New Yorker's 'terrorist' Obama cover under fire

Is the liberal magazine's latest cover depicting Barack Obama as a Bin Laden sympathiser incendiary or have people just not got the joke?

July 14, 2008 5:51 AM

In a campaign in which Senator Barack Obama touching fists with his wife sparked a "controversy", the New Yorker's latest cover was never going to slip onto newsstands unnoticed.

In a satirical swipe at the crazy rumours about the presidential candidate and his wife, Michelle, the liberal magazine depicts them as terrorists in the oval office. Obama is in Muslim clothing; Michelle, in an Afro and military garb, has an AK-47 slung over he shoulder.

Naturally, the fist bumping is there, along with a portrait of Osama Bin Laden and an American flag roasting in the fireplace.

Asked about the image, Obama shrugged his shoulders. But his (and McCain's) spokespeople have made clear their disapproval, claiming most readers would judge the image "tasteless and offensive".

They may be right. Readers have declared they will abandon their subscriptions amid declarations that the cartoon, by Barry Blitt, was "gross, sick and pathetic".

The magazine's editor, David Remnick, believes the image "holds up a mirror" to the absurd and often malicious rumours that have stuck to his [Obama's] campaign. And he believes his readers are intelligent enough to get the joke.

Rather depressingly, it has been suggested that people won't understand the point of cartoon, titled "The Politics of Fear", and that the cover should have included a caption.

A caption? What would it have said? 'The New Yorker would like to inform readers that the above depiction is supposed to be funny. We don't really think Obama is a terrorist and we like Michelle's hairstyle as it is. Just in case any of you should think us unpatriotic, we remind readers that the Stars and the Stripes should be kept away from fire at all times.'

For anyone who needs a caption to get the joke, Remnick's most extensive explanation of the cover can be found in this question and answer session.

He says it "combines a number of images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some, about Obama's supposed "lack of patriotism" or his being "soft on terrorism" or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers. That somehow all this is going to come to the oval office."

By ridiculing these ideas about Obama, is the New Yorker helping to peel away layers of conspiratorial mud? Or, in the subconscious minds of the masses, will the image simply reinforce lingering fears about the Democratic candidate?