New Yorker Cover

I just found out that there is apparently a huge flap about the July 21, 2008 New Yorker cover which is a cartoon depicting Michelle Obama as an afro-wearing revolutionary and Barack Obama as muslim. While the couple is fist-bumping, the American flag burns in the background and Osama Bin Laden peers down at the couple from the revered place in the picture frame over the mantle. You can see the image here. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2008/07/21/toc_20080714

Although the cover does not say it, the image is for the cover story entitled "The Politics of Fear". It is about what the last seven years have been in this country. If Americans begin losing faith in their leaders, raise the terrorism alert to reverse that slide in the polls. If people question policy, announce that you have just captured a key member of the axis of evil and that saying anything against the government at this time would be unpatriotic.

Of course, we all know that we live in a country where image is everything and that more can be said (true or not) and perceived as fact in a five second televised image repeated every hour in the 24-hour news cycle, than can ever be said by presenting a rational, well thought out explanation. I understand that images can hurt, wound, present unintentional messages, and change moods, trends, and feelings. Nonetheless, I have to wonder why is this image so disturbing to everyone?

The Obama campaign has called it "tasteless and offensive". McCain's campaign was quick to distance themselves from it. David Remnick, of the New Yorker (see the interview here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/13/david-remnick-on-emnew-yo_n_112456.html), calls it satire. He says it is meant to play up all the stereotypes that play on peoples' fears and show how irrational, and often silly, they are. I think it does that. Anyone, on the right or left, already knows (or at least Jon Stewart and Michelle Obama in an appearance on "The View" tried to tell them) that the fabricated controversy over the "terrorist" fist bump between the putative democratic nominees for first couple was ridiculous and plainly wrong. Those who read the New Yorker have seen controversy in the cover art (not to mention the content contained within the confines of the cover) before. Those with long memories will remember the cover cartoon of a black woman and an orthodox jewish man kissing just days after the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn broke out between the two groups. Without mentioning the religious infractions visited upon the orthodox man who would commit what some view as blasphemous and heinous actions, it was clearly a time of heightened sensitivity being mined for a greater point.

One would also hope that those who read the New Yorker, which in my view clearly requires some attention span given the lengthy articles with tiny type and occasional laborious prose would take the time (at least over five seconds) to understand what it is the magazine was about. After all, it is the magazine of the few, not the many in this country. Its subscription pool generally runs to the well-educated, left-leaning, affluent and frankly mostly consists of New Yorkers and those who used to or wanted to live in New York. Hardly the type to buy into right-wing stereotypes or be affected solely by a cover image. Yet, this cover has provoked a slew of letters calling for cancellations of subscriptions, the head of the editor, and has replaced use of Obama's middle name and fist-bumping critiques as what plays for news on the 24-hour news cycle.

Have we as a society become the egg-shell victim -- So sensitive to criticism that even attempts at satire provoke mortal wounds to our psyche? Is this simply a tempest in a teapot? After all, there is only so much one can say when news reports go on for 24 hours continuously and we all know the biggest love affair the press have is with itself. So perhaps it is simply another incident of an industry discussing its internal issues with us the public as the witnesses and the bystanders to the venting. More importantly, what does this controversy say about us as a society? There are those that argue that this is just giving those on the right, those who are ignorant, McCain and his supporters, and those who simply do not like Obama more fodder for their attacks. I have to say that I doubt it really helped or hurt with any of those segments. There are those that are such Obama fanatics that any potentially negative image or critique is cause for concern, while such reinforcing images as the halo-encircled Jesus down from the mountaintop images of Obama that appear on magazines such as a recent cover of Rolling Stone fail to provoke ire.

For me, the concern looms larger. I have been worried for some time that we have become a country of individuals so deeply entrenched in our own views of the world that we only talk to people who share them, watch "news" (I use this label loosely) that reinforces our world view, and remain closed to new ideas, changes, or considerations. Perhaps I commit the same sin as all do as they age of romancing the past, but I thought I remembered an age where our disputes were not about what the facts were (which today remain hotly contested on everything) or our deeply entrenched beliefs but the focus was on a problem that needed to be solved and we just simply had different ways and thoughts about how to get there. The former is intractable. There is nothing to do but wonder whether we are a deeply divided country, so entrenched in our beliefs that they paralyze us to action. The latter position lends itself to discussion. We seem to be in the age of the former and this controversy is simply more evidence. So, where do we go from here?