Then there’s that John McCain kind of humor:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/15/174938/784/76/552173

“Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’”

Cartoons is serious business.

Hell, just watching the drama it’s generating, I’m thinking the New Yorker knew exactly what they were doing. I love this one.

When your audience’s first reaction is, “Well, that’s stupid,” it’s kinda hard to come back and argue that the problem is that they have no sense of humor.

I posted these way at the end of the other thread, but Tom Tomorrow has been defending the cover pretty fiercely, but he also posted a link to Ruben Bolling’s issues with it.

This whole thing is starting to remind me of this classic scene.

Yes, I realize that makes us Fran Drescher, but when she’s right, she’s right.

On NPR’s All Things Considered, they read a letter today.  The writer complained that NPR was taking Obama’s side when the New Yorker parodied Obama, but they liked a book satirizing Bush. 

All Things Considered did not need to remind us that the cartoon was not parodying Obama, it was satirizing people like the letter writer.

I have to admit I’m surprised they published it with the scarcity of humor directed at Mr. Obama. Still I’d be more sympathetic if his campaign hadn’t told Jon Stewart to tone down the satire too. Evidently we don’t have a candidate, we have a sacred cow.

I have news for you folks, it goes with the territory. But hey, look on the bright side. If he gets elected, he can wire tap likely offenders and stop them before they sin again.

I know Obama has to take the high road on these things, and offer no comment, but it sure would have been awesome if he’d critiqued the cartoon, something like:

“First, Michelle never carries a Kalashnikov rifle indoors, only a small machine pistol! Second, Osama’s portrait is over our bed, not in the living room. Third, we only do the terrorist fist jab in public, to signal our henchmen of an impending attack on America.”

Oh well—it would have only played into the Obama-is-a-Muslim crowd’s hands.

his campaign hadn’t told Jon Stewart to tone down the satire too.

You mean Jon Stewart who asked Obama if the rumours about his plans to enslave the white race were unfounded?

How do we know the joked bombed?  Do any of the people here who don’t like the cover read the New Yorker?

Maybe most of the readers and subscribers of the New Yorker think it’s funny.

How do we know the joked bombed?  Do any of the people here who don’t like the cover read the New Yorker?

My husband is a subscriber and he didn’t think it was funny, if that helps.  He wasn’t Mortally Offended, but he thought the joke fell flat.

I’d be curious to find out how many people were actually offended enough to cancel their subscriptions, but I’m sure the magazine’s publishers will never let that information leak out.

Dammit Geek; I had the gorilla joke ready to paste!!

You mean Jon Stewart who asked Obama if the rumours about his plans to enslave the white race were unfounded?

Too soon?

I read the New Yorker, upon occasion. I thought the cover may be funny—in two or three years. Satire fails when a preponderance of the audience does not see it as satire, but as factual. Political satire, of the kind displayed here, it nearly impossible to archive in our current climate. Afterall, ten years ago, it would hve been satirical to suggest that anti-abortionists wanted to ban all contraception or that the government was fretting over terrorist breast milk… I did not find the cover offense, just dumb, and I feel that the Obama campaign was dumb to respond to it.

It’s actually pretty hard to come up with an outrageous accusation/characterization of Obama that hasn’t been adopted as ‘truth’ by the NoQuarter crowd.  But does that mean we can’t make fun of them?  If we can’t laugh about the idea of Obama enslaving the white race, what the hell can we laugh about?  Are we supposed to waste our breath arguing that no, in fact President Obama will most likely not place whites in a condition of servitude?  Sometimes all you can do is point and laugh.

Still I’d be more sympathetic if his campaign hadn’t told Jon Stewart to tone down the satire too.

Do you have some support for the truth of this statement? I searched, and all I could find was a Huffington Post blog post from Joseph Palermo stating that the Daily Show needs to be careful not to use Republican talking points as the basis for jokes about Obama. Palermo’s not exactly an Obama campaign official, and that’s not exactly a statement about toning down the satire. So, again, some evidence?

It’s a colossal failure of satire. The people who should be the targets - either the public who are ignorant and racist enough to believe these smears, or the conservative media that are happy to spread the smears - are completely absent.

i don’t know about you, but i think that new yorker cover is just plain offensive!

The people who should be the targets - either the public who are ignorant and racist enough to believe these smears, or the conservative media that are happy to spread the smears - are completely absent.

The title of the image is “The Politics of Fear.”  That’s where the target is revealed.  The artist is clearly being stubborn about _not_ telegraphing exactly who’s the butt of the joke in the context-free image, but that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Evidently we don’t have a candidate, we have a sacred cow.

Which is dangerous.  Obama isn’t a saint or the Second Coming (or even the Hidden Imam - probably) - he’s a politician.  He should be critically examined. His campaign seems to be extraordinarily good at limiting critical examination from the Left, leaving it to the knuckle-draggers and mouth-breathers on teh Right, who are (rightfully) immediately discounted.

But the cover bombed like Andy Kaufman in an unfamiliar room.

I like the Kaufman comparison—although this image doesn’t have the same pure absurdity—because both are playing with the idea that you’re expecting a joke but you’re getting something more like a meta-joke.

It’s a colossal failure of satire. The people who should be the targets - either the public who are ignorant and racist enough to believe these smears, or the conservative media that are happy to spread the smears - are completely absent.

Indeed. It fails as satire because it makes Obama the target, not the people who believe the things depicted are true. Without some acknowledgment of the (satirical) target audience, there’s no way to read the image as an exaggeration of their unhinged fears.

Of course, some things are immune to satire. You can’t parody Ed Wood films or Vegas Era Elvis simply because there is no room to push them into absurdity. Similarly with (most) incredibly stupid beliefs (Not to start another “those meanie atheists” derailment, but some stupid beliefs can be satirized when they are held in high enough esteem by a suffieciently lerge number of people; e.g., religion. Monty Python was particularly adept at this. )

the essence of satire is exaggerating negative stereotypes

I’m not really sure this is accurate, but I can’t quite put my finger on why. SNL did a pretty similar version of the “illustrate the absurd beliefs” game when Nancy Pelosi took office, showing her giving a speech while being interrupted by her gay leatherboy assistant and his “human ashtray” (“Oh, I’m sorry, but this is a no smoking building”) that worked pretty well. This defense of the New Yorker cover, however, would seem to excuse a minstrel show as satire.

I’m pretty damn lefty and incredibly sensitive to what seem to be discriminatory smears, and I think you guys are nuts.

I didn’t find it particularly funny, but it wasn’t offensive.  It was also a complete non issue until liberal offenda-thon started….  now it’s shown every 20 seconds on Fox news with glee since people like Jesse made it such a need for a huge hyperventilation.

It probably still ends up as nothing in the end, but the reaction in the liberal blogosphere was largely lame and showed an acute lack of understanding of satire.

The fact that some of the people who Jonathan Swift was satirizing thought that eating babies was a good plan meant that is was really fucking good satire.  Your supposed to laugh at the fucking rubes, not fear them… what kind of elitists are you guys?

On Jesse’s point that “it didn’t actually exaggerate anything”, that’s my beef with it, too, and I think in that vein it’s significant that Blitt, in response to the outrage, defended the art by calling it “a mirror” of Republican depictions of Obama. It’s a revealing word choice. Mirrors don’t exaggerate. They reflect things just as they are. That’s what this does. It depicts exactly what a significant chunk of wingers claim and claim to believe. So it’s not satire.

It’s probably harder to pull off Sarah Silverman-like humor in the visual format without live kinesics to signal to the audience that THIS IS A JOKE, GUYS. It’s easy to draw cheap, mean caricatures: at some point the subjects of the caricature lose their humanity. (To shift genres, I’m thinking of the caricature of the Sex and the City actresses in Anthony Lane’s review of the film in the same magazine. It’s practically misogynistic.)

The NY would never have put a parallel satire about someone Jewish who is hated by anti-Semitic wingnuts on the cover.

Correction: the SATC review was in the New Yorker several weeks ago, not the same issue of course.

the point of satire is to exaggerate negative stereotypes

You know it’s funny, I took multiple college courses on the anatomy of comedic performance, and I don’t recall anyone ever defining satire this way.

Maybe most of the readers and subscribers of the New Yorker think it’s funny.

So far here in New York I’ve encountered 2 responses from the people in my life who subscribe to or regularly read The New Yorker—a very pointed “I don’t want to talk about it,” and pretty much the same level of Epic Fail most Pandagonians seem to share.  I guess there are probably readers who don’t see the big deal about it, and maybe some who’d defend it simply because The New Yorker is such a sacred cow around here.  But all in all, the reaction around the city, among the sorts of people usually considered the magazine’s prime demographic, is mixed to say the least.

it’s hard to escape the conclusion that those who find Barry Blitt’s drawing completely unfunny have traded their appreciation of subtlety and nuance for an instrumental, ends-obsessed, political-unto-death worldview.

In other words, if you didn’t find the New Yorker cartoon at least slightly amusing, you’re a raving totalitarian. Now THAT’S funny.

Who is this Kamiya asshole anyway—a sock puppet for Lee Siegel?

Coda to this discussion - University brings charges against student for… reading a book.

I think this falls into the same category as Chris Rock’s “I’m not saying he should have killed her…  but I understand” routine about OJ. 

I, personally, find it pretty offensive.  I certainly don’t think it’s funny.  But I see why it’s supposed to be funny, and I certainly recognize that it’s an objectively good thing that major cultural institutions are supporting comedy that I find to be offensive. 

That’s a point I think too few people grasp - even YOU are offended by some things that are nonetheless benign.  It’s part of being… a person.

APS

I’m a New Yorker subscriber, and I was angered at first, but I find I actually like the cartoon, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps I just like seeing the Obamas.

Obsidian Wings has a cartoon with a corresponding National Review cover, with McCain in a hospital gown, sitting in a wheelchair, drooling and saying “Bomb bomb Iran!” Cindy says “Here, John, have some of my meds to get you through the Inaugural parade,” pouring pills into her hand. There’s a portrait of Cheney over the fireplace, in which the Constitution is seen burning.

Even funnier was this comment

McCain isn’t really old, and he never really said “Bomb, bomb Iran,” and Cindy didn’t really ever have a pill problem, and Cheney’s potrait would never really be displayed in a federal building. So it’s totally the same as the Obama doodle. Granted, I am an irony-challenged literalist.

Posted by: Margarita

and funnier still were the reactions. Even some of the savviest commenters can be irony-challenged at times.

One thing Republicans are noted for is being able to laugh at themselves.

And their sense of humor in general is well established as well.

I thought this particular cover, aham, covered well:

http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/3638/mccain1223cb6.png

On Jesse’s point that “it didn’t actually exaggerate anything”, that’s my beef with it, too

It didn’t (much) exaggerate any single smear, but it piled one on top of another on top of another.  That’s a kind of exaggeration.

I agree that the image doesn’t have enough cues to make it absolutely clear that there is unmistakable satiric intent.  I also think that that is not self-evidently a sign of bad craft—the satirist who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing—but could be an element introduced for a deliberate purpose. 

It seems to me part of the idea is that the artist figured that conservatives would see the image and say, “Looks about right to me”... but that’s why the joke is _on them_ for believing something so stupid.  He might not have counted on liberals seeing the image and taking genuine offense, because that’s hipster myopia for you.  (sara’s comment about the likelihood of the magazine using anti-semitic stereotypes to depict [what opponents imagined about] a Jewish public figure is, I think, well-taken.)

But the aspect that so many people have seized upon, the impression that it’s a scene wingnut Republicans could embrace virtually unaltered:  that’s not a design failure, that’s a design _feature_, I have to believe.

I wish I was taller.

Wait, that’s a Ziggy!

fourmorewars, I’ve been stuck on a different exchange from the same episode:  when Jerry comes up with his version of the cartoon Elaine is working on, she doesn’t like it…

Jerry: How ‘bout if it was something like “I can’t find my receipt, my place is a sty.”

Elaine: Everything with you has to be so .. jokey.

”your so-called art does not advance our cause, comrade!”
Tom Tomorrow

Christ, exactly!

Someone posted a link to some WOC blogs about this.. but now I can’t find the post. Can has help please?

I’m a New Yorker subscriber from Oklahoma. I thought the cover was pretty hilarious. I laughed. It makes a pretty simple point. All this bogus analysis is killing it. By January 2009 you will be embarrassed by the amount of attention you gave this.

The sticks up your asses have sticks up their asses.

The fact that some of the people who Jonathan Swift was satirizing thought that eating babies was a good plan meant that is was really fucking good satire.

I would like to see your evidence that anyone involved in Irish policymaking during the time that Swift wrote his essay was seriously contemplating cannibalism as a solution to the problem.  Because otherwise I’m calling bullshit on you.

That’s what made it satire—Swift was saying, “If you’re going to implement all of these policies that mean that the Irish people will starve to death, you may as well go all the way and kill them outright.  And, hey, why not eat their bodies once you’re done?”

most readers of the New Yorker, in my experience, have seen enough of their Big Jokes bomb to know that ... well… the magazine just isn’t that funny.

In my humble opinion, the cover is a flop. And i’m not offended and I’m not looking to pillory anyone, and I’m not thinking of Obama as a Sacred Cow. I just don’t think there’s anything terribly clever about the cover and what they did. They took the easy way, and looked for broad satire, and they suck at it. My response to it was “meh.” Good satire doesn’t get a “meh.”

I did like how the local Fox affiliate polled viewers on Obama’s “overreaction”...and cropped out 2/3 of the illustration...just so that nobody would SEE the burning flag and say, “hm, actually that’s kind of nasty.” Stay classy, Fox.

Regarding the New Yorker cover: not offended, but didn’t find it humorous.  It would’ve been slightly humorous if Blitt had replaced Barack and Michelle with John and Cindy.  The absurdity of *that* would’ve driven home how ludicrous some people’s beliefs that Barack is a Muslim and Michelle is a black militant/terrorist are.  Of course, that would’ve caused an entirely different group of people to get all pissy pants on us.  Whatever.  The dude abides.

Kamiya says “the essence of satire is exaggerating negative stereotypes….”  Yes, but that is when the negative stereotypes are directed toward the target of the satire, which they are not in this case.

I’m sorry- I am pretty left wing, and always thought of the New Yorker as a pretty liberal publication, but I found this cover to be really nasty; I believe I could make a credible case that it was directed at Obama, as there is no real evidence to the contrary.  If this was supposedly satire, it was really bad satire; however, I am not ready to conclude that it was not an attack on Obama.

I believe I could make a credible case that it was directed at Obama, as there is no real evidence to the contrary

What’s the attack on Obama, that he probably really _is_ a Muslim who burns flags under a portrait of Osama bin Laden while yukking it up with his Black Panther wife, and he’ll reveal it after he’s elected, after which point we’ll all realize that the wingnuts weren’t crazy but right all along?

What’s the attack on Obama, that he probably really _is_ a Muslim who burns flags under a portrait of Osama bin Laden while yukking it up with his Black Panther wife, and he’ll reveal it after he’s elected, after which point we’ll all realize that the wingnuts weren’t crazy but right all along?

Considering how many people on the left claim to genuinely believe that Obama is secretly pro-life and will reverse Roe v Wade as soon as he gets into office, why does the secret Muslim thing seem so much crazier?  People are believing a whole lot of really crazy shit about Obama on both the left and the right.

The very first thing that popped into my mind when I saw it was “Oh, God, here we go again.  How many times am I going to see this thing on actual news networks and how many bad spoofs of it am I going to see between now and November”.  Sadly, that sort of just sucked the humor right out of it for me.  No outrage - just annoyance at the inevitable media circle jerk about it.

I also think it was poorly executed satire, at best.  I agree - it didn’t seem quite over-the-top enough to be genuinely funny.

Considering how many people on the left claim to genuinely believe that Obama is secretly pro-life and will reverse Roe v Wade as soon as he gets into office, why does the secret Muslim thing seem so much crazier?

Sounds like a great idea for a very funny cartoon satirizing PUMA and Larry Johnson.

“Everything you said about me?  It was true, Sweetie.”

Sounds like a great idea for a very funny cartoon satirizing PUMA and Larry Johnson.

And yet sadly I lack the drawing skillz of even xkcd.  Maybe I should try to track down my ex-boyfriend the graphic novelist and see if he can draw it.

...our main complaint is that it didn’t actually exaggerate anything

This is almost jaw dropping, and only serves to reinforce Mr. Kamiya’s point.  The cartoon could hardly be more exaggerating.  That it reflects the genuine attitudes, in the aggregate, of the wingnut right just points out how cartoonishly absurd they are. Seriously, the satire couldn’t have been more obvious if they had provided a big neon sign along with it that blinked ‘Satire’ every few seconds.  Of course, that seems to be what the Kevin Drums of the world really want, so maybe that wasn’t so funny. 

If the New Yorker cover had merely caused the intended targets to howl and rave in confused anger, this would be of scant interest.  That’s what those people do.  That it has struck home so hard for some on the Left is interesting.  I’m not entirely sure what to make of, though it seems that reactionary style thinking is not something exclusively of the Right.  This energetic response from those not intentionally targeted is what makes this some of the most successful satire of recent memory.

This energetic response from those not intentionally targeted is what makes this some of the most successful satire of recent memory.

So the fact that the satire missed its target and hit innocent bystanders proves that it’s a ... success?  By that measure, the war in Iraq is the most successful war EVAH!

They shoulda gone with the “Christ, what an asshole” caption—-works every time!

http://modernarthur.com/blog/christwhatanasshole.html

I thought it was funny. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but twitch-of-the-lip amusing. So many people I generally agree with, including IRL, not just on-line, thought it flopped that I’ve been forced to re-examine my position, but having done so, I think I just disagree. I’m left wondering if people who are so upset about this would be so upset if this wouldn’t be seen by a general public audience. And it wouldn’t have been seen by a general public audience if we weren’t in the middle of the media circle jerk that is this presidential campaign. I mean, if Amanda wrote something about how much she loves abortions and is going to stop using birth control and have an abortion every month (oh wait, that’s been done?), some right-wingers could latch on to it as evidence of every bad thing they ever believed about feminists. And some feminists would denounce her for giving ammunition to the other side. And that would all be bullshit.

A lot of the debate seems to center on whether this image good or bad for the Obama campaign. That question is totally irrelevant to the New Yorker’s decision, because it is not an organ of the Democratic Party or the Obama campaign.

From Jon Swift:

Although liberals are often unfairly accused of being humorless, the truth is that they are so knowledgable about what makes something funny that they rarely find humor that meets their very tough standards. They are like connoisseurs of fine wine who are unable to drink anything that is not the finest vintage. When a liberal says, “That’s not funny!” it is a cry from the heart from someone who longs to see something that really is funny. It’s too bad the editors of the New Yorker did not consult them first before they made their ill-fated attempt at comedy.

I think the depiction of Michelle as a Black Panterish radical was straight-up racist.

Of course the cromulent word I meant was: Pantherish

Can racist and hurtful images be appropriated in the service of mocking racists and smear-mongers?  I think I’d say “yes,” but that’s easy for me to say, because I’m not a member of the group being caricatured.  I mean, Sadly, No! has had a running joke about how disturbed wingnuts see Obama as “Barry X,” or as an N.W.A.-style gangsta, and there still are plenty of people out there who associate black skin with criminality, but I wouldn’t say they were being racist to mock racists by exaggerating their racism to the point of absurdity.  Are there images that are deal-breakers, context-killers, joke-enders, the way the “n-word” used to be?

“A lot of the debate seems to center on whether this image good or bad for the Obama campaign. That question is totally irrelevant to the New Yorker’s decision, because it is not an organ of the Democratic Party or the Obama campaign”

Maybe not the debate but certainly the intent.

From Maureen Dowd:

But he does not want the “take” on him to become that he’s so tightly wrapped, overcalculated and circumspect that he can’t even allow anyone to make jokes about him, and that his supporters are so evangelical and eager for a champion to rescue America that their response to any razzing is a sanctimonious: Don’t mess with our messiah!

If Obama keeps being stingy with his quips and smiles, and if the dominant perception of him is that you can’t make jokes about him, it might infect his campaign with an airless quality. His humorlessness could spark humor.

In response to FlipYrWhig’s remark on my comment: “What’s the attack on Obama, that he probably really _is_ a Muslim who burns flags under a portrait of Osama bin Laden while yukking it up with his Black Panther wife….”

No, the attack on Obama is that this cartoonist knows that his drawing feeds the lying right-wing narrative on Obama, and is likely to harden the opinions who believe that narrative.

@ Green Eagle—But then there’d be no reason to give the image the title “The Politics of Fear.”  And the New Yorker isn’t typically in the business of hardening right-wing opinions.  The title and the publication make that reading extremely unlikely. 

Unless Britt, the artist, is only telling people that it’s a satire of right-wing rumormongers and the gullible dupes who believe him, but really he’s a right-wing double agent.  You know, like a secret Muslim.

I suspect the real reaction of liberals who object to the cover is fear that the presumed morons who read the New Yorker (or anyway see the cover) will think it is a real depiction of Obama, not satire; and this is why they don’t think it is funny.  Or maybe they are the morons who think it is a real depiction.

The cover was classic satire - if you don’t believe me, ask John Stewart (who would know better), or just catch last night’s Daily Show, devoted to satirizing the sanctimonious outcry over the cover.

The bit-within-a-bit on Daily Show was useful too.  They showed a CNN piece interviewing people on the street and asking them what they thought the image was trying to communicate, and they all thought it was intended to make Obama look bad.  I think the artist is _counting on_ that reaction, and leveraging it to make a satirical point about the risks of falling for manipulated images, or getting whipped up about what you (think you) see.

I’ve been reading and re-reading this phrase from Gary Kamiya:  Since the essence of satire is exaggerating negative stereotypes, this means that satire itself is off limits.  I don’t get it.  I asked my smartypants Stanford educated b/f what he thought it meant.  He couldn’t explain it either, and we’re only 3/4 through the bottle of Chardonnay.

Is this some precious New York thing that we flyover plebes couldn’t possibly hope to understand?

Sorry, I can’t control my impulse to lecture… it’s my day job…

I wouldn’t agree that “the essence of satire” is “exaggerating negative stereotypes,” although there are plenty of satires that do exaggerate negative stereotypes. 

I didn’t go back to the source to check, but I assume that Kamiya is doing a sarcastic logical exercise:

1.  If all negative stereotypes are off-limits,
2.  And all satire is based on negative stereotypes,
3.  Then all satire would have to be off-limits.

And because he expects your reaction to be, No, wait, I don’t want all satire to be off-limits, he’s now in position to say….

Aha!  Then not all negative stereotypes should be off-limits, should they, hunh?

(I honestly don’t think that the term “stereotype” has much to do with the New Yorker cover, but that’s how I’d guess he means it.)

I sadly join the lot of you in this ultimately meaningless exercise. And I remind you that this one-way global “discussion” we are having will not change one thing at all. It is all a waste of time tantamount to rolling your eyes and nudging your friend so that you may eavesdrop on the stupid argument about whether an episode of South Park was “funny” or not by the couple at the table next to you.
More importantly, satire has nothing at all to do with “exaggerating negative stereotypes”. Zero. Nothing. Wrong. Brush any and all posts that use that as a basis for ones opinion off the table, into your cupped hand, and then dispose of it in the trash.
There is a very good reason why so many people complain that (and please excuse the generalization but it applies) the “left” doesn’t have a sense of humor and are mostly composed of shrill, lemon-faced, well-meaning assholes. If ever there was a shining example of this mindset than this is it.
Guess what? It’s not that funny. It’s mildly humorous. But I get it. I understood it immediately. Only if you were clouded by anger could you not understand its quite obvious intent. The only people who might be excused from not understanding it are those who have never seen or heard of The New Yorker before. That’s it.
And it’s not “racist” either. That would imply some sort of implicit understanding that the white race is superior to the black race. And when was the last time you laughed at a New Yorker cover anyway?  Jesus Christ, grow up!