Cartoonery

Dude. The right response is the cover here.

Oops – the blockquote tag played me a trick. The Cagle quote ends at “…fails.”

I wonder how long we get to fatten on non-news until the culture turns its little six legs up? I used to think we had plenty of leaway. But as the headlines casually suggest that the U.S. might just have to almost double its debt as it nationalizes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and we piss away indignation on a magazine cover, I figure we are in the Soviet endgame zone – say, USSR, 1985, with trivia pursuing corruption as one institution after another fails. I guess in some ways it is hilarious.

It really ought to include a Communist icon, like a portrait of Marx or Che.

I’m afraid that it will initially prove harmful, since there are a lot of symbol-minded people who take everything literally, but there’s a chance that instead it will inoculate the thinking populace against their darkest fears.

It seems that everyone here has misunderstood why the cover is so effective. It’s a terrific satire–not of Obama himself, nor of conservative perceptions of him, but rather of his perception of conservative perceptions of him. Obama himself was the first remotely mainstream figure, as far as I know, to treat as potentially widely-held the notion that he’s dangerous because he’s black and Muslim. Nobody sane, whether liberal, moderate or conservative, believes in the viability of that meme–and I’d bet that the New Yorker cover artist in question is completely sane in that regard.

In contrast, John McCain’s perception of liberal perceptions of him is, if anything, too sunny, after years of coddling by a press corps and liberal establishment infatuated with his heroic biography and willingness to oppose right-wingers on multiple hot-button issues. A cartoon showing a rabid leftist partisan’s caricature of McCain therefore wouldn’t be particularly funny, because neither McCain himself nor anybody else suspects anyone sane of seriously perceiving him that way.

On the other hand, a cartoon showing an image of McCain replacing Obama’s in one of those socialist-realist style veneration posters–perhaps with some hokey McCain caption like “straight talk” replacing the usual Obama slogans–might work as satire, because McCain has suggested in the past that he thinks liberals generally admire him, and he sometimes gives the impression that he still believes it today, nutty as it sounds.

Kevin Drum acting like an authority on comedy is itself a form of humor.

I didn’t think Obama himself had taken offence – the one story I read said that his campaign spokesperson objected, but that when he was asked he said he didn’t have anything to say about it.

Anyway, I think it’s a hilarious cover – though I still prefer the one from February with both Clinton and Obama as Eustace Tilley. (Not to mention the one where they’re lying in the same bed and reaching to get the phone at 3 am.)

And if a liberal paper had done that, it might indeed be bleedin’ obvious that it was caricaturing attitudes rather than affirming them.

Could somebody not bring forward the election to, say, tomorrow, so that we don’t have to put up with much more of this vacuous bullshit?

(The Textile implementation does need a kick up the arse.)

>Were there, in Swift’s time, prominent people seriously suggesting that Irish babies should be fattened for English tables?

I recall hearing a Radio 3 broadcast that claimed Swift’s “proposal” had aroused some commercial interest.

Could somebody not bring forward the election to, say, tomorrow, so that we don’t have to put up with much more of this vacuous bullshit?

ejh, if you don’t like this thread, no one’s forcing you to stay. Off you go and find some other topic where your continual protestations of I IS SERIUS COMMENTER THIS IS SERIUS THRED fit in better.

The Walken’s a neat idea, but the net effect will be a round of excruciating “More cowbell!!!” jokes on rightwing blogs. And speeches at the convention. And press conferences. And Supreme Court decisions. And…

In all of the commentary on the cover I have read so far, I don’t I have come across a single person who claimed that he personally required additional thought balloons, captions or contextual indicators to catch the satirical intent of the cover. Instead, those commentators who object to the cover uniformly seem to be suggesting that there are just so many stupid people in the world, stupider than the commentator himself, that is, that a cover like this one won’t do. I guess the idea is that the New Yorker has a responsibility in its choice of cover art to reckon not just with its own readership, but to take into account the possible reactions of every culturally autistic bumpkin who walks past the newsstand and sees the cover.

There are no sinister McCain rumors circulating on the left to lampoon.

Well, there’s a fairly widespread belief among certain elements of the left that he wants to keep US troops in Iraq for up to a century.

Oh, wait.

I know a few too many hip young Americans who disingenuously use irony to air racist attitudes while maintaining plausible deniability. I suspect this is more of the same.

What the cartoon does is to seamlessly package what were previously a set of related but otherwise discrete rumors into one, neat visual. That it appeared on the cover of a “well-known” liberal magazine won’t matter soon enough — it’ll circulate independently without this piece of contextual information. How long will the satirical intent behind the drawing then be remembered?

The issue isn’t whether the NYer has to account for the morans, but whether a satirical piece that fails to discomfort its target, however slightly, can be considered effective.

That’s accounting for the morans.

So, the point as I see it from the general discussion is that Obama is so vulnerable to assaults on his ethnicity/religion/alleged hatred of the USA that absolutely no mention of it must be made outside of controlled speeches and photo-ops. Some people seem to think this is wrong. I wonder if it isn’t just the reality of the situation?

He’s running, in “wartime”, as an ethnic-minority candidate against the war-hero candidate of a governing party who are in such deep electoral sh*t that they will exploit every atom of possibility to remind the majority of potential Republican voters that they are White, Obama is Black, and Black people are Scary…

This is in a context, of course, where “Black” is intended to be taken to mean some combination of gangbanger/Muslim/Black Panther – what scared racist honkies think Black people are *really* like, when they’ve not been housetrained like Powell, Thomas and Rice….

I think “Edge of the American West” illustrates what’s wrong with the cover (link in comment #1). It would be impossible to have a cover with the same sort of slurs against McCain–McCain as senile McCain as a war monger, etc. Why? Because it would seem cruel, rather than funny. The reason this cover is acceptable in Obama’s case is perhaps because the liberal attack machine is so ineffectual.

Or is it some other reason. It’s an interesting question. Why can’t you have a cover like that about McCain? Why would that be too disturbing to people?

via americablog: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?ID=1792

I showed the cover to my ten-year-old son, who got it right away. “It’s making fun of the people who don’t like Obama,” he said.

Why is satire so hard to grasp? Are there that many people less aware, less connected than my ten-year-old? Why is this controversial?

Does anyone here think this image would be at all out of place on the cover of National Review

Yes, I think they wouldn’t have the guts, although Jonah Goldberg disagrees with me.

or Jonah Goldberg’s next book?

No, but the cover of JG’s book and its various changes were the butt of many jokes well before its release. He is a buffoon and thus indistinguishable from satires of him.

The risk, I think, is that to non-readers of the magazine, it may appear to be a case of a liberal magazine making a Kinsley gaffe.

Or it could be promoted that way by the wingnuts: “The New Yorker has depicted what they and all liberals hope to see from an Obama presidency.”

Italicizing per paragraph is a pain in the ass. Pretend the middle one is all slanty too.

It’s not targeted at a particular demographic, is it? It isn’t making fun of a particular person, it’s laughing at the ideas depicted and its social context.
Given that Obama’s a connected Chicago pol, given the NYer’s advertiser/customer base, given the country’s clear tilt away from Bush-Cheney-ism, it’s obvious and unsubtle and safe enough so as to be almost puerile.
Comparing and contrasting it to the strength and emotional profundity of Swift’s Proposal does a great injustice to the Irish Deacon.

I think the real problem with the New Yorker cover is that it isn’t satire. Satire takes aim at a truth. This takes aim at a rumor, an ugly, insidious and inflammatory rumor at that.

Our reaction to satire is not the laugh of amusement, it is the laugh spawned by our recognition of a truth we’d wanted to avoid. That’s why the New Yorker cover isn’t funny; we (even those who have spread the rumor) all know that this isn’t true and so there’s nothing for us to have to face up to.

This doesn’t upset me as much as it saddens me.

Curiously, I don’t find the “rumors” about Obama (that this cover is supposed to ridicule) anywhere I look on the right. I find them on the left, as in “ooh those right-wingers are sayin crazee stuff!” with a reference to an email someone has received but can’t be bothered to post.

Eh, maybe I just don’t read the “right” right-wing sites. Can anyone post actual links to actual, identifiable people (not anonymous) saying anything like what this cover “satirizes”?

RB:
Is that the right link? She comments on the cover, and says “I call it wonderful” — but where does she say it’s accurate, that he’s really Muslim, etc.? (I haven’t been to that site before, but it’s damned awkward — far too much on the main page.)

Apologies, my previous remark should have been addressed to shelby.

Thank you Martin for doing more work than I was interested in doing.

Here’s a question: is there any cartoon expressing a far right, slanderous, or otherwise outrageous viewpoint that could not be published on the cover of the New Yorker without it being presumed to be ironic and an attack on the viewpoint it superficially supports simply because of The New Yorker’s reputation?

I’ll bet one a them Danish cartoons of Mohammed would be understood without irony.

I think the difference is that the chattering-class knows the way the 1950’s-era or earlier style of right-wing racial caricature works in US culture, on an emotional level, since it’s part of their life and political education, whereas on the whole the Muslim imagery isn’t part of their direct experience. Look at how many people in this thread basically need to be convinced of the latter’s non-ironic existence.

Actually, I just looked up those Danish cartoons (they’re here). I could almost imagine 1, 5, 6, 7, or 9 being on the cover of (or at least inside) the New Yorker. The 9th one in particular is quite clever, blocking out the “offensive” parts of the picture in black (any part of the women other than the eyes, and just the eyes of Mohammed).

It is not as hilarious it is savage.

Just thought I’d link to next month’s New Yorker cover. In the interest of balance they decided to satirize questionable beliefs on the left about McCain.

Illustrating a particular worldview in a wholly undistorted and completely accurate manner does not constitute satire.

See Candide.

When one magazine cover bombs, perhaps next the best strategy is to divert attention from the original controversy by releasing the next issue early. There is a rendering circulating the Internet that shows what this hypothetical cover might look like. In the interest of equal-time political bashing, what we have here are the essential memes of Senator McCain.

Posed in a hospital gown that is slightly open in the rear, McCain stands symbolically next to a walker. OK, we get it. Aware of the best traditions of the Internet, this latest cover reminds us that McCain is the oldest contender in the presidential sweepstakes.

Notice the automatic weapon in one hand and a fist-full of lobbyist cash entering from stage left. Notice the Apocalyptic column of smoke invoking the neo-con dream of 100 more years of war. And notice that look of Anger McManagement on McCain’s face. But what is that skin condition supposed to suggest, and what is missing from this picture?

Perhaps there should be a hand entering from stage right passing divorce papers to a woman in a wheelchair. Or perhaps a mustard-laden hotdog taking off from an aircraft carrier while jets on the fight deck burst into flames. Instead of pock marks on his face and buttocks, perhaps criss-crossed band aids with the words “Keating Five” and “Czechoslovakia” and “Whiners” written on them. Let us not forget an image of Senator Joe Lieberman’s face tattooed on McCain’s derriere. And please make sure Lieberman’s lips are puckered.

It would be impossible to have a cover with the same sort of slurs against McCain—McCain as senile McCain as a war monger, etc. Why? Because it would seem cruel, rather than funny.

No, it’s because in the precincts of the left in 2008 there just happen not to be any paranoid rumors about the McCains that are equivalent in their offensiveness and ridiculous to the rumors about the Obamas that are to be found on the right. So there are no equally silly attitudes to lampoon.

If, on the other hand, there were widespread rumors and misconceptions of the left that John McCain was a clandestine member of the KKK, and that Cindy McCain was a youthful American Nazi Party agitator, and if cable news station like MS-NBC had devoted extended segments to wondering out loud about whether McCain’s pecks of Cindy on the cheek were in fact coded messages of fascist solidarity, then in fact I suspect we would see similar cartoons mocking those left-wing idiocies. We might see a cartoon of McCain in KKK robes planting a kiss on the cheek of Cindy in an SS uniform, with a swastika hanging on the wall.

Of course, since the New Yorker tilts gently leftward and is a place where one would be more likely to find mockery of the right, then we would be more likely to see those hypothetical alternative cartoons in right-leaning magazines, since that is where you would expect to find mockery of the left.

But, fortunately, there are not any significant numbers of Democrats running around expressing these kinds of paranoid anxieties about the Secret Life of the McCains. So Republicans don’t have the opportunity to engage in the same kind of ribbing of the left that the New Yorker was giving to the right.

New Yorker covers are never supposed to be laugh out loud funny – unlike some of the cartoons inside the magazine. Where they aim for humor at all, they aim only to be mildly amusing. And this cover I found mildly amusing, before all the silly ruckus.

…the cover isn’t satire, it simply is the way the conservative movement sees Obama.

These aren’t incompatible notions. Since the way the Glenn Beck and Fox News faction of the conservative movement sees Obama is self-evidently ridiculous to the typical New Yorker reader, it is sufficient for the New Yorker merely to depict that right-wing perception in order to satirize it and draw a chuckle from those readers. That’s what distinguishes subtle and discerning satire from broad and obvious satire. New Yorker readers don’t need a crude signpost that says “By the way, this depiction is something we actually don’t agree with and is intended to be amusing.” They get it.

I can’t accept the notion that the New Yorker has an overriding, lowest common denominator obligation not to put dangerous ideas into the minds of those few hypothetical boobs who might walk past the newsstand and get the wrong idea, and must therefore produce covers that are suitable for swimming in the egregiously dumbed-down pool of American politics without any hope of misinterpretation.

The humorist Albert Brooks used to make short films for Saturday Night Live. Some of these were marked by a form of satire that traveled very close to the real world. I recall one film that consisted of supposed “previews” of the new NBC fall television lineup. They were hilarious. But they were so accurately constructed that it is possible that someone who saw one of those previews outside the context of a satirical comedy show like SNL might have mistaken them for actual previews of actual shows. Brooks evidently thought that the typical content of prime time network television in the late 1970’s and early 80’s, and its typical manner of advertising that content, were in themselves so ridiculous that one hardly had to diverge at all from the plane of reality to get to humor. And he was right. Mere imitation was enough.

If the USA ends up with John McCain as its next president because potential Democrat voters are really so stupid and gullible as to believe that Obama is secretly an Islamist terrorist, then, frankly, the USA deserves to have John McCain as its next president…

I need to be corrected from my AM radio indoctrination.

What percent WASP is Obama?

I wonder if that part of the as-of-yet unconquered
world in WWII, the part that _was_ under the tyrant’s boot-heels, or those S.Koreans still alive after the depredations of NOKOR prayed for an “irrelevant” America, sg? Think the now free people of Eastern Europe wish the US had been irrelevant in resisting the iron curtain of Stalin’s (and his successors)warm embrace? You are indeed an ass, sg.