Sci,

"There's no way a Black decision-maker saw that before it went out."

Brilliant line!

You didn't have add another word to it to make your point.

Fabulous work.

FB

Great article. I might add that I think the New Yorker cover is just one more example of the great cultural and racial divide in our country.

In my opinion, Barry Blitt and the magazine's editor are both oblivious and insensitive to the potential of the image to reinforce all of the smears and whisper campaigns they claim to be against.

I know there are many who will disagree, but I think the arrogance, condescension and recklessness belying the New Yorker's decision to publish this cover image is not unlike the sentiment belying the actions of other so-called left wing supporters of Obama who recently parked themselves on his Web site and openly disparaged his character and veracity in the name of opposition to the FISA Bill.

It appears that the sentiment among some so-called left wing supporters of Obama are either willfully ignorant of the potential consequences of their actions namely that they are willfully providing cannon fodder for Obama's political adversaries or they are aware but simply do not care. I suspect the latter may be the case.

I think the cover is hilarious. It's controversial. It gets people talking and fretting and pulling their hair out. Who can take it seriously? The American flag in the fireplace? Come on! That's GENIUS! (It's how you can tell it's a joke, people.)

Rec'd. This was more of a smear than satire. If they wanted to make it a satire of those sad perceptions they could have framed it inside a fox news broadcast on TV (Fox news did after all announce on the air that Obama attended a madrassa), or have a nazi painting it. That image on the front of a respected magazine just perpetuates the stereotype.

It's as clueless as telling a racist joke in front of a person of color and thinking it's OK since they know you aren't a racist.

I hope their subscriptions go way down and that issue doesn't sell well.

When Obama said:"We know what's coming" I'm sure it crossed his mind that images like this one would surface. But his logical assumption was that things like this would appear on the cover of an ultra-conservative publication, or in a Republican 527-generated ad.
So this from the New Yorker, particularly coming on the heels of the liberal outrage about his FISA position, must be a blow to him.
He's been scanning the road ahead, looking from side to side. I suspect he's been keeping a weather eye on the Clintons. But even as smart a man as Obama is probably didn't anticipate that he needed eyes in the back of his head, to see what his presumed base was up to, all the time.
There's a sadness in this that I feel for Obama as a private person. It's likely that he has turned to the New Yorker, more than once through this long and grueling campaign, for a reliably interesting and relaxing read. That he's chuckled at some of the cartoons inside. So now this campaign has cost him something else; where he once might have turned to find intellectual stimulation and comic relief, he now finds editorial myopia that may cost him, personally and dearly.
I am dismayed about this fiasco for the impact it may have on all of us. But I am furious with the New Yorker. It is not, in the end, the cartoonist's fault -- he for whom an arrested, juvenile mindset is, in fact, a career asset. Rather, I'm furious with the editor, who, for the sake of indulging his own egocentric, and incorrect, concept of satire, entirely abrogated his professional responsibility to make reasoned judgements. That's what the bastard is paid to do. And he failed himself and Obama and all of us, miserably.

Scientific:
Nicely put. "Stupid smart people" just about sums it up.
And the idea of an actual black person being in the room when the decision was made was something that escaped my thoughts entirely.

Please read my post on the topic.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/07/wow-man-thats-really-deep.php

Sorry to shamelessly flog my own post, but someone is posting a bunch of nonsense and I would like at least a couple of people to read it before it disappears.

Brlliant post

Scientific, while I doubt it, there could have been a colored person in the room, if you catch my drift.

I was watching Morning Joe today and the PEW poll showing 12% believing that Obama was a Muslim and 26% believing that he had attended a Muslim school was addressed. Harold Ford Jr was on the panel, but it was actually Andrea Mitchell who stated that race could be a factor in the readiness of some to beleive the worst about Obama despite evidence contradicting the Muslim rumors.

Mitchell wondered out loud what the Obama campaign could do to attack that type of misperception. In my opinion, Harold Ford Jr would never have spoken about the possible racial implications of the PEW study.

Clarence Page told Chris Mathews that the New Yorker cover was within the bounds of satire. I guess what I am wondering is if there is a selection process at the New Yorker that winnows out Blacks who would openly object to the cover despite being in on the pre-publication discussion.

One African-American reporter who appears on MSNBC rarely is Ed Gordon. Gordon gives opinions not usually heard coming from MSM reporters on race and other issues. Gordon is of OJ Simpson interview on BET fame. Gordon worked briefly for NBC, but found little support for the stories he wanted to cover. He now works for Black enterprise Magazine's TV show.

What I find really bizarre about the decision to run that cover is the complete boneheadedness about the conventions of political cartoons. We're all used to seeing exaggerated caricatures of politicians that are not meant to be taken literally, but they are generally presented as having a grain of truth, of illuminating something about the politician--not about his/her critics. I can't think of another example of a cartoon that we're supposed to interpret the way the NY wants us to interpret this one. While there may well be others out there, my point is that the average reader has probably not seen much of them.

Also, how can we condemn the racist garbage and lies perpetrated by the right if we don't condemn this? I can just see Fox whining "but why is okay if the New Yorker does it, but not us? Hypocrisy! Double standards!" And when we try to explain the concept of irony to Fox viewers, they'll be sure to not get it, just like they don't get why black people can use the N-word, but white people cannot.

==not unlike the sentiment belying the actions of other so-called left wing supporters of Obama who recently parked themselves on his Web site and openly disparaged his character and veracity in the name of opposition to the FISA Bill.==

Well, how unfriendly of us (life-long Democrats) to "park" ourselves on this website (assumed to be Obama-sycophant Central) to epxress our opinions on an important Constitutional issue. Really! Who do we think we are?

Scientific, thank you for putting this into perspective. My initial reaction to the cover was disbelief.

I appreciate all of your comments. Please also click on another post I put up last night, addressing a much more important topic, but lost in TPM's shuffle. Thanks!

I imagine there are some people out there who happen upon Jon Stewart and think they’re watching the evening news. So, what? If Jonathon Swift could write about english aristocracy buying Irish babies to eat to solve the poverty of large Irish families in the 1730 we should be ashamed of censoring ourselves today.

People understand satire and context (when they don’t have an agenda not to). And this cartoon was not about Obama as a black man. It was about the smears of him as radical, Muslim, unpatriotic and disloyal, etc. Even the Angie Davis look given Michelle Obama is about radicalism. If it were a racial smear, then it would be easy to interchange any prominent AA into the picture (somehow Alan Keyes or Clarence Thomas or Colin Powell don’t fit). Now if the Defenders argue that any criticism of Obama is because he’s black, what trap are they falling into?

The situation was this: Bill Cosby had just aired African America's dirty laundry and told us to clean it up - and this host, a White man, wanted to express his heartfelt agreement with Cosby's sentiments.

Obama is now saying the same things that Bill Cosby was saying and yet if he is criticized in the same way, even by a long-time civil rights leader (who can speak because he’s not white), then it becomes clear that it isn’t really about race but any criticism of Obama.

There’s nothing wrong with defending Obama as a candidate, but it is misplaced here where the cover itself was a defense and the only thing the PC outrage does is turn more people away. The strategy to raise hell about this because people put in the sticks who can’t understand parody (3 y.o. can understand parody) only ensures that everyone does see it. Could be that’s the real objective, could it not? I liked the Texas Monthly cover that photoshopped Cheney pointing a shotgun at the reader (caption was something like – buy this magazine or Dick Cheney will shoot you in the face). I never heard a peep from the administration about it. I wonder if a lot of New Yorkers saw it.

The cover is Hillaryious.
Funny how I heard no one cry when Hillary was being slandered, now it is the Obamabots who cannot take a joke.