Thou Shalt Not Make unto Thee Any Graven Image

[eponymous_79]

I find it interesting that this community is silent on the cover this week. I'd be curious to see what the opinion of this group's members may be on the controversy. David Remnick has called it "Colbert in print;" is that how subscribers interpreted it? Is political satire such as this acceptable in our current climate? How does The New Yorker's

Comments

[zvuv]

i think being able to laugh at a stereotype is the first step in debunking it, by taking it out of the context of sacred/serious and placing it into "this can't possibly be serious" category.

and there's no doubt whatsoever that the New Yorker has been an Obama supporter even before the primaries ended.

whether it's in good taste--i dunno. but if that's what it takes to make my favorite magazine culturally relevant, then... :)

[florafloraflora]

Obviously it's satire, but not their best. It's just too heavy-handed. Compare it to the brilliant 4th-of-July cover of a couple of years ago, showing rows and rows of Chinese seamstresses making American flags. Now THAT was brilliant political commentary. It doesn't work as "Colbert in print" because you don't have the framing device of Colbert's ridiculous character, or any mention of the right-wingers that are spreading the rumors. Now, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh et al. as Boy Scouts sitting around a campfire cringing from Scoutmaster Karl Rove's story about Obama in a turban, etc., would be clearer, but way too busy to be funny.

But I'm with you: much more important than the quality of the satire, it's terrifying that so many Americans are stupid enough, or bigoted enough, to fail to understand it as satire.

[miss_eagle_eye]

As an editor of a Muslim magazine, I'm not offended by the cover at all. I think it's hilarious. I feel that anyone intelligent enough to read The New Yorker will immediately get the satire. Anyone not intelligent enough... well, I guess I'd just say they're not intelligent (which freaks me out a little bit, honestly--can we really be this stupid??).

[dabroots]

I'm not offended by it, either. I think my feelings about it could be compared to being overheard making jokes about a member of my own ethnic/minority group. In this case, having so much attention drawn on a national level to a kind of intelligentsia-centric humor makes me self-conscious.

That nothing had already been posted about it here might be simply because this is a community that sees very little posting, in general.

[kokopopo]

I think the cover was a horrendous piece of garbage and as a longtime New Yorker subscriber I felt betrayed to see it.

Let's remember, he and his wife are depicted as flag-burning Al Quaeda-loving terrorists.

Perhaps the editors found it wry or ironic, and it gave them a chuckle over cosmos at the literary club, but the magazine will be on newsstands, coffee tables, and waiting rooms where it will reinforce the unspoken anxieties of peoples whose wits are less rarefied.

There are horrible viral emails going around about Obama and this caricature will be added to the parade.

The New Yorker website has a gallery of other covers by the same cartoonist. None of them are anything like this one. The others are wry and satirical.

I am disgusted by the cover and still mad about it, as you can tell.

[kokopopo]

I respect and understand your opinion, but disagree.

Show me another New Yorker cover that employs a racially or ethnically or sexually charged stereotypical depiction of a real person.

There isn't one, and for good reason.

If you are the editor of a widely circulated magazine, putting an offensive image on the cover actually is your problem. We are not talking about a private conversation.

Out of curiosity, let me ask you this: If the same picture was on the cover of National Review or another very conservative magazine, would you feel as comfortable with it?