O bummer (updated)
This is the cover of the New Yorker for the issue dated July 21, 2008.
Barry Blitt's illustration for the issue dated July 21, 2008
Barack Obama, it has been reported, has no comment. David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, says it’s a satire so can everyone please grope their elbows and find their funny bones. John McCain’s spokesman has said the cover is “tasteless and offensive”. I’m not an unhumorous person, I frequently find the New Yorker covers funny and I have absolutely no opinion on or knowledge of the American elections. However, this cover is no laugh riot even for me. Not only is the 21st century Satan, Osama bin Laden, gracing the walls of the White House, there’s an American flag burning in the fireplace, fer crying out loud. (You’d probably have a hundred public litigations out if someone showed the Indian flag like that. After all, we do sing the national anthem before watching a movie in this city. Why I have to prove my patriotism before watching Ratatouille is a mystery to me but anyway…)
This cover may seem ridiculous and exaggerated to some but it is disarmingly close to what many suspect is the hidden truth. It’s a depiction of precisely what many are being conditioned to think and it isn’t excessive in a country that has ended up in a tangled mess in Iraq, supposedly because of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Rather than expose scare tactics, as the New Yorker claims, I have a feeling this cover effectively shows what a large section of those following the American presidential elections suspects is Obama’s doppelganger.
Look inside the magazine and it’s clear there are no “I heart Obama” stickers in the New Yorker office. Ryan Lizza spends 15 pages telling us what a scheming, mercenary and opportunist bloke Obama is. The solidly-written article makes Obama’s political past look like a diaper peeled off a diarrhoea-afflicted baby. Of course, one could argue that Obama is a politician. He’s meant to be scheming, mercenary and opportunistic.
Hendrik Hertzberg’s comment goes some distance in explaining why the New Yorker is so upset with him. He is, to quote Hertzberg, “providing plenty of plastic for the flip-flop factories with the adjustments he’s been making as he retools his campaign for the general election” ( I wonder if Hertzberg is aware of the Indian tradition of garlanding public enemies with a wreath made of flip flops, or chappals as we call them).
A magazine cover is rarely disconnected from the inner content. In case of this particular New Yorker, it is hard not to draw a line between the Machiavelli-esque Obama depicted inside the magazine with the victorious, turbaned Obama on the cover. The illustration suggests Obama is attempting to destroy America, like Osama did in the past, and this might have been ridiculous at a time when terrorism wasn’t such an uber-sensitive topic. That Lizza’s piece keeps pointing out how Obama has been an outsider and a social climber with one focussed goal – as though wanting to be president is a bad thing and politicking to that end is a serpentine evil – doesn’t help add any humour.
Is it really funny to suggest that Obama reaching the White House is an enactment of a grand bin Laden plan? Is there humour in playing up the Islam = terrorism equation? Is the idea of a wife being the blinkered, Mad-Max terrorist following her philosopher husband’s lead likely to bring about giggles?
Probably not. Because people believe these things. But if you are in New York, buy a copy. It’s the kind of thing Osianama – with founder Neville Tuli’s love for kitsch and pop culture – will offer millions for a few decades from now.
UPDATE: Predictably enough, everyone has a piece on this cover. There’s the camp with the likes of Huffington Post which deconstructed whether the cover qualifies as satire. The Guardian, Slate and Salon are all championing the New Yorker’s right to have the cover and write that it’s a shame that people don’t see comedy when it’s staring them in the face. Salon’s Gary Kamiya rues that the Bush adminstration has robbed people of a sense of humour. While reading these reactions (which will go on for a while now, no doubt), what struck me was the underlying accusation that if you don’t find the cover funny then somehow you’ve betrayed your liberal leaning and proven yourself to be dumb. Kamiya and Slate’s Jack Shafer, for instance, would like to ignore that Islam has become a highly-sensitised topic and that Blitt’s illustration simply adds another image to the growing canon that conflates terrorism with the religion. The questions raised by the cartoon about Obama’s motivation to be president and his inherent patriotism shouldn’t be taken earnestly but as a joke. Except, if someone doesn’t find the cover funny, they simply don’t. Shaming them for that reaction isn’t going to help. That’s the tricky thing about humour - it’s either funny or it isn’t and it’s subjective. A critical dissection of it’s technical parts won’t elevate a bad joke to a good one.
It’s a curious thing, the image. The Orientalist painters who painted odalisques in diaphonous clothing paintings were not consciously forwarding a propaganda to other the Middle East. They were capturing what they found beautiful on to the canvas. That Edward Said would open a window to their souls using these paintings and find in them twisted racist politics is something none of the artists could have imagined. Perhaps after a couple of decades, this cartoon will be more universally funny or it’ll be said Blitt was a right-wing, Bible/ Torah-thumping New Yorker cartoonist. Or perhaps it’ll inspire nothing more than a snigger. Then all this debate about the cartoon will seem completely unwarranted and we’ll all look like we had entirely too much free time on our hands in July 2008.
on Monday, July 14th, 2008, 4:31 am in Barack Obama, Barry Blitt, Current affairs, Media, New Yorker › 
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The mag has every right to do this, but it’s done badly. Merely illustrating wingnut sentiments about Obama isn’t really satire. You have to either reveal the ridiculous essence of a sentiment or exaggerate it so badly it becomes laughable, reductio ad absurdum, like ‘A Modest Proposal.’ I suspect the satire fails here because:
- It’s not over the top enough. The New Yorker’s graphic style is restrained, and it doesn’t work here.
- The Obamas aren’t well known enough that their image implicitly contradicts the illustration. People genuinely wonder whether Michelle Obama is a female Shaft.
- There’s no Karl Rove in the frame, so Obama becomes the subject of the satire rather than wingnuts.
The comedy of inversion only works when the opposite fact is firmly established. Complimenting Jay Leno on his tiny, delicate chin. Ribbing A-Rod about his pudgy middle. But right now, putting Obama in a turban merely revisits the sins of that turban email allegedly distributed by Hillary’s campaign.
And, as anonandon says, the accompanying story makes Obama look like a sleazy pol, which contradicts the satire.
It almost always is with the New Yorker. The cover is a stand alone piece of art. Check the last few New Yorkers if you don’t believe me.
The last really controversial cover was the one of the hasid passionately kissing the black woman back in 1993. I’m pretty sure there was no story remotely related to this inside.
There was of course also “New Yorkistan.” (Cringe.)
The Lizza article is awful in how one-sided it is, but in fairness to the New Yorker, there have been a number of more favorable articles about Obama the last few years as well. A couple stand out as truly excellent — a piece by William Finnegan during the 2004 Senate race and a particularly insightful piece by Larissa MacFarquhar from last spring.
I know the New Yorker often has disconnected covers but my point was that with the articles inside, the cover becomes extremely connected. And yes, of course the magazine has the right to do this. Just as we have every right to growl about it. :-D
The Islam rips are just tired and stupid, regardless of the internal content. The average American (verily, the average New Yorker) sees a loaded image and kneejerks in reaction. To suggest that the New Yorker is trying to stimulate meaningful thought here is flimsy at best- they’re looking for Ann Coulter-style sh!t stirring with this.
I’m not a muslim, but it’s just wack and unfunny now; especially considering what the backlash would be if evangelical christianity or judaism were treated the same. And considering how we (brown people) are regarded as ‘one of them‘ still, regardless of actual details, we should be more than wary about this type of glib ‘humor’.
I’m a relatively educated person, and I second Manish — this isn’t playing off of things are familiar enough to satirize. I pulled this out of my mailbox and thought: “wtf is Erykah Badu doing giving Gandhi a pound?”
Aww, I thought that one was a great riff on the New Yorker’s own predecessor to this map, as well as on some very New York attitudes toward our various neighborhoods plus the place names and terms that Americans were rapidly getting more acquainted with after 9/11, and the subsequent US military involvement in Afghanistan then Iraq.
I agree w/Filmi, New Yorkistan was great. I read it as done with affection.
this is really cheap, so right tasteless and offensive. freedom of press gone too far and misused.
Not a fan. And I love satire as much as the next gal. Only, this particular piece does not work. Just makes the local idiot think that he was right all along. And now he has a great image to go along with his conspiracy theories.
Is Obama circumcised? That would pretty much settle whether he was “born” a Muslim. I realize
most American white males are circumcised, but American Blacks are less likely to be circumcised.
Obama has clearly chosen Christianity, so he’s a Christian now.
Imagine that at an interview. That’s worse than Clinton’s question, boxers or briefs.
And it won’t ’settle’ anything. While there was a small difference in circumcision rates between blacks and whites when Obama was born, (the rates have now essentially converged - both because of declines among whites and increases among blacks) - Obama is hardly the typical ‘black’, having been born in Hawaii to a Caucasian mother. If it turns out that he was circumcised, it could just as easily be explained as being ‘routine’ as ‘religious’.
The controversy about him ‘being Muslim’ has nothing really to do with whether he has accepted Islam as a religious faith or not. It’s just a way of otherizing him by default. Many people who call him ‘Muslim’ are essentially saying ‘he’s black’ in other words. It’s not so much that they’re thinking about Black Muslims, or factoring in that most African-Americans had Muslim ancestors, it’s that for many people, ‘black’ (and brown) are essentially interchangeable with ‘Muslim’. Nothing will ever ’settle it’ for the people who consider that relevant.
Also, it may have been better as a comic or image inside the magazine, as opposed to on the cover. That way, the readers are able to see it with its intended article. Or maybe I’m thinking about it too much… along with the rest of the world, apparently!
manish–your tag for the piece is spelled incorrectly.. barrack–barack
;)
If Obama were not circumcised, it would be a strong argument against being a Muslim child. BTW: the
rates of circumcision in Hawaii for Blacks in the 1960’s was closer to 40%. If he is circumcised, what were the details
of the ceremony? Kenya has specific rites for Muslim infants during circumcision.
In reality, I don’t think anyone should care.
Michelle Obama comes across strident… I could see her in that Black Power role pretty easily.