OK - so I read that their intent is to portray how scare tactics are being used - but does anyone else find this cover pretty tasteless?
http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0708/Ya_cant_make_it_up.html
I thought it was hilarious.
Something tells me Barry doesn’t get out of Manhattan much.
Tasteless? Nah. Fails to achieve his goal though.
That’s pretty funny, in a meta sort of way.
Having recently moved from Alabama to Ohio, and having dealt with a lot of blue collar workers who (for whatever reason) liked to talk about the upcoming election, I can say that a LOT of people will not see this as satire. They’ll see it as truth.
Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny. I doubt that anyone likely to take it the wrong way reads the New Yorker.
No, but they’ll read the stories about the cover. It’s just a simple copy paste job. Journalists eat that shit up.
This Huffington Post comments thread is full of people who don’t get the joke. Have we really become so unsophisticated in this country that people don’t recognize satire when they see it?
I laughed.
It’s not that people don’t get satire, it’s that they know a lot of other people don’t get satire. Of course, the same people who would take the cover as proof that Obama is a jihadist weren’t going to vote for him anyway.
Still, I think the cover’s in poor taste.
You know, I think a lot of the problem is context. I think there was one mildly controversial cover when Spiegelman was the art editor. Since then nothing.
Why the sudden need for the New Yorker to get edgy? Perhaps to sell copies… And if that is the reason, then it’s definitely in poor taste.
So they’re not just plain offended… they’re offended because other people might be offended?
What we really need is a New Yorker post satirizing Hitler! Oh, the hilarity!
GODWIN’S LAW, BITCHES! FEEL IT!
And so what if Obama is a Muslim?
Um, it would be impossible for him to win the Presidency?
Satire, like other forms of humor, can be in poor taste and can also not be very funny at all. For those who think it’s funny, Obama didn’t think it was funny nor did McCain. The “self-evident” humor is apparently not so “self-evident,” which suggests the cover fails as satirical humor.
In my fantasy world, the Obama camp would use that picture as a launching point to come out against any new assault weapons ban.
I guess I don’t see how it’s in poor taste. I couldn’t be any more over the top in spoofing the foolish fear-mongering around Obama; he and Michelle are even doing the “terrorist fist jab”. It’s a pro-Obama cover if anything.
Admittedly, not everyone “gets” New Yorker cartoons. They’re funny in a more subtle way than say, Marmaduke. But if you don’t get it, you don’t get it.
If the fear is that people who don’t get the joke will use it against him, jerri blank was quite right when she said that anyone that simple wasn’t going to vote for Obama any way. I don’t see the harm.
Oh hey, I didn’t realize the New Yorker was still in business.
Yeah, that bothers me quite a bit, too. It’s scary how many people seem to accept that being painted as a Muslim is a bad thing. It’s not just the religious bigotry that bothers me, but the fact that it’s so institutionalized that nobody even mentions or discusses it.