Turning The New Yorker Cover Around

Barack Obama went on Larry King's show tonight and did a very smart thing.

KING: Considering that, though, there's a lot of e-mails going around. It gets rather terrible. A "Newsweek" poll shows that 12 percent of America believes that you're a Muslim, and 26 believe -- 26 percent believe you were raised in a Muslim home. A lot of misinformation.

How do you fight that?

OBAMA: Well, you know, by getting on "Larry King" and telling everybody I'm a Christian and I wasn't raised in a Muslim home. And pledge allegiance to the flag. And, you know, all the things that have been reported in these e-mails are completely untrue and have been debunked again and again and again. So, all you can do is just tell the truth and trust in the American people that over time, they're going to know what the truth is.

One last point I want to -- I do want to make about these e-mails, though. And I think this has an impact on this "New Yorker" cover.

You know, this is actually an insult against Muslim-Americans, something that we don't spend a lot of time talking about. And sometimes I've been derelict in pointing that out.

You know, there are wonderful Muslim-Americans all across the country who are doing wonderful things. And for this to be used as sort of an insult, or to raise suspicions about me, I think is unfortunate. And it's not what America's all about.

Whether the right wing is trying to tar Obama as a terrorist or a black militant, it's clear to me that this is not dissimilar to a hate crime. With Obama having to yell "I'm not a Muslim, I'm not a Muslim" every two seconds, and with all the sensitivities surrounding associating him with Muslims (like the two women in Michigan who were removed from the sight lines of an Obama event because they had head scarves), it was extremely necessary that he say this. It's a fine line between distancing yourself from Muslims and another form of demonization, as if the worst thing in the world to be is a Muslim. So bravo to Sen. Obama for that one.

I also think that this is the gift of the New Yorker cover, to make the intangible tangible, to force the whisper campaign out of the shadows and give it sunlight. It's a lot harder to debunk an email forward than it is a major magazine cover. Now it's out there, and smart Democratic strategists would follow Obama here and use it as an opportunity to call this demonization and hatred by its name.

See also this New York Times article about Obama and comedy generally. I think everyone's way too politically correct in this country when it comes to comedy, but it's true that there's not much to satirize yet. I think Stewart had the right idea at the start by mocking the culture of deification AROUND Obama. But what the New Yorker did was thoroughly inside the boundaries. To wit:

Mr. Stewart, who is also an executive producer of “The Colbert Report,” said the Obama campaign’s reaction to the New Yorker cover seemed part of what is now almost a pro forma cycle in political campaigns. “Nothing can occur without the candidate responding,” he said.

Bill Maher, who is host of a politically oriented late-night show on HBO, said, “If you can’t do irony on the cover of The New Yorker, where can you do it?”

If I was still doing comedy, I'm sure I'd run up against this. Still, there is a bias among audiences that only a black guy can joke about black people, only a Jew can joke about Jews, etc. As David Alan Grier says in the article, "They’ve had 200 years of presidential jokes. It’s our time.”

I'm With The Poor Man

Someone who knows from satire.

Kevin Drum is a fine blogger and surely a wonderful person in many ways, but one is advised to file his comedy advice alongside Dom Deluise’s miracle 6-week washboard abs diet. The problem with putting a big Surgeon General’s warning label on this satire reading NO!! NOT REALLY!!! BUT JOHN MCCAIN THINKS SO!!!! is that doing so would make it not a satire; or, if it were a satire, a satire of humorless liberals. (And would presumably fail for the same reason that this satire allegedly fails - many liberals appear to sincerely believe this is a good and necessary correction.) I further suggest that “A Modest Proposal” would not actually be improved by putting the whole thing in the blood-drenched mouth of a Tory industrialist named “Dasterdly McBabyeater von Evil” and/or renaming it “An Absurdly Broad Caricature of Aspects of Contemporary Society which The Author, In Truth, Deplores”. True, the idiots being satired won’t “get” the joke - that’s the joke’s value to those who do. I may be a horrible elitist, but I don’t think jokes are improved by pitching them to people with no sense of humor.

The last thing we should do in this country is make sure we put big flashing letters on every joke that practically scream "LOOK OUT, JOKE COMIN'!" or censor creativity to the point that we can't make anything controversial for fear of what Rush Limbaugh will say about it. The humorlessness exhibited by some is quite shocking and absurd.

Furthermore, in checking Limbaugh and O'Reilly this morning, they're not actually talking about this. O'Reilly is waging some jihad with the AP over what they put in Tony Snow's obit, and Limbaugh is twisting the Fannie & Freddie situation to his own devises. The other thing about this is that smears that have been forwarded around emails and whispered in conservative circles were INTANGIBLE. This cover, actually, makes them both tangible and ridiculous, and provides an opportunity, actually, because every time it's mentioned on the teevee the house Democrat being referred to for comment could easily explain that these are the fevered imaginings of the far right and are actually not true. If we had skilled surrogates out there and not total morons, this could be a win for Obama. As for the idea that Limbaugh can use this to prove that liberals are the real racists, find me one person who isn't a fellow traveler Republican who would believe that and I'll agree with you.

New Yorker Brouhaha

About the New Yorker cartoon that has everyone in a tizzy - it's a joke. It's an over-the-top joke, and it assumes a certain level of sophistication in its audience. It's in the New Yorker, after all. The artist, Barry Blitt, had a hit cover previously showing Ahmadinejad in a NYC bathroom stall being victim to toe-tapping from Larry Craig. He happens to be a pretty good artist and not some kind of smear merchant.

One thing I categorically reject is the mentality that says "Oh sure, I get it, but the chattel, those idiots out there, they'll think this is real!" No they won't. I don't subscribe to a point of view that assumes a nation of idiots. Idiots exist in this nation, like in all nations. But they aren't as large a subset as many people, and I have to say in particular a kind of liberal, think there are.

What we do have in abundance in this country is ignorance. People have busy lives and a terrible media and some aren't as curious about these matters as they ought to be. But ignorance can be changed in a way idiocy can't. And if anything is going to come out of this, it will force the traditional media, which is sure to run with this for a day, to address the fact that these stories are based on lies. They might even provide the correct information to debunk it. What a concept. So this may be a catalyst to set the ignorant right about their ignorance.

Now, the story loosely attached to the cover, by Ryan Lizza, does not address the smears. It's a pretty interesting portrait of Obama's political career on the South Side of Chicago, through the State Senate and into the US Senate. I suppose some people will see it painting Obama as calculating or deliberate but I would characterize it as seeing him as "a politician." And most people running for President happen to be them. The day we get people who aren't politicians to run credible campaigns for President will be a good one, but so will the day we have jet packs. Still, this portrait of someone who successfully negotiated the choppy waters of Chicago politics makes for interesting reading, and offers some insight into Obama's talents and skills.