That Cover

Oh, lighten up Adam. No one read the New Yorker.

Ironically, I think the New Yorker has created the iron-on image for 2008’s most popular cracker head tee shirt. I can also imagine it taped to the back windows of Texas plated F-350’s, right under the line drawing of Calvin peeing.

There is a wee bit more to satire than creating a good likeness of its target.

I have to agree with YLlama, as long as it doesn’t get reprinted in Cosmo, Sports Illustrated, Quail Hunter Quarterly or Four Wheeler magazines, no one who trends toward that sort of belief system will ever have an opportunity to see the cover.

p.s. There are people in my town who really truly believe that BHO is a secret Muslim with some kind of Manchurian Candidate type of plan to destroy the USA from within. I don’t know what they think they know about the New Yorker, but this cover feeds right into their worst fears.

May I refer you to this posting by well known liberal cartoonist and blogger Dan Perkins (aka Tom Tomorrow) for his cover of the cover?

Is there a word that covers willful bludgeonheadness, the capacity to know why a decision is bad yet to be able to groupthink your way out of it?

Since this also covers the conditions that led to the Iraq quagmire, how about Neoconsensus?

Too, too true.

And interesting that though I subscribe to the New Yorker, I didn’t get this one in the mail. So somebody with less morals than brains en route to Casa Felber stole it.
I’m not going to ask either the P.O. or the N.Y. to replace it.

I think that was a “so long as you spell out name right” cover.
But I definitely think it did damage.

This is all my fault, I am afraid. I am a religious New Yorker reader (extremist and fundamentalist), but while I was in Spain I had to put my subscription on hold. I imagine they interpreted my semi-cancellation as a sign that the liberal left was abandoning them, and felt the need to expand their market share. Anyway, I´m back in the US so things should soon be back in order. I´ll give them a good talking to via my weekly subscription card.

Oh, and I have 4 pairs of Spanish leather boots full of sherry here–what do I do with them again? (And really Dan and David, you must have TINY feet–or did you mean size 12 in American sizes? Oops.)

Dale!

Yo, Dale! I ain’t in Spain no more neit’er. I’m down under wit’ da Pope and, man, is it cold! Anyways, dere’s so many guys dat look like da Pope, I feel like I’m livin’ in a shell game. It’s hard for me ta tell which is da real deal.

I’ll see ya da next time I’m in Brooklyn. I owe ya dinner. Frankie’s Hot Dog cart OK? You’re quite a dame, ya know?

Well, I thought it was funny. I like the gentle body language and sweet facial expressions–Michelle, there, with her head bowed and her legs demurely crossed in their Army fatigues and combat boots–and the way the whole thing is centered around that tiny, cute little fist-bump.

It’s pretty clearly-to-me a reference to that Fox reporter who saw the Obamas give each other a loving little dap, and lost her shit and asked on the air if it was some kind of a “terrorist fist-jab”. It makes me laugh, and it makes me laugh even more when right-wingers reveal themselves as morons by acting as if it’s a serious depiction instead of patently self-contradictory absurdism. Settle the heck down, people.

Chris!

Dale! Thanks for the Faith Salie tip. I saw your comment and podcasted her since my NPR doesn’t (didn’t) carry Fair Game. I hope she gets things straightened out and resumes her show.

I just single-handedly erased my own comment. That takes special skill, and Bush-like incompetence.

Dale,

Tiny Spanish boots filled with genuine Jerez sherry? That is some good shit. I trust you imbibed until…

A few thoughts…

Obama’s response on Larry King tonight was just right. Among other things, he said that if you’re in politics you have to have a thick skin. This is a great contrast with the thin-skinned dipshit currently occupying the Oval Office.

As a result of this, he has been invited on various national media venues to discuss the cover and what it means. He has made the most of this opportunity to dispel rumors, and he has also made the point (on King’s show) that calling someone a Muslim shouldn’t be construed as a smear. I gave him a contribution for that one.

In my other home at Daily Kos, I commented that this was a poor editorial decision vs. their overall editorial direction. It was interesting to me that, in a poll I included in a diary I wrote there, weekly readers of the magazine were the least likely to be disturbed by the cover; the most likely to “hate” it were those who never read the magazine. Make of that what you will.

Human nature sucks. Study after study shows that people latch onto an initial opinion and rarely let it go, no matter how much counter-evidence is presented. They just ignore it.

And so the millions of fucking insane idiots who think Obama is a Muslim will have this image lodged in their mind, smothering any last hope of rationality which could have possibly survived.

I don’t mean to sound like a downer, but really–WTF is wrong with people?

What a shamelessly ridiculous man we have as the President of the United States! “I wish I had a magic wand…” OMG, it was like he was saying, “who do you think I am? The President or something?”

Matt Davies sums up the latest trick from the Teenager In Chief:

http://davies.lohudblogs.com/2008/07/15/you-know-the-drill/

Yeah. I got it then, too. But then, the few times I’ve read TT, I haven’t found him particularly funny. Though I’m always amused by the penguin with the Jordy glasses, and expect to be laughing by the end, I am generally disappointed. To each his own. For me: Gary Trudeau, Aaron McGruder, and Berkeley Breathed–those guys know how to do political satire. TT–his penguin’s funny (though Opus was funnier).

Chris Harlan

Of course after all the above blather, I come across a TT comic on Salon about Obama Phenomena and laugh my butt off. Now, that’s irony.

I linked to it up there at comment number 10.

I’ve been a fan of Perkins/Tom Tomorrow for some time and while his stuff is rarely “laugh out loud” funny (I don’t think it’s supposed to be), he’s interesting enough for me to own several of his collections.

I found McGruder to be a bit heavy handed, even when I agreed with his point of view.

Breathed. . . I was never a big fan, though, again, I have several of his Bloom County collections. Actually, if you read them straight through, you realized that he was sort of making it up as he went along and there was never a cohesive narrative. Characters appeared out of nowhere and disappeared again. Some, like Rosebud, the “Bassalope”, seemed designed with marketing of plush toys in mind. Bloom County seemed like Seinfeld. . . it wasn’t about anything.

The all-time best strip, which still holds up more than a decade after “retirement” was Calvin and Hobbes. Bill Watterson combined wackiness, gross juvenile humor (”Don’t you hate it when your boogers freeze?” and a “Thermos full of phlegm” come to mind), biting social commentary, allegory, fantasy, and the best comic illustration perhaps ever (DAMN the guy could draw!).

Thank you, Adam - I was thinking there must be something wrong with me. Here I was, looking at the New Yorker cover and being absolutely horrified; and yet people I respect, like Tom Meyers (the S.F. Chronicle’s brilliant editorial cartoonist) were saying, “But it’s just satire! Lighten up!” But it wasn’t just satire; except that every time I tried to explain why it wasn’t, it sounded like I was making whiney excuses. (Damn Phil Gramm anyhow.)

Let me give an example from history. Most people have heard of Jonathon Swift’s Modest Proposal, in which he suggested that the starving peasantry of Ireland could improve their lot by raising babies for the table. I’ve read it; it’s probably more deadpan than the New Yorker cover. And even then, only a few people took it seriously, even though many upper-class English really did regard the Irish as subhuman.

As you and several others have rightly said, the trouble with this damn thing is that far too many people already believe it, and seeing it in print in the magazine just makes them even more convinced. I heard an interview with a member of “Latinas for McCain” the other day where the woman said that she could never vote for a man who turns his back on his religion when it’s convenient, and what she meant was that (in her belief) Obama had turned his back on Islam when it became politically inconvenient, just the way he later left the Chicago church… which was so far away from reality it made my head spin!

How many times do we have to repeat that Obama is not now and never has been a member of - sorry, wrong era. But I guess for some things, only the name changes; the attitude stays the same.

Okay. Now, wait. A Modest Proposal was satire? I don’t think so! I mean, I’ve heard Dick Cheney sites it like 25 times in the preface to his upcoming philanthropic tome, To Serve Man. Of course I haven’t read it because it was written with some wierd ancient Wyoming alphabet.

hedera, thanks for plugging my book, Modest Proposal! It’s been tough in the current economic cycle to get any manner of attention. Hell, I couldn’t even get on air with Here and Now and that very annoying host, Robin Young.

One minor correction on your review of the book - I wasn’t kidding! I was hungry and I meant every damned word of it. Pass the horseradish, please.

(via Crooks and Liars video linky)

I think that Jon Stewart summed it up pretty nicely:

Obama’s camp initially agreed that the cartoon was “tasteless and offensive”. Really? You know what your response should have been…let me put this statement out for you. Barack Obama is in no way upset about the cartoon that depicts him as a Muslim extremist because you know who gets upset about cartoons? Muslim extremists, of which Barack Obama is not. It’s just a f%#!-ing cartoon!

The clip is worth watching, though, especially the end.

AcJim: good article.
JellyJam, who I believe to also be Confused: I’m guessing it is for sure that you are a troll, as you seem almost dogmatically driven to prove out the fears of those who geeked over the cover. Clearly–by dint of your what-ho-ish phrasings–you’ve demonstrated that you own the intelligence to understand that the satire is aimed at those forces atempting to demonize Obama, and not of Obama himself. By maintaining that the satire is aimed at BHO, you are confirming others’ fears. But I think you know that.

Rod Serling, where are you when we need you?

I’ve been thinking about this for days, and I’ve read several columnists and a couple of other cartoonists’ defense of it. They’re right, as far as they go. Satire is always appropriate. The problem with this cover is that it does not satirize the subjects depicted in the cartoon. Why not? Because Barack and Michelle Obama have done nothing buffoonish enough to be satirized. They are the all-American family. They both came from middle-class hard-working families, they worked hard, went to college, married (to their first and only spouse) and had children. The only thing I could think of to gig them on would be the whole smoking thing–”Barack may run for president only if he promises to stop smoking.”

What the cartoon is satirizing is the people who have been promoting these lies about them. Yes, that’s exactly what Tom Tomorrow’s cartoons do, especially the example of Sadam and Osama as buddies. But TT doesn’t get the exposure that a New Yorker cover does. I don’t ever expect to see a TT cartoon displayed by a right-winger. I do expect to see the New Yorker cover–endlessly photoshop’d–displayed wherever rednecks congregate.

I will support the New Yorker’s right to publish the cover, but they should not be playing innocent as to its impact. And I’m still waiting for the cover that satirizes John McSame.

Is this the week Adam is guest hosting WWDTM? Gee — wonder what the first question will be about.

Yo, Jelly Jam. Sorry to discombobulate you. In Internet terms, Troll or trolling refers to a form of fishing, not an under-bridge dweller from Norway. Trolling is a sort of sport where the troll is fishing for a desired reaction. A lot of pretend is involved. Calling out a troll’s bluff is sort of part of the game, too.As to the rest, I have trouble understanding your points. I apologize about that, but I think we see the world diferently.

In fact, I think that being bi-racial is very American, as is growing up in a single-parent household. The landscape has changed quite a lot since we Baby Boomers were kids.

Michelle Obama’s parents were more like the Cosby family that Jelly Jam refers to.

Neither John nor Cindy McCain’s family could be considered a “typical” American family. Both were the children of privilege.

Well, I tried twice to post a link to a Census Bureau report, but it got swallowed both times.

In the 2000 Census, nearly 7 million people (2.4%) described themselves as being of “more than one race.”

And if we had accurate, objective, records going back 232+ years, I’ll bet the numbers would be a lot higher.

Feh. This is all so overwrought and overblown.

I definitely come down on the Tomorrow/Stewart side of this. It’s a freakin’ cartoon. And it’s not as if New Yorker invented these images; it just exposed and slightly (exaggerated) them. I think the whole kerfuffle is ultimately healthy, actually.

Most interesting/annoying has been the Claude Raines-worthy righteous indignation of the pundit class that has done more than anyone to promote this crap. Remember the breathless reporting on the “Madrassa” crap last year? Remember the ABC debate? I forced myself to watch Chris Matthews comically squirm while interviewing Ryan Lizza for 10 minutes without one mention of Lizza’s actual article. He must have called Obama “exotic” 5 times while trying to assert (and excuse) Obama’s supposed “problem” with Matthews’ beloved Mythical Middle Amurkin; because God Forbid he should use the word black or acknowledge the racism that underlies what the New Yorker parodies.

Pretending this garbage doesn’t exist won’t make it go away. Even if the cartoon wasn’t super funny, at least it forced the MSM to acknowledge the existence of these lies, and their status as lies, albeit in a predictably shallow and self serving fashion.

Truth be told, I believe there is a bit of Cherokee in my father’s side of the family. They did, after all, live in the Brushy Mountains for 150+ years before moving to civilization. Hey, that would make me even more American, wouldn’t it? So………. when are all you land grabbers and interlopers going to get the hell out of my country, for chrissakes?

Funny you should mention Cherokee, cooper - my sister thinks we are measurably part Cherokee (on the basis of assertions by 3 aunts, our grandmother, and a cousin), and has asked me if I’d be willing to have DNA tests done to prove it. (Sure, why not? There’s no paperwork on any of these people, largely because most of them were illiterate…) The Cherokee must have got around…

And SharonHussein is perfectly right - biracial is the norm these days. Here in amazingly diverse Oakland, I regularly run into African American kids with light gray eyes (it’s a nice look), Oriental-featured kids with dark skin, etc. etc. Get a Life, JellyJam, what difference does it make anyway?

And you don’t even want to know how many families in this town have no male head.

Okay, hedera, you can stay - and BTW, it’s more like the Cherokee got pushed around.

just plain Hussein@68: I think that Toles gets it right even when he’s getting it wrong: the sophisticated can spot the difference.

If a version of the cover appeared on the National Review, it would mean one thing. On the New Yorker it means something entirely different.

Intent and context are everything.

What I find so annoying about the tactics of what I call the Outrage Industry (Newsbusters, Media Matters, and all the rest of the professionally incensed), is that they remove comments from context and feed (and feed on) the blogospheric echo chamber effect to manufacture umbrage where none should exist, all for tiresome parochial effect, as if there’s some cosmic Carl Kassel keeping political score and awarding wins, losses, and voices on home answering devices.

This is getting ridiculous - I haven’t seen those two for a week. I’d better go check for bodies….

Now THIS is satire:

http://www.dailynews.com/opinions

If the page has changed, search for “patrick o’connor daily news los angeles”

Ah, yes. The Laura Petrie Liberation Front. I wondered what had happened to those desperados.

I noticed that Jimmy’s truck was gone when I walked up to his house, but I knocked on the door anyway. No one answered so I went around to the freshly cut back yard (I just can’t get used to that) to have a look. Several cases of empty of Yuenglings (PA’s finest beer) were stacked neatly on the back porch. The top case was not completely filled with empty bottles, so I tried the back door - unlocked, as usual - went in to “borrow” a couple of beers from the fridge and wait for them to return.

Molly was sitting at the kitchen table; she’d quite obviously been crying. She told me to sit down. I’m glad I did.

“Gillian, these have been the best two weeks. Jimmy is the nicest man and we’ve had a wonderful time together. Thanks for inviting me, but I’ll be gathering up my stuff and leaving directly (”directly” is colloquial Carolinian for “right away”. When spoken with the requisite accent, it sounds sweetly melodious and makes perfect sense.).

“What’s wrong, Molly?”

“I’m sure you didn’t know this when you asked me up here, but I saw it right away. I thought I’d work my considerable charm on Jimmy (Molly’s being modest, she has exceptional charm) and win him over and it worked for a while. But in the end, the feelings were just too strong.”

“Well, maybe if you two just slowed down a bit. You know, don’t rush it. You’ve both got plenty of time. Give it a rest, honey. Come back in a month or two and try again.”

“You still don’t get it. Gillian! Jimmy’s in love with YOU!”

I must have sat there in shock for an hour or more. It was noticeably darker when I heard Molly’s car crank up and back down the driveway. I quickly got up from the table and ran outside, but Molly already had her bright red Miata in third gear and was cresting the hill. I turned and walked back to my house where I could sit at my own kitchen table and cry.

Off topic, but just when you think you can´t get any more appalled and depressed about this country, you find this. It´s long, but read to the end if you have time–the author steps back and analyzes exactly why this this is going on now–yet another sickening perversion of the ¨war on terror.¨

If anyone has any idea of ways to make this stop, or at least to get it more press, please share.

Absolutely never off topic.

Dale, I still haven’t received my size 12s full of Jerez sherry. Can you put a tracer on them, or at least locate the happy/tipsy UPS driver? I got happy/tipsy on Jerez in Jerez about 30 years ago, and I was really looking forward to reliving the moment. I at least want to know who got to relive it for me.

David–you didn´t give me an address, so I just wrote “David needing alcohol in Florida” on the box, I figured that would avoid any possible confusion. It hasn´t arrived yet, really? (PS–send me your address and I´ll see if I can make it up to you. shuger02135@yahoo.com) Meanwhile, maybe you should stock up on a fine new Belgian brew available at your local grocer.

This is waay off topic, but I have to get it off my chest. Ever since the bailouts of Chrysler and Silverado S&L, we’ve heard the neo-con mantra of “too big to fail.” Chrysler was “too big to fail.” The S&Ls were “too big to fail.” Now FannieMae and FreddieMac are “too big to fail.” I’m sick of hearing this. Of other countries that receive our financial aid, we demand that they embrace free-market capitalism and allow weak companies to fail, making room for stronger, more competent companies to move in. But when a favored big corporation fails in the US because it can’t make money and follow the rules at the same time, the cry goes up, “It’s too big to fail! If it fails, it will bring down the entire US economy! We must immediately appropriate US taxpayer dollars to rescue it!”

We are looking at this all wrong. Big corporations are not “too big to fail.” They are too big. Period. When the economy of an entire country hinges on the success or failure of a single corporation, that corporation is too big. Corporations exist for the benefit of the People, not the other way around. Corporations are given permission to operate by the State, and must abide by rules of operation as established by the People’s duly elected representatives. The State–that is, The People–expect the corporation to live or die on its own merits and competencies. When a company is incorporated, the deal does NOT include a promise by the State that the company will be bailed out by us taxpayers if it gets into trouble.

If we don’t limit the size of corporations to something that is more manageable and less threatening to the national–and world–economy, then we shouldn’t be surprised when this keeps happening over and over and over. Maybe if we’d let Chrysler fail back in the 70s, we’d all be driving solar-powered electric cars by now.

There must be some comedy in there somewhere.

Sharon Hussein, if by property you mean a toothbrush, well, I do own a toothbrush and I am (sigh…) a white man. I didn’t think I was causing that much trouble. Maybe we (by that I mean all Americans) could just eat less processed meat. Would that help? We would not have to brush our teeth as much, making our toothbrushes last longer and thereby making us less of a consumer driven economy and helping us to save the planet. Sharon, thank you. You’re a genius!

Remember, Rev. Billy sez “Stop shopping!”

“Cost of Bailout of Loan Giants Is Estimated at $25 Billion
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: July 23, 2008

WASHINGTON — The proposed government rescue of the nation’s two mortgage finance giants will appear on the federal budget as a $25 billion cost to taxpayers, the independent Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday even though officials conceded that there was no way of really knowing what, if anything, a bailout would cost.”

Neo-cons never met a big corporation they didn’t want to give a helping hand-out to.

Well, Steve, all I can say is that I’m glad that we’ve all got it out of our system now. So what else can help us chose our next president? How about issues? How would that be?

Hey gang, it looks we have an angry and cynical young man here. How rare.

BTW, is cynicism still cool? I seem to be out of the loop, plus I work for the federal government, so I wouldn’t know cool if it smacked me between the eyes. At least, that’s what my angry and cynical kids tell me. Often.

Steve #16 - “No, no, Obama doesn’t believe in a Sixth Century guy who started receiving messages from God in his head, he believes in a rabble rousing rabbi who thought he was God…”

That’s an interesting concept you touch on. What if the founders of religious movements were not visionaries, as presented, but actually suffered from mental illness - schizophenia, bi-polar disorder, Asperger’s or Tourette’s syndrome, for example? And what if our ancestors were just too stupid to figure out that by immediately clubbing these wackos, they would have saved humans a lot of misery through the ages?

This will be brief, since I seem to have actual work to do today and the energy to do it with.

Jake: That’s an interesting concept you touch on. What if the founders of religious movements were not visionaries, as presented, but actually suffered from mental illness. . .

There’s an interesting book which I believe is still in print by a Princeton psychologist named Julian Janes called The Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Despite it’s somewhat prolix and academic-sounding title, it’s actually quite readable. I’m working from memory here since I read it decades ago and don’t have it closely at hand to check my recollection, but Janes, after a lengthy introduction and discourse on what “consciousness” means anyhow, suggests that it was not until recently, evolutionarily speaking, that the brain hemispheres “fused” such that they communicated in a coherent manner. Janes posits that it was the somewhat fuzzy communication between hemispheres that caused earlier humans to believe that they were hearing the voice of a “god” in their minds when they were actually just “hearing” crosstalk between the hemispheres.

That sounds absurd but I happend to work in a neuroscience lab (though I am not a neuroscientist by any stretch of the imagination — I’m a computer visualization guy, if you really want to know) and one day in conversation with one of the researchers I brought this theory up, mostly as a joke, assuming that it would be dismissed. It turns out that Janes is quite well respected and that his theory holds some amount of water.

You be the judge.

I would also note that until recently, the word “visionary” was not meant to be taken as a compliment — it literally meant “seeing visions” or hallucinating. It has only taken on its more common meaning of “far seeing“.

Jarrett: Yes, I remember the slogan well. I managed to avoid service in Mr Nixon’s (and Mr Johnson’s) war by means of a student deferment and, eventually, by a high draft lottery number, not being the wastrel son of a member of the Texas Congressional delegation.

“Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. — Blaise Pascal

cooper: Needless to say, he stayed on in school for as long as he could and emerged with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1974.

Yeah, the draft did wonders to promote higher education. One of my best friends has his PhD in Oceanography for I suspect largely the same reason.

One correction to my respose to Zee Man (#92) above: I was actually 20 in 1968 and could not vote — the voting age at the time was 21 (the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971 — I always wondered why Nixon allowed it, given the general antipathy between Mr Nixon and a large portion of the youth in the country at the time — history shows us that perhaps Mr Nixon knew something that the rest of us didn’t). I did actively campaign against Nixon and vote for George McGovern in my first election in 1972, beginning a long and unbroken series of electoral heartbreaks which continues to this day. It seems that even when we win, we still lose (viz. Carter, Clinton).

Jersey: While memory is somewhat hazy on the matter, I seem to recall that it was a Nixonian initiative, in response to the charge that if we were old enough to go to the Nam we should be old enough to vote. Rather than stop the war, we were thrown this bone.

But, again, that era is befogged by the mists of time and . . . uh. . . other things.

But at least I know that Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia fifteen years ago, a fact that seems to have eluded John McCain.

Dale #79 - I’ve been working on the web site project for a couple of days and am just catching up. I read the article about the ICE raids until I couldn’t bear to read any more - I couldn’t finish it. And it isn’t as if we don’t have ICE raids here in California - oh, we do, we do. Someday, somewhere, we’re going to pay for what we’re doing. I only regret - I deeply regret - that Dubya and his neocon cronies never will pay for it.

I was already teaching when the SOB from San Clemente brought his “secret plan” to the White House. Little did people know just how many secret plans Nixon and his evil political spawn were capable of.

Favorite stickers:

Dick Nixon before He Dicks You

Nixon’s the One - Agnew’s the Other One

Oh, but those were fun times. Thought they were just a passing political phase, and that ultimately America would once again make sense. Merd. Still, with Obama there is at least possibility. He is a political animal, and he is running to win, but he is not just another politician - whatever that actually means. Pay particular attention to those around him. That will tell you much of what you need to know, as will every speech he gives/has given, and everything he writes/has written. Little of what a politician says or writes is actually hollow. It might be intentionally ambiguous regarding the question asked, but it is still revealing when taken as part of the whole of what that person says/writes. Ultimately, of course, it will be what he/she does that matters most, but in my experience, that can always be found in the body of what has been said/written.

Meanwhile, would the talking heads please just mostly shut the fuck up and let/make the candidates speak for themselves. And would voters please just learn to tune out all political ads. Yeah, I know, Dream on, David.

Steve@95 I think you are the only person I’ve ever know to site the Janes book. I picked it up years ago and found it fascinating.