Just a quick note about this cover. Of course it's stirred up a maelstrom of controversy - well, umbrage, at least. It seems neither pundit nor politician can move quick enough to take offense.
Jon Stewart made an excellent point, as he is want to do, when he noted the irony in the television pundits' outrage for pushing false, meritless rumors, when that's what they do on a daily basis. "Was it a pound? A fist bump? A terrorist fist jab?" - courtesy of Fox news.
So, to summarize, at the risk of being redundant, this cover, courtesy of Barry Blitt, conveys all of the most outlandish rumors attributed to Barack and Michelle, rumors disseminated to the public primarily via the 24 hour news networks, only for those same networks to feign disgust. Perhaps, each rumor one at a time is news, but lumped together in a single cartoon is unacceptable. This is irony. Good. We've covered irony.
But the argument made in defense of this cover is that it is satire. Um...actually, I hate to break it to you, but no. It isn't. Satire is "the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc." (I copied that from dictionary.com - just so we're all on the same page.) The reason this cartoon is not satire is because it says nothing - it neither exposes, denounces, nor derides. It merely depicts. There's no higher message, no lesson to be learned, no...point. It shows us all the rumors and lies, but makes no judgment on them.
The only possible satire one might discern from the cover is contextual. Because these Right Wing smears appear on the cover of the stereotypically liberal New Yorker, one would likely infer that the magazine's editors are not supporting the images but must be making a statement against them. And so shouts of "satire" ring out from the rafters.
But what is the statement that is supposedly being made? Where is the satire? Merely being on the cover of the New Yorker is not sufficient.
It is precisely because this cartoon fails at its proposed purpose of satire that it is offensive. Instead of sending up these outlandish attacks as the absurdities that they are - absurdities that should no more be paid attention to than one would pay attention to claims that gay marriage would tear apart our families and destroy our civilization - the cartoon merely reprints and repeats them. The title of the cartoon could easily be, "This is what Some People are Saying." No rebuttal. No counterpoint. Just, "this is what some people are saying."
Awesome. Thanks.
Lies become truth through repetition. You tell one story over and over again, it doesn't matter what really happened. All this cartoon does is perpetuate the right wing smear narrative. By showing Barack in traditional Muslim garb or Michelle as a militant, the cartoon is enforcing, rather than denouncing, such attacks. It's putting an image to a lie, but saying nothing of the lie. We all heard the lovely folks in West Virginia tell us they didn't vote for Obama in the primaries because, "Blacks cause too many problems," and they've "had enough of Hussein," and they don't like them no Muslims. (Well, something to that effect.) Do we really need to keep putting gas in that engine?
While everyone in the media claims to be offended by the images that they helped perpetuate, I'm mostly just offended that The New Yorker doesn't even understand satire. If they did, they would have avoided this whole mess and, perhaps, actually said something worthwhile, besides "This is what Some People are Saying..."
And it wasn't even funny.
