I'd say in the same light, New Yorker is entitled to its opinion and its jokes.

the cartoonist (and it is, after all, a cartoon) made clear his obvious intent. which most sane people assumed already.

if the nutbags take this and make something more out of it - which they will - it's not rational thinking, it's them. if the CARTOON were drawn about McCain in the same way, they'd make a big deal out of that too. that's what they do.

The New Yorker seems to be working hard to make up for all those pro-Obama, Clinton-bashing Herztberg screeds.

Unfortunately, I am guessing the editors didn't say, boy this is great satire, they said this is going to sell a lot of copies, which makes the picture and their publishing of it not intellecutally honest.

What a non-issue. Obama needs some thicker skin and a bigger sense of humor if he's going to survive past September (we know he'll make it past August because the DNC has their official candidate stretcher ready to push him out the convention hall doors.)

Them throwing a hissy fit over this cover after what they let slide from the Huffpo is hilarious.

But TeamObama was nowhere around to counter that bigotry as it was the "good" kind that assisted their campaign.

I wish them well in fighting this. As someone who has been a longtime activist with NGOs or in personal activism, I support global human rights and oppose bigotry and persecution of any human being.

I oppose it even when it's fomented by cynical political campaigns designating Typical White Persons like myself as racists because it's "brilliant" campaign strategy and later, "just" politics moving to the center.

I extend an invitation to Team Obama to notify me for Pester-Web duty, once the racism reaches lawn jockey proportions and conventional media laugh along as they did at non-compliant women using the nutcracker (AKA the Feminist Lawn Jockey) as a prop.

The Obama/Muslim stuff is so obviously known to be false that I can't believe people are still accusing other people of perpetrating it. No minimally respectable person would dare promote these rumors, and yet the reputations of good people are repeatedly slandered by the suggestion that they're immoral enough to do so.

To wit:

1. Bob Kerrey, who made the suggestion that Obama's heritage might be helpful in reaching out to the Middle East. Immediately deemed a racist.

2. The Clinton campaign generally, because Matt Drudge spread an unsubstantiated rumor that it was distribution an easily available press photo of Obama wearing tribal clothing.

3. Hillary Clinton herself, who forcefully rejected the notion that Obama might be Muslim on 60 Minutes, only to have irresponsible journalists and overactive bloggers accuse her of vilely promoting the issue.

Satire involving racist, sexist and religious stereotypes just do not work

I've been thinking about this (wondering if I agree with it). I think there's something to it.

The problem is that jokes employing racist, sexist, or religious stereotypes are also used to reinforce those stereotypes or in group-formation or establishing group membership (where reinforcing the stereotype also comes into play). Could I see this cartoon being used by someone who believes Obama to be a dangerously left-wing revolutionary (and I am amazed to find there are such people) not as satire, but as that other kind of joke? It's so clear to me that it's a New Yorker cover, I think I would recognize it as such even without being told, but absent that context, I dunno, maybe, yes.

And that's a problem. Being a cartoon and easily available it can be ripped from its context.

There's also the aspect of "it is ridiculous that people think these kind of things about the Obamas but they would indeed be bad if they were true." For example, that it would be a bad thing if Obama were a Muslim (but he is not). And in that sense even the satire works in a direction of reinforcing bad stereotypes.

Dang. I've got to think about this some more.

What I did find offensive was the response of the Obama campaign. If they had any humor or political shrewdness, they would have laughed, said they loved it, thanked the artist profusely for doing more to defuse the absurd smears than the campaign had managed in 18 months. Instead, the cover is going to appear everywhere in America tomorrow. Obama is going to come across as an unsophisticated mid-Westerner who can't handle New Yorker humor. And many more people are going to read the inside story, depicting him as the ultimate pol. The ultimate pol would have handled this more intelligently.

If the press are willing to use sexist codewords to define Clinton they are just as likely to not be afraid of using any of the other codewords to define Obama. The floodgates were opened months ago and now we are beginning to see the inevitable outcome of that.

This is going to be a brutal summer.

It's not even close to what the Obama campaign (and its supporters) have fanned for the cynical purpose of removing a rival in the primaries.

This cover tempest strikes me more as the campaign's attempt to see what kind of levers it can pull against any (critical) media covering Obama outside the campaign's tight control. It's a test to see if media blink and who'll run with it.

However, the Rethugs helpfully provided pundits with a target for their frat humor pile-ons. Obama's NuDem Boss Machine can't provide the same service using racism as leverage.

My guess is that even In The Tank for Obama media will balk at this control device.

It is his attempt to inoculate himself from all criticism he forces the extremely squeamish media afraid to say anything negative about him.  And do you know what??  It's working.

I am sure they will apologize.  I will not.

And I wont vote for him.

He is a different kind of politician.... the worst kind.  He has used race to manipulate the entire campaign.  

Unfortunately, I also believe that "the ignorant masses", a phrase I heard often while living on Capitol Hill in DC during he 1990's, is also true. i.e., the ignorant masses are the people who brought us W, as a drinking buddy in 2000 and I am sure they fail to even comprehend the irony of the New Yorker cover.

Whether satire fails is up to each viewer, of course.  But then, if that viewer sees it as racist, does that make it racist -- for one and all?

1) CATAPULT THAT PROPAGANDA

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in," he said, "to kind of catapult the propaganda."

Is this written with tongue in cheek?

If not, what are the groundrules and boundaries for satire nowadays?

Out-of-bounds: religious nuts, bigots, chauvinists, right-wing fanatics and Democratic politicians.
In-play: sit-coms, breakfast cereal, The Hummer and Lee Greenwood (borderline?).