Every cloud has a silver lining!

What percent WASP is Obama?

The rest of the world, however, does not.

Suppose a group of people at your workplace start spreading rumors that Dan K is beating his wife; these rumors start affecting your life, your career – this is something you, obviously, wish would just go away – and then the university newspaper publishes this sort of cartoon – how funny would it be to you?

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.

Yes, the image should be self-evidently absurd. But the mainstream media has granted legitimacy to self-evidently absurd beliefs, as evidenced by the Jonah Goldbergs and William Kristols that retain employment despite their intellectual bankruptcy and by Rush Limbaugh having fans like Brian Williams (who also thinks Peggy Noonan should get a Pulitzer for her Obama bashing columns.)

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.

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.

Are you sure it’s Michelle and not Angela Davis?

See Candide.