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The New Yorker arrives at my house and my drivel moves to the TPM cafe
My copy of the New Yorker was in my mailbox when I arrived home Tuesday night. I have been receiving the New Yorker for about 30 years after reading Brendan Gill’s book about it, and deciding that my mother (who has probably been a subscribe since the mid or late 1940s) might have been right about what the magazine presents. Between Roger Angell, John Updike, Woody Allen, Garrison Keillor, Elizabeth Kolbert (today, Elizabeth Drew in the days of yore), Seymour Hersh and the drawings/cartoons, if you insist, and everything else, I am always glad to see it.
This week, of course, I had to slip it under my shirt so that nobody would see it as I walked from the mailbox into my own home, where I could hide in the bathroom and covertly read its hot contents, or more accurately, gaze upon its provocative cover.
Of course, I immediately saw what everyone was talking about. I mean, the minute you saw the cover you knew—and if you did not know, you suspected your gullible neighbors at least would know—that it was true: there it was, not just in black and white but in starkest color, clear as a bell: Senator Obama is a Muslim, his wife is a terrorist and they hate America and love Osama bin-Laden. There is no way, with a cover such as this, that he could be elected president and even if he could survive this exposé, his election was certainly made harder by the New Yorker’s attempt at satire.
Sure, you and I would understand the intention of the cover, but if we think that Mr and Mrs. America out there pays attention to this kind of subtle attempt at humor and won’t just accept the cover at face value, well, we have not been paying attention. After all, John Kerry was swiftboated out of the race, and this is just the kind of thing the Republicans need to fool them once again.
And I’ll tell you one other thing: if you have to explain it was satire, it wasn’t very good satire.
Comments (7)
Sure, you and I would understand the intention of the cover, but if we think that Mr and Mrs. America out there pays attention to this kind of subtle attempt at humor and won’t just accept the cover at face value, well, we have not been paying attention.
Once again, a critic of the cover asserts that he, himself is smart and gets the joke, but that the hypothetical masses out there in the great unwashed boobocracy don't or won't get the joke, and therefore the cover is somehow very wrong. Of course, the New Yorker didn't mail their magazine to Mr. and Mrs. MacMoron. They mailed it to you, and to a bunch of other New Yorker readers. I think just about every single one of them gets it.
And I’ll tell you one other thing: if you have to explain it was satire, it wasn’t very good satire.
On the contrary. Only the very worst, overly obvious, crude and dumbed-down satire will be such that everyone gets it. But, in fact, this cover has been widely discussed in the mainstream media now, and so only a small proportion of people in the country who have encountered the cover now do not understand that the cover is satire.
The level of paranoid hysteria on the left over this cover is stunning to behold, and almost frightening I would say. People in this country appear to have lost their fucking minds. The best thing for Obama is to get all these wingnut fantasies right out there on the table and start ridiculing them, and the New Yorker has helped get the ball rolling. Do you think that if the New Yorker and others just hushed up about the idiot winger rumors, and refrained from making fun of them, then no one would hear them?
July 17, 2008 4:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Personally, I'm a member of a lesser discussed group: I'm not at all outraged or even annoyed by the cover, but I also don't find it funny, or even particularly good satire. Of course, I've never been a fan of the New Yorker's "humor", so as you rightly point out, I'm not their target audience.
July 17, 2008 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
(pssst; I was trying to be funny)
July 17, 2008 5:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hah!
Are we up to the satire-within-a-satire-within-a-satire part of the program? Or just the lampoon-within-a-satire? Sorry, I've lost track.
July 18, 2008 3:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
The hypothetical masses don't get the New Yorker and the cover would quite possibly have gone unnoticed by John Q Public, if it weren't for the firestorm of outrage being fanned by the media.
How many folks know what's on this month's cover of UTNE Reader or Birding Magazine? How many people know what was on the the cover of the last issue of the New Yorker?
July 17, 2008 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I got my copy yesterday. The mailing label covered Michelle's trendy combat boots. I'm not sure if the magazine had come this week, as it does every other week unheralded, without the big fanfare, that I would have gotten "the Politics of Fear" out of the image I saw. There are times, I admit, that I have to flip to TOC to find out that what I guessed the cover to be saying is far from what the cover illustrator intended.
Satire doesn't have to be "ha-ha" funny. Sometimes it should just elicit a smile, a nod of affirmation, perhaps a "that was clever" moment. I didn't get that from this.
July 17, 2008 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
The editors were a step ahead of themselves and assumed a knowing context. Oops. I think we'll all get over it (but I wish it hadn't happened).
Best content in the issue is the honest and detailed report on the actual politicking here in Chicago.
I am not disappointed to learn that Obama had the sense to plan moves for the future. No one becomes President without intent (or you get W). I am more impressed with his insight and also with his moxie.
July 17, 2008 10:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
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