartoon are bogus.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 11:35 PM

I hope you're right, Stilly. Rig, I think your observation is reasonable for some. Sadly enough.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Tasteless and Offensive
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 11:44 PM

Do you suppose the stupid people will not understand they are the target of the lampooner?

I can't imagine LimbO'Reilly haven't commented upon all this.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 02:42 AM

The very real potential damage is not for people who will actually read the New Yorker, scan the cover carefully, or pay close attention to serious news coverage of the story and what it's meant to be. It's from people who will catch a glimpse of the image of Barack in Muslim garb and Michelle in terrorist attire as they pass newsstands or see a fleeting snippet on a TV show.   A picture is worth 1000 words, and images can trigger emotional responses that run counter to what the rational brain tells us.

Think about it. If there were rumors about you -- that you were a drunk, a meth addict, a child molester, an animal abuser, whatever -- and some local publication ran cartoon images of you engaging in flagrant examples of such behavior.   What do you think that would do for your public image and reputation in the community?

I think it would have been better if the "news" media had not made such a big "story" out of this. (Better still if the New Yorker had kept that cartoon on the inside pages and not put it on the cover.)   But since the "news" media have all seemed to glom onto the story, maybe the best way to salvage the situation is for Obama and other Democrats, as well as fair-minded media people, to use this spotlight to point out the absurdity and viciousness of the kinds of gossip and rumors about Obama that this cover references.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 08:45 AM

It's not a question of what would have been better for the Obama campaign or its supporters, myself included.

It's only a question, as far as the New Yorker is concerned (and by extension the rest of the mass media which is indulging in a feeding frenzy) to exploit the celebrity status of the Obamas for their own gain.

But I do agree that there may be a lesson learned from this cartoon, as Genie is also hoping will happen.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,T & O
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 08:59 AM

Perhaps some of you have never read the New Yorker? It doesn't purport to be the NY Times. It is an arts and culture magazine for New Yorkers, and their satirical cover art always--on nearly every single issue--reflects that aspect of their magazine.

As I said earlier, those who are offended by this are his supporters, who do not wish to see their candidate mocked, ridiculed, satirized, or made fun of, and who believe everyone should self-censor anything that could be construed as negative about the Obamas.

No one should go along with that line of reasoning.

To suggest the New Yorker "should" have put the cartoon on the inside is outrageous. The Obamas are public figures, and this comes with that territory. Public figures don't control, nor should they, what gets put into the public domain about them.

What is truly depressing is the number of people who believe arts and culture communities "should" self-censor regarding the Obamas, in order to get the Democrat elected. These brown shirt tactics carry Anybody But Bushism far beyond the pale of reasonableness. One can only hope this "All opposition must be stamped into the ground" mentality is on it's way out.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 09:02 AM

Another perspective:

Face it, race is going to play a role in this election, no matter what so I'd rather have "The New Yorker" and Jessie Jackson pick open the scabs not than later... By the time the election really gets underway having these kinds of things happen *now* can only help Obama's chances of winning in November...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,T & O
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 09:12 AM

Next the Anybody But Bush Brownshirts can get Free Speech Radio and the Amy Goodman show shut down, on the grounds that no African Americans "should" be allowed to say Obama is an establishment empty suit.

Then the Colbert Report, for satirizing and lampooning the Obamas.

And the Daily Show, because Jon Stewart personally likes John McCain.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 10:19 AM

It's only a question, as far as the New Yorker is concerned (and by extension the rest of the mass media which is indulging in a feeding frenzy) to exploit the celebrity status of the Obamas for their own gain.

The New Yorker has been around for a long time, and it has used withering political humor before. It is like T & O said, Obama supporters don't want to see their guy as the butt of a political cartoon. Ask Hillary if it ever happened to her, and a lot more ruthless--it's part of the political minefield, folks, and you might as well get used to it. It's rather naive to expect public figures won't receive the gaze from many quarters, or in this case, the gaze is actually a reflection of what the right wing extremists are trying to say about Obama. It is ridiculous and most people EXCEPT thin-skinned Obama supporters probably wouldn't have made anything of it except to chuckle or wince at another New Yorker cover cartoon.

Truth be told, The New Yorker took a look in some Obama supporter's Anxiety Closet and portrayed your greatest fear while representing the silly rumors that right wing pundits have tried to push all along. In the heat of the primaries so many were gung-ho Obama and his great ideas, and a lot of you were ridiculing Hillary when she said he wasn't experienced enough, and that she had been thoroughly vetted. A cartoon similar to this about Hillary would have been like water on a duck's back to her. You have seen many cartoons lampooning Bill and Hillary, caricatures on all sorts of subject matter.

When I first looked at the cover, my first impression was that he was with Angela Davis. If any of you are up to wrapping your heads around sub-text, then you'll remember that she was on the FBI's most wanted list but was ultimately acquitted of all charges in the case. More at Wikipedia. Since many Obama detractors are also trying to make his wife Michelle scary as well, why not go all out for the FBI Most Wanted list connection? It's the "acquitted of all charges" bit that people seem to have forgotten. This is a very subtle cartoon, to be commended in it's complexity, not derided because of the shallowness of some viewers.

I think this about covers my defense of the cartoon. Those of you who don't like it aren't going to change your minds, but maybe you'll at least go away understanding a little more about satire.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 10:24 AM

Sage you are perfectly correct. I do not share Amos' sadness.

Bob Bennet doesn't like the Republican rumor machine exposed like this. He vows that Obama is going down. "He's going down hard for something."

Take away the swiftboat rumor machine and the fear factor and all the fear mongers have left is a record of dismal failure and hate production.

PS the darktoon was an illustration for the article titled "The Politics of Fear"

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Wesley S
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 10:28 AM

And this should be a great chance for Obama to use this to his advantage. He needs to run with it. Instead of objecting to the cartoon he needs to be saying "Yes I saw the cartoon. And I'm glad I have a chance to tell the truth about some of the falsehoods that have been spread about me. And then ask why these smears are considered acceptable in this day and age".

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 10:54 AM

Satire by exaggeration of a stupid POV.
It should be easy to understand.
Some of the reactions here show it is not.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,T & O
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 10:56 AM

Yes, but stupid is as stupid does. Should the New Yorker not maintain it\'s style & integrity, just because the satire is lost on the majority?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 11:10 AM

It could be that the editorial board of the New Yorker has a vested interest in seeing the war in Iraq continue, so they've planted the magazine cover for the purpose of getting McCain elected.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Wesley S
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 11:25 AM

Hey Rig - Bobert wants to talk to you. He wants some of what you're smoking. It sounds like some strong wacky weed ya got there fella.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Midchuck
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 11:36 AM

Yes, it is tasteless, IMO.

But every President, and every Presidential candidate, since the establishment of the Republic, has been the subject of political cartoons and caricatures, many of which are tasteless in the normal course of things. Did Mr. Obama think he was entitled to different treatment? If so, he's living in a fool's paradise. And we already have one candidate who's living in a fool's paradise. If they both are, why vote?

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,GoGreens!
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 11:39 AM

Why vote? Because now you can vote for Cynthia McKinney!

Headlined on 7/7/08 at opednews.com:
McKinney Poised to Challenge Obama For Left-Wing and Black Voters

by Vivian Berryhill

As Senator Barack Obama continues pivoting away from those primary-election positions and promises that once galvanized his Democratic base, he may have a new worry looming on the horizon in the person of Cynthia McKinney. A former Georgia Congresswoman, McKinney is said to be a shoo-in as the Green Party\'s 2008 presidential nominee when their convention is held in Chicago, July 10-12.

Securing the Green Party\'s 2008 standard-bearer position would bestow on McKinney the historic title of \'first\' African American woman to be on the ballot as a viable candidate of a major party for President of the United States. That title alone will not only lessen the aura surrounding Barack Obama\'s position as the \'first\' African American male presidential nominee, but she may also siphon off just-enough left-wing, African American, and women voters, to sink both their chances for victory in the Fall.

Obama, in his quest to appeal to Reagan Republicans and Independents, is gravitating toward a more \'centrist\' position of late, which is causing serious ire among many of his followers, and those who supported and believed in his pre-General election message. And McKinney, being the shrewed politician she has always been, is set to capitalize on the Obama backlash. Recently issuing the following statement, McKinney\'s camp unashamedly challenges progressives/liberals who are disappointed in Obama:


\"There can be no effective reasoning with those African Americans who want only that a member of \'The Race\' occupy the Oval Office - no matter the character and politics of that Black individual. But self-described progressives of all races cannot excuse their own docility in the face of Obama\'s rightward lunge - especially when there exists one last opportunity to threaten the Democratic nominee-to-be with a backlash against his betrayals of progressive principles - one last chance to affect Obama\'s behavior before Election Day, November 4, and beyond. Cynthia McKinney.

It\'s time for people claiming to be progressives who supported Obama, to accept that they were bamboozled by a champion slickster. Actually, that\'s putting the best face on the situation, since most of Obama\'s progressive credentials were simply wished into existence by folks who were tired of even pretending to fight. Obama now dares to drop all pretense of progressivism, trusting that there will be no ramifications on the Left, especially among the otherwise most dependable progressive constituency, African Americans\".

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Wesley S
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 11:53 AM

Go Greens - I'm glad that voters have a choice. That's a good thing. But I can't imagine that the Green Party could get more than 3% of the popular vote. Max. And that's just not enough to win. Or even make a dent in Obamas lead.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 11:56 AM

"Hey Rig - Bobert wants to talk to you. He wants some of what you're smoking. It sounds like some strong wacky weed ya got there fella."


          No, seriously, they could be friends of Joe Lieberman!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,GoGreens!
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 12:02 PM

Dear WesleyS,

Nobody wins in a rotten, spooiled system!

This isn\'t about who will win and who will lose--that is the old, narrow way of thinking. The Greens & McKinney are about building a mainstream reform movement to take back our country from the corporate crooks that stole it away from us!

Fight the good fight! Join your local ballot access fight, and Go Green!

End the cynical, downward spiral & look up at the sun for authentic change!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: quokka
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 12:13 PM

it may not be the cover itself but the press attention that will be the factor deciding how Obama will be seen by the great unwashed - i think it missed its mark - mud sticks no matter how its intended, people that may not have intended to vote could be swayed by this vitriol. Does the new Yorker do similar satirical covers about the Republicans? How are they received?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Donuel\'s Evil Twin
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 12:17 PM

For a satirical suggestion for the New Yorker to do a McCain cover, have a look-see here:

http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=974

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,T & O
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 12:23 PM

I also remember the Terri Schiavo issue. The Terri Schiavo drama came to a head right around Easter. That week, The New Yorker cover featured a pregnant bunny in a hospital bed with her bunny husband at her side. Opposite her was a bunny doctor pointing to a computer screen displaying her ultrasound. Instead of a baby bunny, however, the screen revealed an egg -- an easter egg.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 12:40 PM

http://www.cartoonbank.com/ is where The New Yorker parks all of it's cartoons and covers. Quokka, if you haven't been reading the magazine for years then you should do your research. You're not likely to believe someone who has read it for years and likes the covers. Decide for yourself.

"GUEST,GoGreens!" is another "johnny one note" guest with absolutely no interest in Mudcat or music, only in promoting his/her political platform.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,GoGreens!
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:07 PM

I take that unprovoked name calling of me as \"johnny one note\" in the true spirit in which you offer it, Stilly River Sage -- a personal attack upon me and my opinions.

Not very nice!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:17 PM

If I am duplicating something, I apologize
James Rainey in 'On the Media' column today discusses Barry Blitt's New Yorker covers. If you have access to a print version of the LA Times see accompanying cover reproductions which accompany the column.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Los Angeles Times, we are dealing with a paper only slight less liberal than the NY Times (whatever your definition is of what's liberal).

Link?
Obama Cover column LA Times

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:26 PM

Sorry, the blue clicky didn't work. Try again

Obama Cover column LA Times

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:35 PM

Johnny one note has nothing on Condi Rice's One Note Bush Piano Concerto in D minus
http:/www.thinskinned.com

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:37 PM

"The Obama campaign felt it had to reject the New Yorker cartoon as "tasteless and offensive." The McCain camp quickly reached the same verdict.

Obama was the one man capable of putting the "furor" in its proper context. But he didn't.

Instead of his terse no comment, he should have played one of his strongest cards -- his cool -- responding something like: "Hey, I thought Michelle looked pretty good in camouflage.""


from the LA Times piece.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:51 PM

Sounds like someone's doppelganger is a guest. Who is it who always complains about "attacks" when none are there? Hmmmm.

Grow up. You have an agenda that has nothing to do with music or musicians or folk music folks. You found this forum that doesn't force you to register, where you can unload your party-line at will. Don't act like we don't all know what you're doing or why you're here.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:59 PM

Have Obama's managers issued a fatwa against the New Yorker cartoonist yet?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 02:07 PM

"Chicago Tribune columnist/blogger Eric Zorn gave notice that he is waiting for the magazine to launch an equal-ink takedown depicting John McCain as "about 150 years old and spouting demented non-sequiturs in the middle of a violent temper tantrum while, in the corner, his wife is passed out next to a bottle of pills."

Actually, someone who has maintained a little more perspective already obliged. David Horsey, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, riffed on the Blitt illustration with a McCain portrait of his own.

Horsey's image shows a drooling, wheelchair-bound McCain, singing "Bomb bomb bomb -- bomb bomb Iran," as wife Cindy pours dozens of pills from a vial and implores her husband, "Take some of my meds to get through the inaugural parade!"

Playing off the New Yorker cartoon, in which an Osama bin Laden portrait adorns the Oval Office, an American flag aflame in the fireplace, Horsey poses the McCains in front of a Dick Cheney portrait, their fire burning a copy of the Constitution.

Lest anyone miss the point, the cartoonist dedicates the piece to all those "irony-challenged literalists who were upset by the New Yorker's Obama-as-a-Muslim magazine cover."

That's coming from a self-described progressive who has put a world of hurt on President Bush but who said in an interview that he sees a disturbing "lack of irony or sense of humor" among some Obama supporters.

Jon Stewart regularly rides roughshod over candidates of both parties but hears nary a whimper. That's as it should be. The "Daily Show" host is, after all, lampooning a system overflowing with absurdity and irony.

Audiences understand those broadsides as satire but fret like kindergarten teachers when it comes to one image on a printed page. "It's like they need a flashing light saying, 'It's a joke,' or they lose the capacity to judge," Horsey said.

And speaking of judgment, how is it that Obamites, who are justifiably furious over threats to civil liberties under the current administration, suddenly want to play censor when the 1st Amendment puts their man even remotely on the hot seat?

If Barry Blitt is anything, it's brilliantly provocative. The New Yorker artist sent up the furor over gays in the military by playing off a famous end-of-World-War-II photo: Instead of a sailor and a pretty girl in amorous embrace, he drew two male sailors doubled over in a lip-lock.

A few years back, Blitt spoofed the idea of President Bush as a maid -- complete with apron and feather duster -- to the shadow president, a scowling, cigar-smoking Cheney.

In March, no one seemed to mind when Blitt had Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama in the same bed (maybe there is progress?), both in their pajamas and lunging to be the one to answer that proverbial 3 a.m. phone call on some global crisis.

Obama's supporters are desperately afraid, and not without cause, that his image and record will be distorted."

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 02:10 PM

Bush is elitist. He comes from monied Kennebunkport and is a phony Texan. John McCain is elistist (ties in with rich corporations). The GOP has always been elitist and never on the side of the working person recently, except for maybe Eisenhower. The GOP is composed of elitist union busters.

Obama is not elitist but earned his stripes in the hard South side of Chicago. The idea that he is elitist is Republican bullshit.

The New Yorker cover may be a "weapons of mass deception" to avert the attention
to the "endless war syndrome" being advocated by the Pentagon and the current
lack of government in the US.

Whether it's impact will be negative remains to be seen.

It may have helped the New Yorker subscription inadvertently.

I think that this is not the time for satire. The public is too uninformed to appreciate it.
The negative campaigning and ad hominem attacks attacks on public officials or candidates make it a poor timing for this New Yorker cover.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 02:19 PM

"It may have helped the New Yorker subscription inadvertently."



                      It seems to me like that's their main objective!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 02:20 PM

Bruce wasn't that "LA Times Piece" a blog item by Andrew Malcolm a former Republican speechwriter?

SRS, and Donuel, I grow weary of your lecturing here on the subject of satire.

Donuel, your own cartoons which you talk about exaggerate things that you believe to be true to point them out. In my experience pretty much every political cartoon does that. The message of a cartoon you described what "the right tries to brand Obama 'elitist'". By that same token the message of the New Yorker cover is "Obama and his wife are dangerous, exotic and not as patriotic as the rest of us". Please keep in mind that the things depicted in the pictures are not really exaggerations of what Hannity and others are saying. What Hannity and others are saying are cartoon like exaggerations to create a mental picture like the one on the cover. The New Yorker cover does nothing but make their job easier. Why are we seeing this cover from the New Yorker? Because it creates "buzz." It will sell some magazines and increase their brand awareness.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,GoGreens!
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 02:23 PM

Sounds like someone needs a little Green sunshine beamed their way!

Ms McKinney's running mate is a hip hop musician, Stilly River Sage. Maybe you would like to learn a little something about her music and activism, both appropriate subjecgts for this forum, I beeelieve!

Now let me introduce to you, the one and only...Rosa Clemente!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_clemente

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 02:28 PM

Oh, good, someone knows how to play LPs backwards in the Green camp. Make them an honorary Mudcatter. Not.

One must sometimes spell it out slowly and clearly, JTS, when people don't get it. That's the way it goes.

Do you really want to go toe-to-toe with an MA in Environmental Ethics, GG?

I thought not.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 02:49 PM

Stilly,

Your arrogance is so charming. What a wonderful insulation against inconvenient truth it must be.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 02:52 PM

You should know.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: In My Humble Opinion
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 02:56 PM

Ahh..one of those types "Well I have a degree in (fill in the blank) so I know ALL about it, whatever IT is. When i see or hear this type of person It makes me want to put on my hiking boots, and not for the purposes of hiking. Degrees make wonderful insulation for the house, or emergency toilet paper (recycleable of course!)

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 03:04 PM

A degree says I've been paying attention and am not easily impressed when someone claims to be "green." Talk about a hackneyed term! Everything in the grocery store is "green" these days, despite no changes in formula or recipe. Every business that advertises has their green spin on things. It's a buzzword. What does green mean any more in politics? Anyone can call themselves anything, can't they, Mr. Humble.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 03:04 PM

IMHO,

I have to disagree with you.

In the real world, an MS degree is treated as equal to one year of experience.

MA degrees have no value. An MBA will get you into a management level position if you have experience, but only if you have 8-12 years of real world management to go along with it.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 03:05 PM

The MA obviously did not include classes in wit. Your training in that field obviously came on the primary school playground.

Please, for the sake of your own credibility, stop trying to psychoanalyze Obama supporters. There are 18,000,000 at least, you can't possibly know the motivations of all. Surely an MA in environmental ethics knows better than to stereotype and to claim knowledge that she cannot possibly have.

I've had my say. In the interest of not making work for the moderators, I offer you the last word. Dazzleme. Dazzle us all.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Amos
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 03:59 PM

Cheeses, keeds, chill out. The satire missed, but it probably didn't kill anyone or really cost anyone much, so let it go. We do have more important things to worry about.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:01 PM

Jesus Jones, now we have people who basically agree with each other sniping and being nasty.

I should just stay upstairs and out of the BS basement.

PS. My copy of this week's New Yorker has still not come in the mail. Perhaps one of our mailsorters or letter carriers found it so tasteless and offensive that they decided to perform some pre-emptive censorship.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:01 PM

Just listened to an interesting discussion of the cover on Here and Now on NPR. I agree with their guest who said it was a failure at trying to be a satire. The subject of the illustration, for it to be successful satire, would have illustrated those who are plotting such lies about Obama, not the Obamas themselves. As it is, the image just illustrates the lies, which is why I said it may have worked next to the article itself. There is a difference between just illustration and satirical illustration. Listen here click

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:34 PM

>>The subject of the illustration, for it to be successful satire, would have illustrated those who are plotting such lies about Obama, not the Obamas themselves. As it is, the image just illustrates the lies

Thanks Alice, that is the point I was trying to make. You phrased it much better than i did.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:46 PM

Who's Jesus Jones?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,In My Humble Opinion
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:49 PM

This is Jesus Jones

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:51 PM

It's not a matter of being an Obama supporter or of being surprised or offended by political satire or mockery of political candidates, as such. It goes in the category of
"With friends like this, who needs enemies?"

Had this cartoon been published on the cover of a right wing publication, I'd have shrugged it off as just another mag attacking someone on the other side. In fact, I think this same cartoon on the cover of The National Review might have been seen as so over-the-top inflammatory that it could have really worked to Obama's advantage.   The kinds of will insinuations, caricatures, and allegations that are spreading virally via right-wing blogs, emails, YouTubes, and trash radio talk shows would have had an important spotlight shone right on them -- making the "mainstream" media view it as a legitimate news topic.

But this cartoon was on the cover of what purports to be and is widely viewed as a "liberal" magazine. (One that is often picked up and browsed through by many far-from-liberal folks, I'd add, who just want to look at the cartoons and read the little newspaper bloopers inserts and wouldn't dream of actually READING the articles.)   

The cartoon itself clearly lampoons and caricatures the Obamas, NOT his opponents and their smear and gossip tactics, although the New Yorker editor maintains the target of the satire was intended to be the latter.
But the "intended target" of the satire is not depicted in the cartoon.   That's why, outside the context of the article it was supposed to illustrate, the cartoon does not come across as lampooning (and connecting negative images to) Barack and Michele Obama.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 05:05 PM

Shooting the messenger is always a good way to distract others from the message. Deriding education strikes me as an attempt to bluff past your lack of it. BB and JTS will always say 'no' if I say 'yes,' so there is nothing new here, is there?

Now where were we?

For every news report you find that says it doesn't work, there will be one out there that says it does and defends it credibly. Fresh Air had an interview yesterday, and there was another one, if I can track it down, with a very lucid interview with the editor of The New Yorker that explained the process in choosing cover art.

The only way Obama can be sure of a win in November is if he has Hillary as his running mate. He's falling apart, just like the folks on this thread are falling all over themselves. He's too new at all of this, rushing into this candidacy too fast, he isn't case-hardened. I'll vote for him because he's the candidate of my party, but he's not the best choice, and this kind of publication event is a good way to illustrate it.

If you don't like the cartoon, too bad, pull your socks up and stop whining. There are bound to be more.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 05:16 PM

SRS,

If you say "no" I'll ignore it as an un-informed opinion. If you continue to pretend to be smarter than other people for holding different opinions from yours, I shall continue to point out that you are behaving like a buffoon.

Hillary will not be the running mate. Get used to that idea. She burned those bridges during the primaries. If she were on the ticket, the RNC could simply pick any of the many examples of Hillary saying that McCain was better qualified than Obama. Anyone with an attention span longer than that of a goldfish can see this. Stop talking and listen. You may learn something.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 05:35 PM

Politics. The Great Divider. If anything on this Earth can turn formerly friendly relations between people into mutual anger, contempt, hatred, and disgust, politics will do it.

The longer the campaign, the worse it gets. I think that American presidential election campaigns are probably the longest, most tortuously drawn-out campaigns in the entire world. They basically completely screw up the state of mind of the entire country for a whole year! That's not what I call an efficient way of running a nation.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 05:40 PM

This campaign has been going on for about 20 months already. Four months to go.

FYI, actual political satire.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 06:02 PM

In Canada, four to eight weeks is the length of time between calling an election and holding it. The 2006 campaign was a long one, lasting eight weeks, because of the year-end holidays.

In the States, they do drag on. And on. And on.......
The period was set before highways and fast communications tied the country together.
However, they do allow time for people to think, but in the current campaign it is becoming obvious that Obama has little to offer, and McCain isn't the brightest light on the tree; Congress will continue to be divided on approaches as it has for the past eight or so years and will continue to muddle along without much accomplished.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 06:11 PM

I like a President who doesn't change much an who takes care of the day to day. Clinton was that. Bush was the opposite. Obama would be like Clinton. McCain is promising to perpetuate Bush's radical changes. For me that make Obama an easy choice.

In a way Canada is always in campaign mode, question period and the transparency of Parlementary system ensures this especially with a minority government. The problem today is that Harper is kicking Dion's ass, so it is not much of a contest.

Basically in the Canadian system the government campaigns and campaigns until they think they can win and election and then they call it.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,In My Humble Opinion
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 06:18 PM

I didn't notice that I claimed to be 'green' unless you call that aside (recycleable of course!) 'green, I don't. Oh and let me spell this out carefully, Environmental ethics, bit of an oxymoron these days, what?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Chongo Chimp
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 07:03 PM

I have met more tasteless and offensive New Yorkers in my life than I could shake a stick at. It goes with the territory. Chicago can be kinda gritty and mean too...but not as bad as New York, lemme tell ya. The first one I met I was only about 2 seconds off the boat...

- Chongo

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Amos
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 07:13 PM

One more to my liking. Seriously though, there are some very funny Obama cartoons in the link Jack provided.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Amos
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 07:30 PM

It seems Mister Obama is more level-headed than many of us here! :D

"Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday called a New Yorker cover that unflatteringly depicts him and his wife an unsuccessful attempt at satire that will probably fuel misconceptions he has long battled over the course of his presidential campaign.

The New Yorker cover published Sunday shows Barack and Michelle Obama with a flag burning in the fireplace.

But in an interview with CNN's Larry King, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee downplayed the impact of the illustration, which depicts him in Muslim attire in the Oval Office, with his wife, Michelle, carrying a machine gun.

"It's a cartoon ... and that's why we've got the First Amendment," Obama said. "And I think the American people are probably spending a little more time worrying about what's happening with the banking system and the housing market and what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, than a cartoon. So I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it.

"I've seen and heard worse," he said. "I do think that, you know, in attempting to satirize something, they probably fueled some misconceptions about me instead. But, you know, that was their editorial judgment."
"

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: frogprince
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 08:54 PM

Whatever the objective merits of the thing, it cost me some very sad moments this morning. My wife and I stopped for coffee where we often do, and got to talking with some older gents we often find there. They've all been coming accross as generally very decent people. This morning one of them piped up about seeing the cover, and observed that "they certainly got it right" in their portrayal of both the Obamas. I'm considering buying a copy, and pointing him to the article for context. As my wife said afterward, I'm not going to change him. But it was so damned disheartening.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Amos
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 10:34 PM

Fight for the truth, as best you can, good Prince.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 11:08 PM

I don't usually put much stock in columnists. But one guy has a pretty good track record--and on this I think he nailed it---Jonathan Alter--Web exclusive 14 July 2008 (Newsweek).

The cover is definitely harmful to the Obama campaign.   Frogprince--in his up-to- the minute example-- confirms exactly what Alter says.

Alter's example is quite telling:

"Leslie Stahl covered the Reagan White House for CBS News. One day in 1984 she broadcast a five-minute (extremely long for TV news) blistering report on how President Reagan was cutting funding for public health and for children with disabilities. After it aired, the late Richard Darman, a top Reagan aide, called and said: "Congratulations! We loved it."

"Stahl was dumbfounded. The piece had been a hatchet job".

"Nobody heard what you said," Darman told her. The pictures Stahl had used to "cover" her story were of Reagan cutting ribbons at hospitals and speaking at the Special Olympics. The White House knew that these warm images spoke a lot louder than anything Stahl was reporting."

"In the same way, the New Yorker cover, now being displayed endlessly on cable TV, speaks louder than any effort by Obama supporters to stop the smears....negative images burn their way into the consciousness of voters in ways that cannot be erased by facts."

If anybody doubts this, what is the most well-known context in which voters know Dukakis, if they remember him at all? My guess would be him in the tank.

And Frogprince's example confirms this principle yet again.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 11:13 PM

For the rest of what Obama's response:
"doesn't bother him but that it was an insult to Muslim Americans."
Click Here.. article, Obama says New Yorker insulted Muslim Americans

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 01:45 AM

That's right, Ron. One memorable picture is worth 10,000 or 100,000 words in the propaganda game...because a visual image goes straight into the subconscious mind for one thing, and it stays there...and it leaves a lasting overall impression on the emotions. People forget the words. They don't forget the dramatic images.

It only takes a 1 second glance at that picture to lock the image of Barack and Michelle Obama as 2 antisocial terrorists and Black Power "Muslim" freaks in the minds of millions and millions of ordinary people...and there the image remains.

For a majority of ordinary people out there no amount of intelligent verbal explanations of the satirical purpose behind the picture can ever go as deep as that 1 second visual image does. They will remember the image. They will forget the satirical explanations of the picture or not even bother listening to them in the first place. They don't have time or patience for the explanations.

I think the guys at the New Yorker failed to realize the power of visual images over sophisticated thought and analysis. That this would happen is fairly predictable, because the guys at the New Yorker are self-consciously intellectual by habit. They are used to analyzing all the words! Most Americans are not intellectuals by habit, and they are quite suspicious of the people who are. They see those people as "elitists". There is an anti-intellectual streak in popular American culture that goes right back to the rugged cowboy and frontier stereotypes portrayed in thousands of American books and movies...books and movies where the "bad guy" is so often a sophisticated, fancy-talking intellectual of some kind. A high-falutin', pretentious type who dresses really well, maybe has a cane or a mustache, and uses big words. He's just gotta be the "bad guy", right? ;-) Good guys don't use those fancy words, and they dress like jus' plain folks...

It's therefore inimical to your chances of ever being elected to be seen as an intellectual if you are running for office in the USA, and it's one of the things Obama gets attacked for regularly...if he acts or talks like an intellectual, he gets accused of being an elitist...not sometimes. Every time.

This is very unfortunate. A man should not have to deliberately dumb down his act to become electable...but that's exactly what works in American politics. Reagan was an absolute master of the technique, and Bush used it pretty effectively too for a fair while. It still works for those who have not abandoned Bush. It will work for McCain also, because he's a "war hero" who talks tough...just like a John Wayne cowboy character would.

The main thing the Democrats have on their side to counter that is simply that people are very, very fed up with the Republicans after the last 8 years of folly under the Bush administration. Sometime the worm has to turn.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 02:09 AM

Amos, Obama's reply to the question of the New Yorker cover, on Larry King, illustrates some of the characteristics that would make him a good President.

I'll take his comments a bit further, though, and point out that another reason this intended "satire" was unsuccessful -- and probably hurt the Obamas a lot more than the alleged "real targets" of the satire -- is that a good political cartoon caricaturing a politician is supposed to be an exaggeration of real attributes or features of the caricatured one.   Neither of the Obamas has ever been a Muslim, anti-patriotic, a flag burner, a Black Power militant, or any of the sorts of things portrayed in that cartoon. It wasn't a caricature, it was false accusation - veiled in attempted humor as it may have been.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 02:17 AM

"In the same way, the New Yorker cover, now being displayed endlessly on cable TV, speaks louder than any effort by Obama supporters to stop the smears....negative images burn their way into the consciousness of voters in ways that cannot be erased by facts."

What's more powerful perhaps, images burn their way in the UNconsious or SUB conscious minds of those who view them.

Jonathan Alter (echoed by Thom Hartmann and others in the progressive camp) has hit the nail on the head.

Barack Obama, I believe, is a savvy enough politician to avoid making some of the same image-related mistakes made by Dukakis (in the tank), John Kerry (wind surfing; duck hunting in camouflage clothing, Al Gore (trying to laugh off the rumor that he had claimed to have "invented the internet"), etc.   But a fat lot of good it does him when his self-proclaimed supporters give the media and the opponent's campaign their own destructive images?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 02:19 AM

BTW, well said, Little Hawk!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 09:53 AM

Ah... Don't ya love the Google!

I found a New Yorker cover viewer with a number of satirical cartoons. Viewing them now from through the lens of the comments of the New Yorker editor and the "sage" comments from the Stilly River, I now see that these cartoons were not actually poking fun of Bush and his cabinet. Obviously they were attacking those who were making outrageous comments about them.

New Yorker cover browser.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 10:51 AM

They miscalculated, Jack. 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.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 11:29 AM

Regarding Conde Nast publisher, Mudcatters may be interested to know that myself and other members of the Graphic Artists Guild and the Illustrators Partnership of America, hundreds of professional artists, years ago protested the Rights-grabbing contract Conde Nast installed for their publications. Most professional illustrators refused to sign the new Conde Nast contract and years later, the issue is still not resolved.
If you support workers' rights and unions, boycott Conde Nast publications.
Here is a 2002 letter from IPA to those of us who joined the protest.
CondÈ Nast Contract Termination Effort Continues

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 11:44 AM

Little Hawk,

I was being satirical.

When I looked at the present New Yorker title in the context of the old ones I saw that the current ones are indeed attacking the Obamas and not those who attack them. I am conviced of this because it is obvious that the ones attacking Bush are attacking Bush.

In my mind they don't get to use the same style they used to attack the Obama's that in the past they have used one everybody else and say that this particular attack in the context of all the other attacks was meant ironically.

The argument that the editor used was that this picture was so over the top that people could not possibly believe that it was an attack on the Obamas. Yet one of the covers in the links I posted shows Rumsfeld's face on a bulldog tied up on the White house lawn. Obviously the Rumsfeld cartoon is much more over the top. So which are we to believe, That the Rumsfeld cartoon was ironic or that the Obama cartoon was not?

I believe that the Obama cartoon was not. It was a cheap, dirty, below the belt shot from the New Yorker.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Wesley S
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 11:46 AM

"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.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,In My Humble Opinion
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 11:49 AM

I ate a New Yorker once, you're right, completely tasteless......

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 11:54 AM

Yes Wesley,

I am illustrating that point. Or at the very least, amusing myself by trying to illustrate this.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 11:58 AM

Conde Nast lost most of their good illustrators over their contract dispute. Even illustrators outside the US signed the protest and will not work for Conde Nast.
"jointly signed a letter to Conde Nast Publications that accompanied over 400 protest letters concerning their contractual policies."
From
Illustrators Ireland

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 12:01 PM

From the Kansas City Star "The problem is the cover does not come off as satire..." yup, just what I said.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: In My Humble Opinion
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 12:03 PM

that's one newspaper's opinion, and you know what the say about opinions.....

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 12:09 PM

and people's opinions influence their votes

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 12:15 PM

>>."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.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 12:18 PM

I have no problem with the New Yorker attacking Obama to influence voters.

I do have a problem with them lying about it and calling it "satire."

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 12:23 PM

Jack - "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."

That's what I'm saying! ;-)

If, on the other hand, they are lying...and it was a deliberate attack on Obama... Well, that would be quite something, wouldn't it?

I can't see them deliberately trying to go after Obama instead of McCain, but I suppose it's possible.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Emma B
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 12:26 PM

satire -

'a (literary) work in which vices, abuses, absurdities, etc. are held up to ridicule and contempt.'

The absurdity of portraying the Obamas in the way in which some political opponents have attempted to is certainly held up to ridicule and appropiate contempt IMO

more 'satire'

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 12:33 PM

They went after Obama for the same reason that people told jokes about Al Gore inventing the Internet. To entertain and to sell their product.

Like I said they have a constitutional right to do it. but we don't need to be suckers and pretend they are on out side.

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".

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 12:37 PM

Emma B

The cover as drawn is holding the Obamas to ridicule and contempt. Look at other New Yorker covers. See who is ridiculed and how.

Certainly it is satire, clearly the Obamas are the target.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 01:01 PM

Bullshit.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Rep (D) Pixie Hotmuffin
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 01:10 PM

Well that was an informed reply....

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Peace
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 01:13 PM

It was indeed eloquent. The only apt reply left at that point.

(Hi, SRS)

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 01:22 PM

"Certainly it is satire, clearly the Obamas are the target."


                      Yeah, I agree with that!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 01:49 PM

They don't like it when I articulate complex ideas ("lecture"), so I put it in terms they would understand.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Rep (D) Pixie Hotmuffin
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 02:04 PM

Ahhh the mysterious "they"

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 02:26 PM

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."

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: heric
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 02:30 PM

>>"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." <<

Story of my life right there.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 02:42 PM

More sagacity from the Silly River.

LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 02:50 PM

You can't have it both ways, Jack, either I dumb it down for you, or I don't.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 02:50 PM

The New Yorker has not dared to pull this kind of shit on Chongo. I think that says a lot.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 03:02 PM

If they pulled it on Chongo I'd have to say "Apeshit," not Bullshit. :)

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 03:06 PM

LOL! Well, thanks for that laugh, eh, Stilly? On that note I think I shall head out for a coffee break here and go out to the mall. I definitely need a change of scene for a bit.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 03:18 PM

Dumb it down?
Go back and read your early posts to this thread. Obviously nothing needs to be any dumber than it is already. It was the condescending (lecturing) tone and the insults that I grew weary of.

You act like you believe that someone holding an opinion different from yours is automatically not as intelligent. You seem to feel the need to attack the intelligence and motivations of others (especially Obama supporters) rather than staying on point. Its grating, made doubly so by your bragging about academic credentials. Your education is not evident in your writing. Certainly your ethics are not.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 03:25 PM

Heh. I just looked at the first one of those early posts. Good thing I'm a Kucinich supporter and not an Obama supporter, or I might think the insult was aimed at me. LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 04:33 PM

jib jab has Obama riding a unicorn over the rainbow of change.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 05:17 PM

Millions of people are just looking for ANY excuse to not vote for this character with the funny name and dark skin, no matter how well-spoken he is or how reasonable he seems....and the New Yorker has just given them one more reason. They may not say so, and indeed they may not even realize it, but they WANT someone who looks like their father and 'waves the flag better'.
I can only hope that the obvious differences in basic competence and viewpoint that Obama brings to this race will overcome poorly presented images.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 05:51 PM

'They' meaning the ignorant & biased...not the New Yorker.

Subject: New Yorker "satirical" cartoon of Obama
From: Genie
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 06:33 PM

If a Right-leaning mag -- or any mag, for that matter - ran a cartoon of a ranting and raging John McCain caricature having marionette-like strings attached, with an obvious Viet Cong (or more contemporary Asian Communist authority figure) pulling them, and with Cindy standing meekly in his shadow while a young black woman holding a very dark child tugs at his pant leg and has a "Paternity Suit" envelope in her other hand, I doubt that anyone would think it was a satire of Carl Rove or any of the others who have so portrayed McCain in an attempt to discredit him.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 06:41 PM

Now, if the New Yorker cover cartoon had been placed entirely inside a speech bubble coming from the cartoon mouth of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, while Michelle and Barack Obama, dressed neatly in conventional Western business attire, watched that image on their TV set, THAT would have been a send-up of the ridiculous right-wing attacks on the Obamas.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 06:53 PM

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!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 07:14 PM

Maybe there are elements within the New Yorker who would like to sandbag Obama's campaign.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 07:27 PM

Maybe....but I think it's more likely that they are SO high on their own pedestal of elite taste that they just don't comprehend how 'the great unwashed masses' see things.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 08:55 PM

Yeah...I'm not sure, Bill. It's either one or the other. I sort of figured it the same way you do, though, most likely...

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 09:33 PM

Really, who cares????

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Enid Here
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 09:48 PM

Finally, a voice of reason, er...sanity!

The people who care appear to be people who want to be seen as people who care DEEPLY about the Obamas.

If you don't care, well. That's suspicious enough, isn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 10:08 PM

Damn right. ;-) Prepare to be hunted down and destroyed like a wild animal now that you have openly revealed that you don't care!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 10:23 PM

More people, by a huge factor, will only see the cover--on the Net or elsewhere--than will read the article. The cover tends to support various smears. As has been painstakingly explained by more than one poster--to anybody not willfully obtuse-- this is the problem.

Images--especially negative ones--are powerful--especially to people who have deep cynicism for what they might read or hear on the so-called mainstream media (that meaningless term).

Consider, for instance, what Dukakis is most known for.



And as for the tired theory that Hillary would have been stronger--that's hogwash to the n'th power. Burdened by the 60's and 90's, facing more scandal--not even mentioning what investigation of Bill's financial dealings might have--and still may--turn up, and without the enthusiasm of Obama's supporters, she would have had no chance against McCain.

It's Bill who will keep her from the VP position--in so many ways, he's the perfect loose cannon.

The nomination was hers to lose. And she lost it--primarily by alienating the anti-war wing of the Democratic party--the wing which has the intelligence and dedication a candidate needs. As well as money.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: heric
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 10:26 PM

Hey *I* don't care I just couldn't be bothered to say so. To say that a New Yorker magazine cover could have been done better is about is newsworthy as saying a dog crapped on someone's lawn today. Meanwhile I have been trying to apprise people that Bernie Mac told jokes with references to black people in them when Mr. Obama WAS RIGHT NEAR BY and I can't even generate any outrage. We should just vote already.

Subject: New Yorker "satirical" cartoon cover of the Obamas
From: Genie
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 03:04 AM

I think a huge point is that, with the "mainstream media" owned by huge corporations (including defense contractors) that know which side their bread is better buttered on, and (probably not coincidentally) John McCain being almost as "teflon" as Ronald Reagan was -- e.g., not being called on his "flip-flops," still being hailed as a "maverick" and "independent minded statesman" despite voting in lock step pretty much with the Bush administration over the past 7 years -- Obama really does not need this kind image association and pictorial smear (coming from a highly respected and "liberal" publication).   And he may not be able to overcome its damage any more than Al Gore could the deceit-based jokes about "inventing the internet," Michael Dukakis could the way the "tank" photo was used, John Kerry could the "swiftboat" attacks, or Howard Dean could the doctored audio of his "scream."

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 06:19 AM

"...she lost it--primarily by alienating the anti-war wing of the Democratic party--the wing which has the intelligence and dedication a candidate needs. As well as money."


                  Well, at least they had the money, and that's all that matters.

Subject: New Yorker cartoon of the Obamas - sabotage?
From: Genie
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 10:11 AM

There are those who speculate that the New Yorker PTB do, indeed, want to sabotage Obama's campaign. So far he is still the "presumptive nominee" of the Democratic Party, and if his campaign were to pretty much crash and burn -- i.e., if it became clear that he had little chance of overcoming the prejudices against him and the smears of the Rove machine -- before the Denver convention, there would be a roll call on the floor of the convention and either Barack would withdraw (under pressure from the party bigwigs) or Hillary would beat him outright. She, of course, has pretty much kept her powder dry for such an eventuality, and the superdelegates definitely can swing the decision either way, since they are not "committed" in the same way that regular delegates are.

I can't say I'm buying into this theory wholesale, but I don't believe it's beyond the realm of possibility either.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 10:27 AM

Waay back when I was just beginning college, I took English Comp 1 in summer night classes. The professor was a curmudgeon nearing the end of his teaching career; each session he would do five minutes or so exposing the supposed foibles of this ethnic group, that religious group or a political party or movement. The young woman beside me chuckled and laughed as loud as anyone in class...until he did his schtick on her particular group. She left at the break, never to return to class. I guess she could only laugh at others' groups.

I haven't thought about Mr. Fisher and that English class for 50 years until these last few days of reading posts at this thread. Most of you are that girl.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 10:44 AM

John, how off base can you get.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 10:51 AM

Alice, not very damn far, I believe. Please note I did not say all, I said most. I will retract only the comparison to leaving the class. But while you (generic you) do stick around for comment, I believe there are a lot of thin skins here.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 11:15 AM

That's a very clever smear tactic, though. Cast as broad a net as possible, without regard for whether or not there is any truth to it, see who responds, and then say, "gotcha!".

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 11:16 AM

Good for you, Carol. You saw right through me.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 11:21 AM

Thank goodness for that John! I thought you were having a senior moment! I figured the next step would be a discussion of what the Putin is doing to Czechoslovakia!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 11:26 AM

Jack and Carol, you are quite a tag team...or are you a team?...or one and the same? Anyway, I stand by my remarks, and you can Putin that in your Czechoslovakia and smoke it.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 11:36 AM

Mighty thin skinned there John. What did you do when the professor got to you?

Did you suck up and pretend to be a good sport about it in the hope that you would get an "A".

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 11:37 AM

Yes, JtS and I are just computer simulations run on the big server at Mudcat headquarters.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 11:52 AM

John got that right.

Bill D wrote: Millions of people are just looking for ANY excuse to not vote for this character with the funny name and dark skin, no matter how well-spoken he is or how reasonable he seems....and the New Yorker has just given them one more reason. They may not say so, and indeed they may not even realize it, but they WANT someone who looks like their father and 'waves the flag better'.
I can only hope that the obvious differences in basic competence and viewpoint that Obama brings to this race will overcome poorly presented images.

I respect your opinion, Bill D., so it's depressing that you hold this view. As you write it, it sounds like the Democrat party is holding it's breath, hoping that these stupid bigots will not know any better and will vote for Obama, or just not vote at all, versus go out and vote for McCain simply because that is a perceived vote AGAINST Obama. Was that where you were taking this?

Who are these bigots and where do they live? Are they former Hillary voters, are they former Edwards or Richardson supporters, that they're somehow now dangerous to Obama? I don't think so. Are they conservative voters who wouldn't have voted for Obama anyway? Maybe wouldn't have voted at all? That this will drive them to the polls?

This discussion looks like an episode of mass hysteria. It is ludicrous, exactly like the Danish cartoons, and these Obama supporters are exactly like the muslim leaders who told large groups of followers (who were clueless about the cartoons) that they had been insulted. It is a tempest in a teapot generated for political gain.

The New Yorker did what it always does, and it's readers got it. Big deal. But Obama himself made a fuss and his set off his most ardent supporters who themselves hold extremely biased (one could call them bigotted) views of the rest of the nation--"everyone but me is a bigot" or "everyone who doesn't support Obama is a bigot." Yes, we know there are bigots in the world, but don't dismiss everyone in Mississippi or Oklahoma or Kentucky or wherever you think those Others live as incapable of figuring out the meaning of a cartoon, or of understanding this discussion about the cartoon and realizing that Obama isn't the things portrayed. Those who want to hate Obama don't need another excuse, this cartoon isn't going to drive them any faster into McCain's camp.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 12:00 PM

Seriously John,

Alice is right you could not be further off base. That's why I have trouble taking what you said seriously. I really thought you were joking until you got catty.

As for this discussion. Speaking for myself, I'm interested in analyzing the media and politics and I'm using this discussion to sort out in my head exactly what happened. I'm pretty sure that Alice and for that matter SRS and Donuel are doing the same.

Will you grant us that a cartoon brutally attacking Obama is out of place in a supposedly liberal magazine which claims to endorse him? That leads us to an examination of the New Yorker's motivations or to their ability to write satire. I take it that you are a conservative. Why don't you go back to the link that I posted of New Yorker covers. Look at how they are treating the Bush administration. If you do you may find it very difficult to believe their editor when he says that the Obama cover was meant ironically.

Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with the New Yorker treating the Obamas and the Bush administration equally. The problem I have, is with them trying to have their cake and eat it too. Telling the "Liberal" that it is irony as they crystalize in graphic glory every right wing smear.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 12:10 PM

No SRS,

The New Yorker did not do what it always do. The New Yorker attacked the wrong side. Frankly they were overtly racist when they did so.

The problem is not that those things (in the picture) were said. The problem was that the New Yorker said them. The picture painted of the New Yorker its self was the most vivid one. It was not pretty.

BTW,

The Hillary you saw in the primaries, the one you seem to be emulating, was by no means the real Hillary. That persona was forced upon her in desperation from being so far behind in the polls. Kitchen sink Hillary would make a horrible general election candidate and an even worse President.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 12:19 PM

Smear tactics are for lazy people. I see no need to monitor JtS' posts to make sure I'm not posting anything during the times he posts, or to make sure that nothing I say is remotely similar to what he says. There is no reason for me to do so other than to prevent people from using our marriage as an easy way to score points in an argument.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: heric
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 12:20 PM

Actually I thought Obama did quite well in refraining from comment on the first day while he thought through the correct response. Maybe he should have controlled his campaign a little more, though. The teflon coat is an invaluable asset and if he showed umbrage in response to a political cartoon it would have shown unacceptable weakness. He did very well in saying it didn't bother him but that muslim attire shouldn't be viewed as an insult in anyone's book.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 12:26 PM

The illustrator Overton Loyd posted the cover on the illustrator's forum a couple days ago with the thread title, "Perception is a Mutha..." He and I are the only ones who have commented on it there. He referred me to what his response was in The Nation, when interviewed for an article about the cover. In part, quote:
"Nothing beats a healthy debate but this "devoid of black illustrators" rag, not only promotes fear-mongering for Obama's presidency but for all people of melanin. I must admit I was relieved that they graciously omitted the humongous inner-tube lips that were a standard in my day. However, The New Yorker cover still misfires as it clearly demonstrates that pimpin' might not be easy, but it's a helluva lot easier than satire."

The Nation did a satire of the New Yorker cover, and in my opinion, it does hit the mark. It shows the New Yorker top hatted dude knocked out on the floor, Michelle in her normal dress and hairdo holding a sign that says "round 2", the flag back on the flagpole, the New Yorker cover burning in the fireplace, the picture of Bin Laden upside down, and Barack with this sleeves rolled up, having blackened the eye and knocked out a tooth of the New Yorker dude.

Let the discussion continue! LOL

The Nation satirical cartoon, Aug 4 issue

Don't forget to see Overton's great web site of his work, linked to his name above.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Enid Again
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 02:02 PM

Some people are easily disturbed by the ambiguities of life and art, and this manufactured controversy (along with the Jesse Jackson diss of Obama) is textbook.

For those who demand such literal, unambiguous sorts of connect the dots art, will you please just pull the curtain on the stage now?

Some of us prefer our art, life, and controversies with a bit more meat on the bone.

That drive-by at the UN, when Picasso's 'Guernica' was covered during the Iraq war invasion debate? Now that was a political art controversy worth screaming about.

This? Pfffft.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 02:24 PM

Is there nothing more rude than dropping by to criticize someone else conversation; not to join in but to try to demonstrate your own "superiority" by saying that the participants are inferior for even having the conversation?

There are a billion things to talk about. If you think something else is more important then by all means talk about it.   

If you want to talk about 'Guernica' or 50 years passed classroom bigotry, no one is preventing you from buggering off and starting your own thread. But butting into a conversation that you say is beneath you simply to say that it is beneath you, is really nothing more than demonstrating your own ignorance.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 03:22 PM

"I really thought you were joking until you got catty."

Jack, you cannot begin to fathom how little I believe that statement. You, and especially CarolC, should know by now, when I present an opinion it is what I believe, absent some smiley or shorthand contrariwise. It has been so over all my years here.

If I've offended you or CarolC, (in the words of the infamously immortal Belle Barth) please tell your friends. LOL for real.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 07:52 PM

John,

I'm sorry to say that I don't know you that well. I do not read or participate in every thread that Carol does. It is a mistake for you to think that she and I are the same.

You haven't offended me. I thought that what you were saying was so over the top that I thought it would be fun to reply in kind.

I'm certainly not offended because you try to imply that people on this thread are thin skinned bigots. As Alice said. You could not be further off base.

By the way, what did you do when the offending Prof got to your ethnic group?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: DougR
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 08:02 PM

Nobody thought it was funny? Gee whiz and most of you folks view yourselves as very sophisticated liberals. It takes someone with a real sense of humor to spot satire I guess. Someone on the radio speculated that it was aimed at those unsophisticated mid-western and westerners who are not fans of Obama.

I thought it was hilarious.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 08:08 PM

It was hilarious even though it was poking fun at Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and people like that?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 08:33 PM

Stilly,
there is no such thing as the "Democrat Party," and your use of that term gives you and your agenda away.
Whatever your views on actual political and social ISSUES are, if you were not acting out of pure partisanship and the desire to smear anyone and everyone in the opposing party, you would do them the courtesy of referring to the party by its real name.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 08:36 PM

Ah, Jack, what am I to do with you? You impute to me more than I've said. Yes, I did say that some folks here are thin skinned, but I did not imply, nor did I mean to imply that anybody here is a bigot; nor can I figure out how you could infer that conclusion. I can only believe that you missed the point of the story which was (and is) that some of you (generic) only find the humor when you (generic) think the other side is the butt of that humor, but not when your (generic) side is. In the New Yorker case, the other side actually was the butt of the satire, but you (generic) failed to understand that.

God, I hope that's now clear even to you (specifically).

What I did in that long ago class is not the point of my anecdote, and has no bearing on what I said.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 08:43 PM

Doug R,
as I said earlier, to be effective as a caricature or satire, a work needs to exaggerate real characteristics (foibles) of whoever or whatever is being lampooned.    There are characteristics Obama has which could be so satirized (e.g., his tendency toward overly intellectual, academic sounding speech; his pausing often to weigh his words; even his knight-in-shining armor persona), but since he has never actually demonstrated any sort of disrespect for his country or its flag, never been a Muslim -- much less a supporter of Bin Laden, etc., there is really nothing funny about a cartoon depicting him in those ways.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 08:53 PM

Stilly,
there is no such thing as the "Democrat Party," and your use of that term gives you and your agenda away.
Whatever your views on actual political and social ISSUES are, if you were not acting out of pure partisanship and the desire to smear anyone and everyone in the opposing party, you would do them the courtesy of referring to the party by its real name.

Is this all you have to argue about? A typo?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 09:03 PM

Doug:

Oh, no worries--I understood why it was funny immediately, and also why it missed being as funny as it hoped to be, and why it looked like bad-taste shlock because of that misjudgment. It would have very little to make it communicate a whole lot better, and missing that, it walked right into the irony briar patch.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 09:27 PM

John,

You described your professor who told ethnic jokes (and other jokes) and the bigoted person who laughed at the ethnic jokes (and other jokes) until they came to her. Then you said we were just like her.

Perhaps you didn't mean to imply that we were the type to ridicule other ethnic groups. But you did.
Perhaps you would like to refine your position?

DougR

Of course you found it funny Doug. It was aimed at people like you. My complaint is that that the New Yorker lied and said that it was aimed at people like me.

Stilly

If it was a typo, wouldn't it be better to apologize for making the error and move on?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 09:39 PM

Correction,

I should have said "since it is a typo."

Stilly

Do you know the many Republicans, including Bush and Rove have used "Democrat Party" a pejorative?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 10:14 PM

With all due respect, Stilly - "typo," my arse!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: heric
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 10:21 PM

as a pejorative.
-----

I was misled by that definition of satire at first. But it is misnaming the subject that allows the argument that it could not have been satire as allegedly intended. It was not a satire about Obama or his traits, it was a satire about the mischaracerizations (the mischaracterizations are the "absurdities" in the definition) of his traits. The picture therefore meets the definition of satire as claimed, albeit at one level out.

It doesn't matter that other covers directly satirized character traits of, e.g. Rumsfeld.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 10:54 PM

This argument is too ridiculous for words. You're bunch of whiners, and when you can't understand something as simple as a satirical cartoon, you ridicule anyone who offers a lucid explanation (extra licks offered if they claim experiences with higher education) and instead rely on the idiocy of others around you to confirm that it wasn't you, it was everyone else who must be insensitive and uncaring and . . . well, you'll think of more stupid things to accuse people of, I'm sure.

Those of you with this approach, and you know who you are, you deserve each other.

And Genie, what is your problem?

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 11:01 PM

I'm not sure what you are saying Heric.

Satire holds up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn. or it is trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly

The question is, whether it is satiric or not.

Obviously, DougR doesn't think so. I like it as is.

Amos doesn't think you for different reasons.

I don't think so. I think that they were trying to have it both ways.

If you or anyone else really think that the shot was taken at those smearing Obama and against them only, may I point out that, that impression must come from your imagination. because it is certainly not on the page.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 11:35 PM

Its not your "lucid answers" That invites ridicule. It's your hostile attitude and your self delusion of superiority.

suggested reading for SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: heric
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 11:56 PM

>that impression must come from your imagination. because it is certainly not on the page.<

Well sure. It IS outside the page. I was thinking of pointing that out as well. I don't think that's a foul. Of course there is a fancy term to describe the practice of alluding to unspecified references (so common in song, film and literature) but it's not coming to me. (For example, I knew nothing about the "terrorist fist jab" story until after the fact, but that's just part of the intellectual pretense. No real harm in it.)

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 12:18 AM

John Stewart agrees with you Heric

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 01:07 AM

Jack, this one's for you. Learn how to stop being one. Looks like it's at your reading level also.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 01:19 AM

Thanks Stilly, but I've read it already. Where do you think I got the zingers that I have been using to handle you?

How long have you been stuck in your bully costume? I know you weren't born that way. it says so in the book. Why don't you try to Win Friends and Influence People?

You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar you know!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 03:15 AM

One last time Jack. I did not say or imply that anyone was bigoted. I did indicate that that young lady had no sense of proportion or humor when her groups foibles were exposed. Remind me not to tell you an sailer jokes. On second thought don't. I won't bother with you more.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 10:27 AM

Bill Mitchell did a satirical cartoon of the cover
Satire, Baby

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 10:30 AM

Many people consider laughing at jokes that are at the expense of ethnic groups to be an expression of bigotry. I certainly do. For people who hold this view of ethnic jokes, to be compared to someone who laughs at them is to be called a bigot. That's definitely the meaning I got from that story. The woman in the story is a bigot who laughs at jokes that are told at the expense of other ethnic groups. It is a huge assumption to say that most of the people posting in this thread are so bigoted that they laugh at jokes that are at the expense of other ethnic groups.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 10:53 AM

And of course you would think so CarolC because you have no sense of nuance. You see everything in purple and green (I didn't want to offend you by saying black and white). So goodbye to you too.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 11:10 AM

Laughing at stereotypes of other ethnic groups is "nuance"?

"Have you heard the latest "nuance" joke? Three Hymies walked into a bar... "

Yeah, I guess calling it "nuance" makes it ok.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: frogprince
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 11:25 AM

Try this approach to the New Yorker cover: imagine seeing the cartoon with no clues whatever as to who created or published it; what would be your assumption as to the position it represented?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Enid, one more time
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 01:39 PM

Excellent question, that!

If I saw the cover, had no context to put it in, my first impression/assumption would automatically be it was a parody/satire/April Fools issue.

Magazines that live in the publishing realm the New Yorker does are not prone to stray very far from conventional practice, even with parody and satire. No one who sees the cover could possibly take it seriously.

It is so obviously a satire/parody/spoof, I just can't even wrap my head around this spitting at each other, name calling, and general ruckus raising and brawling going on in this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 01:41 PM

This thread is the funniest thing I have read in ages. It deserves reprinting in the "New Yorker." Now if Mark Twain were still alive to write a postscript-

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 01:43 PM

Its not nuance John.

In general, it's bigoted to tell ethnic jokes about other ethnicities. If for some reason you think that this Prof's jokes were not bigoted, then you should have shared it. Your story has the same flaw that the Obama cover does. You left out crucial details that would make you position clear.

You can tell sailor jokes in front of me. Sailors are not an ethnic group. I am not a sailor. Its an Internet handle.

You entered this thread with disparaging comments about those posting in it. You told your story in such a way that it was by no means clear what your negative comments were. Carol and I responded honestly and with some humor. You acted as if you were a cat that had been hosed down with water and continue to that the nerve of accusing us of having thin skins.

You have perfectly illustrated your own story. It was OK for you to laugh at us, to call us thin skinned people who laugh at other groups but who won't laugh when people laugh at our group. But when we laugh at you, then you bristle and have the audacity to remind me that I ought to know you well enough to know that you are always serious.

OK you are always serious. You are always serious and you butted in to a conversation to call us thin skinned people who laugh at other ethnic groups (the worst of the sins of your professor and young woman) and who get up and leave when our group is mocked. To be frank. I found this offensive enough that I thought it had to be a joke. Like the editor of the New Yorker said. "It was so over the top" that most people would see it as satire. Perhaps it wasn't over the top.

Alice said you couldn't have been more off base. If you want to prove you were on base you could go through the tread taking any specific person and point out where they were laughing at other people and got upset that when they were laughed at. Of course you can't do that. The only linkage between the story you told and the behavior of people in this thread is in your mind. The more you explain it the further off base you will appear to be.

You said you were done with me and with Carol. Thats fine with me of course. I hope you are done. I hope you don't follow us into other threads and snipe. Please keep in mind that most people lost interest in this thread long ago. Carrying a vendetta from it elsewhere, making snide remarks that only have context for you and a couple of people who have read this conversation, will probably lead to further misunderstanding.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 01:58 PM

Enid

I've ruckus raised and spit. But never about the cartoon. Its people coming here, acting superior and criticizing others for talking about it, or calling others stupid that in my opinion is causing the ruckus.

The cartoon is what it is.

Here are four more cartoons. Three are very over the top. All are exaggerating the point. Three are biting satire aimed at the individuals pictured. In context of their previous style of cartoon, it is a stretch, I think to say that even an avid New Yorker reader would be expected to see the cover in question as anything but mocking the Obamas. Of course the New Yorker has a perfect right to mock the Obamas. my only concern is that they are saying that they are not doing so. Of course DougR and others don't care about that. they like the cover just as it is.

New Yorker and Rumsfeld

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 02:05 PM

I have to agree, Q. I check in here several times a day just for the amusement.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 02:14 PM

We aim to please. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: van lingle
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 03:42 PM

I recieved my issue today and as an "avid New Yorker reader" I thought the cartoon was funny, clever (if a bit heavy handed) and a biting commentary on the bigotry and misperceptions that a lot of ignorant people seem to want to buy into regarding the Obamas. That's all I got from it.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 03:43 PM

Here is a survey of responses to the cover, which addresses whether viewers "got it" (that it was supposed to satirize a smear campaign, or if their response was that it illustrated the the real Obamas).

Mediamatters.org posted the graph of survey responses from readers of World Net Daily.
(689) 60% responded
The image isn't too far from the dangerous truth about the Obama family.
(128) 11%
Funny, because there is some truth in it.

There are 11 other types of responses, dwindling down in numbers to the last one, 0% (2) It is obvious the New Yorker wants McCain to win.

See the article and survey by clicking here.

Subject: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 03:53 PM

My "problem," Stilly?
You casually toss in a dismissive distortion of the Democratic Party name, one that was introduced during the McCarthy era deliberately to counter the positive associations people have to the word "democratic" and substitute the negative associations they have to the word "rat" and which has been increasingly used by right wing operatives under the guidance of people like Karl Rove over the past 8 years and you try to shrug it off as an innocent "typo."   I'm not buying that it was unintentional.

If it really was an unintentional typo, please try to make sure you don't repeat it.   Then I'll believe you and I'll apologize for saying you are trying to carry on a tactic from Joe McCarthy to Lee Atwater to Karl Rove (and Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, etc., etc.)

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:00 PM

Alice, Bill Bitchell's cartoon makes the point more clearly and powerfully than our thousands of words can. Thanks for bringing the link.

G

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:08 PM

Did you read the survey of how reader's responded to the cover?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:14 PM

Frogprince,
if I saw that cartoon with no context whatsoever, I think I would be scratching my head wondering who drew it and what point they were trying to make.   
If I saw it in, say, The Oregonian (Portland's local newspaper, which liberals tend to think has a conservative bent and conservatives tend to say leans liberal), I honestly wouldn't be sure whether the cartoonist was pro or anti Obama.   
For me, without some context, I wouldn't know if it was making fun of the Obamas or of certain public perceptions of them.

But I say that as someone who supports the Democratic Party and Obama in this election.

If I were already inclined to distrust or dislike the Obamas and/or the Democrats, if I were buying into the "be afraid, be very afraid" meme that the Bush administration has been pushing since 2001, if I tended to view Islam as something to be feared, and/or if I had negative feelings towards blacks or mixed-race people, I think seeing that cartoon with no context would reinforce my pre-existing fears and attitudes.    It's hard to see how it would in any way allay my fears, distrust, or dislike of the Obamas.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: pdq
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:33 PM

"Bill Bitchell"    huh?

"If it really was an unintentional typo, please try to make sure you don't repeat it."

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:33 PM

>>I recieved my issue today and as an "avid New Yorker reader" I thought the cartoon was funny, clever (if a bit heavy handed) and a biting commentary on the bigotry and misperceptions that a lot of ignorant people seem to want to buy into regarding the Obamas. That's all I got from it.<<

How do you feel about Obama?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:39 PM

People's very first gut reaction to something (or someone) usually sets the pattern of thought about it firmly in their minds...either they are positive or negative about it. Then they spend the next five years doing what they can to reinforce and defend that first impression. As time goes by they must defend it ever the more fiercely because of all the past investment of effort and feeling they're already put into defending it. Kind of like the American military in Vietnam. Nobody wants to be seen as "a quitter" or as someone who didn't get in the last word on the matter. ;-)

That's what I usually see happening in the personal arguments that arise between people here too.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:43 PM

If it really was an unintentional typo, please try to make sure you don't repeat it.   Then I'll believe you and I'll apologize for saying you are trying to carry on a tactic from Joe McCarthy to Lee Atwater to Karl Rove (and Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, etc., etc.)

Okay. One more time. Genie, you are so full of it. I don't give a rat's ass if you "believe me." Is this all you can manage in this discussion, because you came too the party to late for the original fight, and since Jack and his missus have been getting all of their jollies by slugging it out with circular logic so far, you want some of that, too?

Oy! With democrats like this, no wonder people are looking twice at McCain. I'm embarrassed to be in the same party with you.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:46 PM

One other point, a very important one, about the "out of context" question:

"Source amnesia" is a very common and powerful phenomenon, where people's beliefs and emotional connections are concerned.   You may initially temper your reaction to a media report (tabloid?) or bit of gossip or a photograph or cartoon because you discredited the source or the story wasn't substantiated by evidence or even because an image was put forth as a joke, but what tends to linger over time is the allegation or image itself, not where it came from or why.   

Even the 5% in the MediaMatters survey who said "Hilarious. It's perfect satire," the 1% who responded "It's obvious the New Yorker wants Obama to win," the 6% who said "The image will only add to the massive publicity Obama receives while McCain remains in the shadows," and the 7% who agreed that "It will do what it's designed to do: sell magazines" are likely to retain the images in that cartoon long after they've forgotten the article it was supposed to illustrate (if they read it) or even where they got that image.   

Imagine the lingering impact the images may have on those who said they think there's "some truth" in the satirical images or that "the image isn't too far from the dangerous truth about the Obama family."

Research shows that most people are far more likely to base their votes on emotional associations and feelings than on rational consideration of issues and candidates' policies.
I don't see how this can be anything but harmful to Obama and to the Democratic Party in this election cycle.

As Jack The Sailor said,
"In context of their previous style of cartoon, it is a stretch, I think to say that even an avid New Yorker reader would be expected to see the cover in question as anything but mocking the Obamas. Of course the New Yorker has a perfect right to mock the Obamas. My only concern is that they are saying that they are not doing so."

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:49 PM

Obviously my typo of "Bill Bitchell" instead of "Mitchell" name was a Freudian slip. I must've had Bellow Riley .. er .. I mean Bill O'Reilly on my mind.

Genie ; D

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:52 PM

From the Satirical Political Report:
http://satiricalpolitical.com/
(Sorry about all caps but that is the way they are on the web site).

David Remnick Explains The New Yorker's 'Obama Terrorist Cover'
"IT'S THE ONLY WAY WE COULD GET PEOPLE WEST OF THE WEST SIDE OF MANHATTAN TO PICK UP OUR MAGAZINE."

The New Yorker's David Remnick Claims "It Coulda' Been Worse"
"IF WE HAD REALLY INTENDED TO HURT OBAMA WITH MIDDLE AMERICA, WE WOULD HAVE DEPICTED HIM AND HIS WIFE AS 'NEW YORKERS.'"

Satirists Riot Over The New Yorker's Obama Cartoon
"IT SEEMS THEY VIOLATED THE SACRED PRINCIPLE OF THE RELIGION OF SATIRE: HITTING YOUR ACTUAL TARGET."

Even the New Yorker "Cartoon Dogs" Are Pissed!
"NEXT THING YOU KNOW, THEY'LL BE PORTRAYING US AS 'AFGHANS'."
(with photo of Afghan dog)

When It Comes to Barack, Maureen Dowd Jumps the Snark
"WHO WOULDN'T WANT TO BE PARODIED AS AN UNPATRIOTIC, AMERICAN-HATING, MUSLIM-SYMPATHIZING TERRORIST, MARRIED TO A 1960′S 'BLACK PANTHER'? C'MON BARACK, LIGHTEN UP."

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Howler
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:53 PM

"Bellow Riley"

LOL!!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:54 PM

OOOPS

Subject: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:54 PM

I get the feeling Stilly doesn't much like me. Not sure just what gave me my first clue.

Guess I'll just have to carry on somehow.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:56 PM

I would have thought that highly educated people would be able to articulate a position or an opinion without having to resort to using insulting language. But I'm only moderately well educated, so maybe I'm wrong about that.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 04:57 PM

[[When It Comes to Barack, Maureen Dowd Jumps the Snark
"WHO WOULDN'T WANT TO BE PARODIED AS AN UNPATRIOTIC, AMERICAN-HATING, MUSLIM-SYMPATHIZING TERRORIST, MARRIED TO A 1960′S 'BLACK PANTHER'? C'MON BARACK, LIGHTEN UP."]]
Brava, Maureen!!

I think that says it all! : D

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 05:02 PM

One glaring problem with the satire is that they forgot "eliteist". Shouldn't there be some arugula?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 05:04 PM

or Endive?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 06:01 PM

Probably posted before, but too much trouble to wade back through the morass-

Nine cover cartoons by Barry Blitt:
Blitt covers
"The Politics of Satire"

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: heric
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 07:02 PM

Hey, c'mon. WorldNetDaily is a nutso rag, totally preoccupied with ranting against Muslims. It's own byline says "News with an emphasis on investigative reports and conservative commentary." Of course its readers, playing on the internet, would choose to push the button on the funniest option ("depicts the dangerous truth.")

You had me going there for a while.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 07:17 PM

hmmmm so reinforcing the misinformed opinions just doesn't count for anything? Only liberal readers must get the wrong impression?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 07:23 PM

Bill Bitchell is such a perfect name that there really should be someone in that line of work with that name, I think.

My theory continues to be borne out, I see.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: heric
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 07:28 PM

Alice go try and read worldnetdaily for a minute or two if you can stand it. It's for a very select few.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 07:37 PM

I wonder if worldnetdaily is read by more people than read the New Yorker?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Enid, one more time
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 07:44 PM

This isn't personal, Alice, but just a few posts back you declared yourself a Democrat Obama supporter, and in the last paragraph of that post, went on to list a long litany of "if I were my enemy" rationalizations that make you look, well, a little off on a jihad.

The problem many people have with the Democrat Obama supporters' reaction, is the projecting they are doing of their own fears of the Republican Right onto this cartoon, while claiming they can read the minds AND predict the votes of their misperceived Republican Right "enemy", whom you have deemed pretty damn dumb.

Not that I would argue that Americans aren't dumb! Not for a second.

But you simply refuse to take into account anyone who truly doesn't give a damn about Obama looking bad, or winning in November, and especially, about this silly cartoon!

Millions of Americans, Alice! They just plain don't care.

And "those people" aren't exclusively the card and cross carriers of the Republican Right. In fact, they are nearly the majority of potential American voters who refuse to vote!

Some of them may well care deeply about this, but come on. Time to turn off the cable & Dem hysteria blogs, and take a nice bike ride!

You can't read other peoples' minds, you can't know the thought process of millions of potential voters, you can't know how other people interpret a McDonalds menu much less art, and last but not least--online voting polls to prove the rightness of your (pardon the tongue in cheek jab--really) jihad here? That is ridiculous!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 07:46 PM

Thanks for the cartoons Q.

I especially like the one satirizing people who call Bush and Cheney "the odd couple."

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Sorcha
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 08:26 PM

Oooo, Alice hit a Guest's button! Gee, Enid, lighten up here! MILLIONS of us DO care!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 08:31 PM

Enid, most of my interest in this topic comes from being a professional illustrator. I'm interested mainly because I think this editor failed... I think the New Yorker is making a real stretch to say they succeeded in their intent. If you don't care, then don't open this thread. The rest of your rant is not worth a response.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 08:45 PM

Enid, please tell us where you found a post by Alice identifying herself as a "Democrat Obama supporter?" I couldn't find one.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 09:37 PM

Will Mattell re-create the figures as bobblehead dolls? Sales should be good!

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Sorcha
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 11:05 PM

And just WHO IS this 'Guest,Enid' anyway?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 19 Jul 08 - 12:01 AM

Guest, Enid is an anagram of Stud, Genie - but I wouldn't read much into that.

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 19 Jul 08 - 12:48 AM

Neither would I. (I'd hardly qualify as a "stud." LOL)

it's also an anagram of:

guised nut

stun guide

I sued gent
get sued in

sued tinge
used tinge
nest guide

I edge nuts

ingest due

get due sin
get dues in

sing e-duet
singe duet

Not that this has anything to do with the discussion at hand. (Blame Heric, who started it.)
I just like anagramming.
; )

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 19 Jul 08 - 12:23 PM

Dust Genie

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Genie
Date: 19 Jul 08 - 02:47 PM

Good one, heric.

I goofed. "Guised nut" doesn't work.
But these do:

guised net
teen gnu's id
ID teen gnus
Teen's gun ID
Dee sung it
I stung Dee

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Alice
Date: 19 Jul 08 - 05:23 PM

And then there is this cartoon,
from stereohyped.com
obamasecret blue clicky

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Jul 08 - 06:03 PM

Chip Bok cartoon

and another

Chip Bok cartoon

and Luckovich

Luckovich

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jts
Date: 19 Jul 08 - 06:20 PM

I like the Luckovich

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 10:29 PM

Obama cover commentary

Humor?

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 10:44 PM

Well, it's a lot funnier than the cover of the "New Yorker."

Subject: RE: BS: Tasteless and Offensive New Yorker?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 11:03 PM

True