Myra MacPherson: Does the New Yorker Regret the Error? It Should.
Posted at 10:49 am, July 14th, 2008
Like many, I am sure, who have seen the new New Yorker cover, I am still reeling. Nothing the far right wingnut media brigade has promulgated is as offensive or damaging as this cartoon: Obama in full Muslim gear, Michelle in an Angela Davis style Afro, terrorist rifle slung over her shoulder, fist bumping while an American flag burns in the fireplace beneath a picture of Osama Bin Laden on the wall.
Whatever David Remnick, the usually wonderful editor of the New Yorker was thinking, is beyond me. [See Romenesko for a response by Remnick and others weighing in.] Many media critics have slammed the cover and the east side New York elitist mindset that somehow thought this “lampoon” (as characterized by a staffer) would be seen as knocking the far right false depictions of Barrack and Michelle Obama. A must read on such offensive media coverage by progressive publications is Don Hazen’s Alternet piece, “The Bad Frame: Why Are the New Yorker, Salon and Other Liberal Media Doing the Right’s Dirty work?”
Among other points, he dissects headlines that are often misleading. I thought, for example, the New York Times’s front page Sunday piece on an interview with McCain was one such example: “McCain’s Conservative Model? Roosevelt (Theodore, That Is)” . On first glance it seemed as if the New York Times was labeling McCain a laudable remake of Theodore Roosevelt. Only when I read the piece was it clear that this was how McCain characterized himself.
As for the New Yorker cover, one can almost hear those intrigued by broad satire saying, “Can’t you take a joke?” In our culture today, when the “running of the Jews” and other tasteless moments in Borat were hailed as funny by movie critics, anything goes. But this is no joke. The far right have consistently hit Obama with racist slurs, now some on the left are piling on in misfired satire. The result, as Hazen writes, is that the lies and myths about Obama are reinforced. As polls show, racism and ignorance about Obama’s heritage still abound.
Normally I can’t wait to read the New Yorker. Hendrik Hertzberg is a twice monthly marvel in assessing the political scene in Talk of the Town and Seymour Hersh remains the best in uncovering the lies and foreign misdeeds of this administration. So this is as dismaying as it is puzzling. Is the need to shock so vital to media readership that appalling taste is championed? As the cliche goes, “with friends like these, Obama doesn’t need enemies.”
July 14th, 2008 at 1:23 pm |
One test is whether this cover would be as funny as Remnick thinks if it were on the cover of a right-wing magazine like the Weekly Standard instead of the New Yorker. Another is to look at the Democratic primaries when Saturday Night Live was making jokes to the effect that Obama was the darling of the media. The writer of those episodes was quoted as saying that he personally favored Obama. Yet many others felt that the shows helped Hillary Clinton by reinforcing her campaign’s argument that the media was tougher on her than on Obama.
But the precedent was set long ago when the National Lampoon repeatedly had Alfred E. Neuman on its cover with the caption “What, me worry?” Little did we know how prescient the magazine was. It was lampooning George W. Bush decades before he became president.
July 15th, 2008 at 3:43 pm |
From: John Broder [mailto:broder@nytimes.com]
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 4:53 PM
Subject: Pool Report from the Obama jax event
6.20.08
Pool Report 1
Jacksonville, Fla.
Senator Barack Obama spoke to about 600 paying guests at a reception at the Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center in downtown Jacksonville. He began at 5:17p and spoke for about 20 minutes.
Probably his best riff was:
“The choice is clear. Most of all we can choose between hope and fear. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black? And he’s got a feisty wife.”
(big cheer).
“We know the strategy because they’ve already shown their cards. Ultimately I think the American people recognize that old stuff hasn’t moved us forward. That old stuff just divides us.”
He stayed for a while shaking hands.
John Broder,
New York Times
July 15th, 2008 at 3:46 pm |
I don’t want to suggest that a PC standard be applied to Barack Obama. He is ripe for parody. Senator Mitch McConnell recently quipped in remarks at the Gridiron Club that he was “apparently born in a manger.” That was funny. The cover will emit knowing smiles on the Upper West Side and maybe in Westwood. But since the cover requires “explaining” the fun quickly evaporates elsewhere.
Maybe worse is the backlash for the New Yorker which may feel an equal time provision requires a job be done on Senator McCain. Oh, dear.
July 15th, 2008 at 3:46 pm |
I completely agree with Myra McPherson. When I saw the New Yorker cover, I was mystified. What were they thinking? It is not satire, it is more like an elitist snicker. I mostly love the New Yorker covers (as well as the magazine’s content) but this was not clever nor humorous – it was a heavy joke without satirical context that fell flat. I can only say again, shaking my head, what was David Remnick THINKING?
July 15th, 2008 at 3:51 pm |
Good piece.
July 15th, 2008 at 4:10 pm |
since I have gotten personal responses both pro and con the cover I want to add a thought a day later, after reading the explanation by David Remnick. He argues that the cover depicted the “imaginings and dark fantasies and misconceptions” about the Obamas and “we’re putting it all together in one image and holding a mirror up to it” to convey the “absurdity that it is.”
Of course the New Yorker is trusting it’s readers (and I am a faithful one) to “get it” but it was a ham handed effort. If The New YOrker wanted this to be a satire of the far right’s thinking and those who believe such absurdities, then why not have a balloon cartoon of this vision coming out of the head of a Limbaugh or Coulter? Subtle it ain’t but neither is this cover.
While I agree with the reader who thinks Obama is ripe for satire, as is any politician, and the reader who noted Obama has spoken of these very same absurdities, I want to give credit where credit is due. The fine satirist Mark Russell is the first I ever heard, months ago, in contrasting Hillary and Obama, saying that Hillary was born in Illinois and Obama was born in a manger. Don’t think Mitch McConnell is that funny.
July 15th, 2008 at 5:57 pm |
Yesterday I found the New Yorker cover repellent and damaging.
Today I am starting to think it’s so over the top that it preempts (if you will excuse a positive connotation to preemptive anything) the right’s ability to use to any effect whatsoever the characterization of Barack as a secret Muslim and Michelle as a closet radical.
But, and I don’t know what is is worth, I have just riffled through a stack of New Yorker mags and at a glance I only ‘get’ about half the covers.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:53 am |
Tom Toles’s editorial cartoon in today’s Washington Post weighs in on the issue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/toles_main.html?nid=roll_toonsvid
July 16th, 2008 at 3:20 pm |
I am a longtime reader of The New Yorker, since 1961 for the aticles and (full disclosure) much earlier for the cartoons, and I have to echo Dan Kennedy’s comments in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/15/barackobama.uselections2008) regarding the cover: “And, oh yes, I promised to say what all this means for the campaign ahead. My answer: Damn little. Sorry.” I was not offended or shocked or dismayed or sent into spasms of emotional distress by the cover. Then again, maybe I just have a different perspective on things.
I really do think that many have completely lost the bubble on this. This is a non-crisis. This will not cause the stop in the heavens; it will not stop the sun from rising in the east tomorrow morning; it will not cause the tides to not ebb and flow; it will not cause the heavens to rain frogs nor myriad plagues to be visited upon us (well, not too sure about the frogs….).
Sometimes it seems that we so readily take offense, real or pretended, to so much that after a while, when it is time to be truly offended, the silence is deafening. It is truly possible that people are more upset about a magazine cover than any of the many other things that warrant being offended or troubled by?
Or is it simply that have read The New Yorker for too long?
July 18th, 2008 at 11:16 am |
I am a long-time subscriber and reader of the magazine. I didn’t think the cover was “funny” like a joke. It was obvious that the intent was to capsulize or demonstrate some of the false accusations and paranoia about Obama. It was moderately successful at that. I thought the terrorist fist bump was cute.
Anyway, I wasn’t offended, and I support the candidate. I sense a great deal of false indignation here. This isn’t a big deal, even if you think it was stupid.
July 19th, 2008 at 9:40 pm |
No one worries that the Mag’s reader don’t “get it.” It’s all those folks who go to pick up a copy of US and see the cover. Worse yet, the Swift Boat contingent are already producing posters that will be plastered all over the country in a few weeks. How could the NEW YORKER be so stupid.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:10 am |
Samm Coombs, The Swift Boat contingent scarcely needs any material from The New Yorker to operate. Plastering the cover everywhere simply provides them an opportunity to become familiar with the concept of copyright violations and the opportunity to see how law-abiding they really are…..
July 21st, 2008 at 1:08 pm |
The New Yorker’s response to the controversy over the cover, reminds me of an episode of Seinfeld. Jerry and George are sitting in the network executive’s office, trying to sell a show. George says the show is about “nothing.” The network executive asks why anyone would watch a show about nothing. George responds, “because it’s on television.”
Isn’t The New Yorker making the same argument? Isn’t it saying the unflattering portrayal of Michelle and Barack Obama is okay because it’s on the cover of The New Yorker? There is an arrogance to the response. At least on the Seinfeld show, when George says people will watch a show about nothing because it’s on television, the network executive responds, “Not yet.”
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:25 pm |
Myra’s right. I worry about the people who are not regular readers, those who will only see the cover and not read the content of the magazine, and those who simply want to believe all this crap. The New Yorker simply gave them ammo. If anyone has doubts as to the capacity of a huge number of citizens to not have good information and to make really bad choices, just look at the last 7 years.