Irresponsible Satire

Earlier today a fire storm irrupted as The New Yorker introduced its July cover, which portrays Barack and Michelle Obama standing in the Oval Office with an American flag burning in the fireplace under a portrait of Osama bin Laden. Senator Obama is shown wearing a robe and turban, while his wife wears military fatigues with an AK-47 strapped to her back. Additionally, the couple is shown doing a fist bump, which Fox News once called a “terrorist fist jab.”

A New Yorker spokesman, David Remnick, justified the cover by stating, “Satire is part of what we do, and it’s meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that’s the spirit of this cover. The cover artist, Barry Blitt, defended his work by stating, “I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic (let alone as terrorist) in certain sectors is preposterous...It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.”

Senator Obama’s campaign responded to the cover by expressing outrage over the cover. Obama spokesman Bill Burton responded by saying, “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.”

Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain quickly condemned the cartoon by saying, “I just saw a picture of it on television…I think it’s totally inappropriate and frankly I understand if Senator Obama and his supporters would find it offensive.”

I believe the cover of the New Yorker is inappropriate and irresponsible because it displays a controversial imagine without any type of primer to explain the meaning of the displayed imagine. Had the New Yorker include some cover text explaining the cover as a satirical lampoon on the imagine right-wing critics have tried to create; then it may not have been so bad. As it stands, the picture alone reinforces the negative stereotypes attributed not only to the Obamas, but to a majority of Muslim and some African-Americans. Let’s be clear – not all Muslims support terrorism; not all persons of Middle Eastern decent are terrorist, and not all vocal blacks who question some of America’s decisions are militants.