And are all Americans autonomously “biased”? Is our care for our children%u2019s health, well-being and lives just another crazy capitalist hoax? I certainly don%u2019t believe they are! With what Obama has in store for America, I would rather have peace and security for all, not a manchurian candidate democratic leader to please the few and far between into obliterating freedom, democracy, capitalism, education, health and progress from the very map of the human fabric we all partake to comprise. Obama needs to be constantly reminded that his being an enemy to all life is still his being an enemy!!

I took the cover as a classic example of overidentification. Contextualized with the New Yorker header, there’s no way anyone who’s ever heard of the magazine could see it as anything other than satire. It’s the same basic idea as Jon Stewart asking Obama if he had a plan to enslave the white race or what Steven Colbert does on his show every night. It seems to me like a lot of people (including a surprising amount of liberal bloggers)are getting indignant because it seems to them like they should be instead of laughing along to a joke meant for them at the expense of deluded and paranoid conservatives.

Chris Edelson says  ::  July 14th, 2008 @ 5:18 pm EST
but many people who see this cover are not New Yorker readers and won’t be in on the joke
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Yes, MPHarris - what you forget is that this is American politics and nothing is funny and nothing is subject to irony. Uneducated readers are going to see the cover of the New Yorker (as they always do) and think that Obama is Osama and his wife is the reincarnation of Charlton Heston.

This is so clearly a joke, and a very good one at that.

I frankly find it sickeningly elitist of you that you should suggest that jokes like this cant be made, because heaven forbid, someone less intelligent than your good selves might see it.

Really, doesnt everyone over the age of three know what a cartoon is?

Chris Edelson says  ::  July 15th, 2008 @ 9:44 am EST
I didn’t say this cover shouldn’t be printed–I am not a censor. I think it feeds into myths about Obama–12% of Americans incorrectly believe he is Muslim, even more incorrectly think he was educated in a madrassa. It’s not a question of intelligence–it’s a question of someone seeing the cover and thinking this confirms what they have heard elsewhere from right wing ideologues on Fox and elsewhere–see Obama really is a terrorist. That doesn’t have to do with being dumb.
Comments on many right wing websites indicate that many people don’t take this cover as a joke, they think it is straightforward. again, doesn’t mean they’re dumb–political cartoons are often meant to include truths (this one was not, but that may not be apparent to someone who sees a snapshot on line or on CNN)
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Chris Edelson says  ::  July 15th, 2008 @ 9:58 am EST
if you go to the Media Matters website, you’ll find a piece explaining that one right wing website (World Net Daily) suggests that the cartoon “isn’t too far from the dangerous truth about the Obama family”, and many WND readers agree
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The new Yorker is just trying to draw interest and sell magazines. Do we expect anything else?

Chris Edelson says  ::  July 15th, 2008 @ 9:48 am EST
well, the New Yorker is (one assumes) left-leaning–if I were working there, I think/hope I’d say “hey, this is going to feed into myths about Obama”. I can’t imagine a right wing magazine like the Weekly Standard doing something so tone-deaf
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