The New Yorker’s Obama Cover

Responding to the outpouring of criticism, Andrew Sullivan writes, “I still see it as satire, and the notion that most Americans are incapable of seeing that strikes me as excessively paranoid and a little condescending.” I think Sullivan here errs on the side of giving too much credit to the average American. “Satire needs overstatement,” Ta-Nehisi Coates writes. “But the cover doesn’t actually overstate the beliefs of the scaremongers. Indeed its the sort of image you’d expect to see at one of the nuttier websites or publications, and so in that sense it doesn’t work very well.” I think that nicely sums up the satirical failings of the cover: In what was probably an attempt to exaggerate, the artist inadvertently merely drew what some people actually believe, not in overstated form but rather in fact. The single greatest defense against claims of offensiveness — actually being funny — can’t come into play here, because well…it’s not actually funny.

But is it offensive?  Rikyrah at Jack and Jill Politics thinks so: “ Racist tripe is racist tripe. Man up, New Yorker Magazine, and admit that its racist tripe.” Coates stops a bit short of that. “[I]ncompetence and epic fail may be the only things more common than bigotry,” he writes. It’s clear the intent is not racist. The idea behind the cartoon is to lampoon those that cling to crazy racial and religious myths about the Obamas. But since it fails at that, what’s left? If a satirist failes to sufficiently satirize their subject, do they in effect become propagandists for those subjects? If this image is received and interpreted by some not as a critique of rumors but rather as reaffirmation of those rumors — even if intelligentsia types “know” this isn’t the proper reading of it — then it’s not hard to see where the critics are coming from. I suppose when it comes to faith in my common man, I’m just a little more pessimistic than Sullivan in this regard.

Update: Ned Resnikoff offers another perspective:

In fairness to The New Yorker, satire about this sort of stuff is really, really hard. As has been pointed out again and again, the Republican Party always does a very efficient job of unintentionally satirizing itself. And that can make third-party satire a challenge.