The New Yorker Cover

Since everybody else seems to be talking about this, I suppose I'll weigh in as well:

It's obvious that the New Yorker cover showing the Obamas as terrorists is meant to be a spoof. It's obvious that the cover is meant to parody the various media narratives and motifs that have been floating around for the past year or so: the constant mixing up of the names Obama and Osama, the allegations that Michelle Obama is a black separatist, the accusations of terrorist sympathies, of being a secret Muslim (whatever that is), of the so-called "terrorist fist jab," and so on. It's obvious.

That is, it's obvious if you are already aware enough to understand where these media narratives come from and that they are false. But here's the problem:

A portion of the U.S. population actually believes all of those things about the Obamas. The New Yorker cover does not work as satire because there's no exaggeration. Because everyone always references Swift on occasions like this, let me just point out that nobody thought that the solution to Ireland's troubles was to start eating children. "A Modest Proposal" worked because it was a logical exaggeration of what people actually believed: namely, that free markets were the way to go and that people should be seen primarily as resources (haven't come too far since then, have we?). But the New Yorker cover reflects things that people actually say, and in many cases have come to believe. That's a different set of circumstances altogether. Because it's styled as an in-joke for the cognoscenti (as New Yorker cartoons usually are), it does not make itself clear to those who are outside its orbit. In other words, like most in-jokes, it reinforces both the self-satisfaction of those already in the know and the misunderstandings of everyone else.

And no, this discussion we're all having about it is not going to help make things clear. Epistemological relativism has become such an ingrained habit in American politics that this whole episode can't help but add to the confusion. All that will enter the public consciousness (thanks to a reliably blockheaded media) is the following: Some people say these things about the Obamas, and others deny them. Who knows what the truth is? That there are in fact reliable ways of separating fact from fiction has, sadly, almost been forgotten in American politics.

In other words, a lot of people these days are idiots.

Update: More from Michael Shaw, from Melissa, from Atrios. And let me point out one other thing: the New Yorker cover is not, as some seem to be claiming, getting these right-wing narratives out in the open, where they can be exposed, mocked, and defeated. They are already out in the open. They do not fear exposure. They thrive on it. That's why the American conservative movement has a whole cable network, a small army of talk-radio chatterers, a largish gang of bloggers, and several major newspapers. They're not interested in hiding; they're interested in changing and confusing the general discourse. All this cover does is add to the confusion. (Don't believe me? Take a gander at the comments thread here.)

It might have been effective satire, say, forty years ago when this sort of paranoia was confined to blurry mimeographs produced in someone's basement -- when there was in fact something hidden that would have wilted upon being exposed to a critical mass media. That, however, is not how things are anymore.

Second Update: Satirist Ruben Bolling has more:

Of course, I'm certain Blitt intended to make fun of people's paranoid perceptions of Obama, not how leftist/radical/Muslim Obama is. But that's because I've seen his cartoons before, and because I know what could or couldn't be the stance of The New Yorker. But if this same cartoon were created by Sean Delonas and published by The New York Post, I'd think it was satirizing Obama himself, and that's a very different (opposite) point -- it would be tasteless and offensive.

A cartoon shouldn't rely on the context of its creator and publisher in order to successfully make its point. Some more indicators should have been utilized in the cartoon in order to make the target of its satire clearer.

Apparently the cartoon is called "The Politics of Fear." I know the New Yorker doesn't usually put text on its covers, but in this case that might have done the trick.

Third Update: Spencer Ackerman:

One of the worst impulses in liberalism is when white people think that they're so right-on that everything they say race-wise gets an automatic pass. Isn't their good faith evident?

Fourth Update: G. Gordon Liddy says the New Yorker "got it right." Well done, New Yorker! Far from being shamed and neutralized, the propagators of these smears are delighted by the backup. The attempt at satire has failed, as was absolutely predictable.

Fifth and Final Update: Because I'm sick of talking about this by now, and because, apparently, using your right of free speech on a free blog you write in your spare time to criticize an internationally published cartoon makes you a Stalinist or something.

Anyway, go forth, and read Somerby, especially this bit:

Sorry, this isn’t a rational process, though Remnick doesn’t seem to have heard. But this is the way our elections now work, and the Remnicks rarely seem to notice. Repeatedly, our elections are driven by disinformation, bull-roar, high trivia and lies—often driven along by major pundits who, at their best, can’t seem to care. Let’s put Michelle in a giant huge Afro! Let’s show the two of them burning the flag! Most important: Let’s make Obama a Muslim! To them, this seems like a joke—like a sally that is tres amusant. To us, it seems more like a reprise of Al Gore said he invented the Internet—or of those Swift-boat tales.

And the Rude Pundit, especially this bit:

See, the Rude Pundit's problem with the whole Barack-as-Muslim and Michelle-as-Black-Panther plus burning flag and bin Laden's picture in the Oval Office isn't that it's particularly offensive. It's that it's just not very funny. It's not even enough to make you go, "Hmmm." You glance at it once and think, "Yeah, some people think that, don't they? That's a shame." And there the whole joke ends. There's no more levels to it. It's like an Upper East Side version of South Park, an elitist attempt at crude humor, like an ironic fart at a wine tasting.

That's more or less what I was trying to say in the first place.