7/14/08
Contrary to my behavior here, I don't actually like talking about Obvious Current Event Blog Topics®, but until we get news or pictures of some li'l Jif-Jif twins flailing about, the latest cover of the New Yorker is pretty frickin' ripe. For those of you who don't keep their antenna up, the magazine looks like this next week, a cartoon of Obama "terrorist-fist-jabbing" his wife in Muslim dress while a portrait of Bin Laden hangs over a flag-burning fireplace.
What is fascinating about the brouhaha that ensued, as always, is that it missed the point. The cartoon isn't offensive, nor should it be called "satire", nor anything else that simple. This cartoon sucks because it missed the crucial difference between something that is funny in vague theory, and something funny in practice.
If you say "what if the New Yorker had a cover with Obama giving his wife a terrorist fist jab?" you might get a casual laugh among your well-heeled lefty friends (or, in the case of my friends, it would be followed up with "Yeah. Or how about a cartoon of Obama getting penetrated by Catherine the Great's sex horse?") You know, the usual things said in the one-upmanship of Gen X badinage.
It's quite another thing to actually make a New Yorker cover out of the idea – a decision so tone-deaf that it really does lend credence to the idea that Manhattanites are hopelessly solipsistic and have no idea how the rest of the country thinks. What you're seeing here is meta-humor gone wrong; it's what happens when you stand too close to your own sarcasm bomb.
Let's see: it's supposed to be funny, because it's so far from the truth, yet some people still believe these things about Obama, and aren't they stupid? Just kidding! Except we're not! Because we're progressives, and really want to see Obama become president, so the way to do that is show stupid voters how stupid they are through impenetrably thick satire! Even if this cover makes them more likely to think Obama is a Muslim... hey, wait a minute. Now I'm confused by our act of aggressive meta-parody. What were we trying to say again? And WHY DID MY CAR JUST GET TOWED?!?!?
I dunno – if the New Yorker did it to be salacious, then it worked, but that was never their strong suit. They're much, much better at "actually being a good magazine."
If they did it with a progressive agenda, then they flunked out of their psych seminar at Columbia: every behavioral psychologist knows that when you show a movie about the horrors of bulimia, you make more bulimics. Same goes for politics – why give this Obama-terrorist bullshit more airtime than it already gets from your crazy right-wingnut family members?
But if they did it to be actually funny in their own snooty so-obvious-it-simply-HAS-to-be-humorous way, they just made Obama's work that much harder, which, if you're scoring at home, is a meta-meta-funny piece of satire. Which is absolutely hilarious, if you happen to be a Republican.
Posted by Ian Williams at July 14, 2008 11:20 PMI agree, Ian. Tone deaf is exactly how I described it, as well as just sort of sophomorically unfunny. Their satiric intent could've been accomplished more subtly, I think, even with the same key elements (like having it be the nightmare of a sleeping guy, tossing and turning or something), but as it is it's just shocking, without being clever or inciteful or interesting. I mean, it's generating a lot of discussion, and it will undoubtedly sell some magazines, but it's just all wrong, I think.
Today I had to look up three words. Normally it's just one or two. Your blog is better than a Word-A-Day calendar.
persiflage
solipsistic
badinageThanks for increasing my vocabulary.
In general the "fist jab" makes me shudder with Stupid Feeling (tm)
"it's what happens when you stand too close to your own sarcasm bomb."
Great line.
You said it, brotha. I expected much better from the New Yorker. Maybe I should make a bonfire of all those unread copies taunting me from their perch on my bedside table.
The advertising columnist for the NY Times (name? oy) wrote in his weekly e-mail recently about reader complaints regarding ads that border on distasteful, such as the one with humungous push-pins zooming down and stabbing Manhattan.
Again I see that disconnect between smug urban insider "humor" and how people really react and feel to some images. And the ad agency, of course, was incredulous that anyone sane would make a visual connection between giant pointed missiles (push-pins) targeting NYC and the attacks of 9/11. "Aren't we over all that by now?" Um: NO, we really aren't, nor should we be. Get a grip, wise guys -- ad people and editors alike.
I just read the New Yorker for the articles.
The liberal elite in me already appreciates what the cover is trying to say. But I'm not the one who needs convincing. And if their ultimate goal is to change minds, they're not doing Obama any favors by lampooning the voters he's trying to court.
Holding a mirror up is one thing. Holding a mirror up and circling all the gross parts of your body in front of a laughing audience of "snobs" is entirely different.
The people who this will offend are extremely emotional. Their points of view are gross and wrong (to me), but their feelings are real. If they feel threatened, if they feel hatred, those emotions run deep. And take it from a lady: if you tell me my feelings are silly or wrong, lordy me, watch out.
No one's minds will be changed if Obama loses.
My mom told me this morning that the cartoon has, or was supposed to have, the title "The Politics of Fear". If that had been prominently featured on the cover, it might have changed my feelings about the whole thing.
My mom told me this morning that the cartoon has, or was supposed to have, the title "The Politics of Fear".
They never title their cartoons, though. At least, if they do, it's in very small print or inside. So if that's their defense, it doesn't fly.
OOPS, that "My mom" part was quoting Deb...I meant it to go in italics...then my response is below.
the smartest kids in the room outsmarted themselves. always entertaining.
The tit e is apparently running inside, in tiny print, on the Table of Contents page where they credit the cartoonist. Thanks, Mr. Remnick. Well done on the editorial judgment front (sarcasm bomblet intended).
Oops that was supposed to be "title".
The equivalent cartoon on the other side of the aisle would be a red-faced, scowling John McCain hunched over an aluminum walker, while his wife was down on her hands and knees, her face a botoxed rictus, gathering up a spilled bottle of V1c0din.
Not so funny either. The difference is that the Obamas are none of the things the misinformed and deluded among us think they are. McCain is old, and his wife was addicted to pills. Of course (he says disingenously) it's mean and unfair to point this out; I'm just saying.
And is it really so elitist to want people to not believe shit that isn't true? Sean has great stories about canvassing in South Dakota, where the #1 thing he had to do was convince voters that Obama is not a Muslim. One woman even told him "well maybe you're right, but can we take that chance?"
The sad thing about it all is that so many of the ignorant and fearful, who cling to these ridiculous canards, are very nice people who love their kids and pay their taxes. I don't want to take that away from them, but at a certain point they make me want to scream.
Kent, the worst of it is the way McCain treated his first wife. Says a lot about character, in my opinion.
Barrister,
Bud Day, one of the despicable liars enlisted in the Swift Boat attacks against Kerry in '04, was McCain's lawyer during his divorce to his first wife. Day is back again for Round 2 as he was making also sorts of distorted attacks on Wes Clark a few weeks ago. Day is sort of a five-tool scumbag if you will.
Is this what you meant, Matt?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/7/14/81539/2609/953/551288
Dear David Remnick, Editor, New Yorker:
Dude, I've ben thinking about a hysterical piece of cover art.
What if I did one of those evolutionary charts, showing how primitive man evolved into modern man, but where the missing link is supposed to go... I drew Barack Obama! It could be ironic, y'know, and show how SOME think black people are a lower form of human life!
Oh! And I could draw it so the last figure... the most evolved... looks like John McCain!
Huh? Huh? Funny?
Tell me what you think?
Love,
Barry Blitt, illustrator
It gets better....
Yes.
Ian, here is your blog post for tomorrow:
"Gay tourism ad causes uproar in South Carolina"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25677373/
Kent, had you seen this already, or was it cognitive resonance?
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?ID=1792
Oddly enough, my wife and I didn't think it was a big deal. I think the New Yorker is read only by people who have "bought the critique", and their covers are always like that.
But I'd love a screaming McCain/Cindy on vicodin cover, too. IMF
It's not supposed to be funny. It's supposed to be ridicule--to satirize and reduce to absurdity what some people are thinking about the Obamas. It's just that these people tend to communicate in hyperbole and figurative speech, so the cartoon ends up looking as much like an illustration of the rhetoric as a satire of the conviction motivating it. It's kind of like an anti-Semitic caricature, but if the villainizing had been done so far only with words, and running it on the cover of the New Yorker. Way to stick it to Henry Ford. Excuse me, got to go back to polishing my Sambo lawn ornaments.
So it's Wednesday and my issue hasn't arrived yet. NOW I'm pissed. It usually comes by now. Hmmm!
I think everyone's being a little too sensitive about a candidate that that we're all a little too close to. Let's have some perspective.