To watch the contortions over that New Yorker cover cartoon of the
Obamas is to understand whom it is impermissible to offend in the
America of 2008.
The cartoon is a caricature of Michelle as an urban terrorist in an
Angela Davis afro with an AK-47 slung over her back and a bandoleer of
ammo in the Oval Office doing a fist-bump with a Barack decked out in
turban and Muslim garb. On the wall hangs a portrait of Osama bin
Laden. Blazing away in the fireplace is the American flag.
"President Obama and First Lady -- as Seen From the Right-Wing Point of
View" might have been the caption. Phil Klein of American Spectator
nailed it: "This cartoon is intended to make fun of conservatives as
ignorant racists and essentially marginalize any criticism of Obama as
moronic."
Unfortunately for the New Yorker, the cartoon misfired. Blow-ups are
likely to be as pandemic in right-wing dorms this fall as were posters
of "Che" Guevara in left-wing dorms in the 1970s.
Indeed, to a goodly slice of the media, this cartoon is no joking matter. Michelle and Barack had been dissed!
For 48 hours, editors Rick Hertzberg and David Remnick fended off
attacks, assuring media interrogators the cartoon's purpose was not to
satirize the Obamas but to satirize the caricature of Michelle and
Barack in the mind of the paranoid right. Remnick insisted to The
Huffington Post, "It's not a satire about Obama -- it's a satire about
the distortions and misconceptions and prejudices about Obama."
Why did progressives recoil? Because the more savvy among them sense
that, like much humor, this cartoon was an exaggeration that contained
no small kernel of recognizable truth.
After all, Barack did dump the flag pin. Michelle did say she had never
been proud of her country before now. Barack did don that Ali Baba
outfit in Somalia. His father and stepfather were Muslims. He does have
a benefactor, Bill Ayers, who said after 9-11 he regrets not planting
more bombs in the 1960s. He did have a pastor who lionizes Black Muslim
Minister Louis Farrakhan. Put glasses on him, and Barack could play
Malcolm X in the movies.
And assume the point of the cartoon had been to satirize the Obamas. Why would that have been so outrageous?
Journalists, after all, still celebrate Herblock, the cartoonist who
portrayed Richard Nixon with the body of a rat climbing out of a sewer.
Bill Clinton is still denounced as a racist for saying Barack's claim
to have been consistent on Iraq was a "fairy tale" and for comparing
his South Carolina primary victory to Jesse Jackson's.
Hillary Clinton has been compared to the sex-starved Glenn Close
character in "Fatal Attraction." George Bush's verbal gaffes are
endlessly panned by late-night comics and Comedy Central. But Barack
gets the special-ed treatment. Our first affirmative action candidate.
The New Yorker made a "damn-fool decision," said George Lockwood, a lecturer on journalistic ethics.
David West of Brookings wailed to USA Today of the cartoon: "It's the
mass media at its worst. It perpetuates false information, and it's
highly inflammatory. ... It gives credibility to what's been
circulating for months, and that's what makes it dangerous."
But dangerous to whom? Again, it is only a cartoon.
Barack called the cartoon "an insult against Muslim Americans." His
campaign called it "tasteless and offensive." That they are miffed is
understandable. After all, 12 percent of Americans think Barack took
his oath on the Koran, 26 percent think he was raised a Muslim, and 39
percent think he went to a madrassa.
Yet, the reaction of our cultural elites is the more interesting and instructive.
For it suggests that Obama is an untouchable to be protected. As an
African-American, he is not to be treated the same as other
politicians. Remnick and Hertzberg obviously felt intense moral
pressure to remove any suspicion that they had satirized the Obamas. No
problem, however, if they were mocking the American right.
Bottom line: If you wish to stay in the good graces of the cultural elite, don't mess with Michelle and Barack.
On display here is not only the sensitivity of the Obama folks to
portrayals of him as a radical, but the sensitivity -- the naked fear
-- of an elite magazine that it might be perceived as lending aid and
comfort to any who would dare question the nobility and patriotic ardor
of the Obamas.
If conservatives allow such a media to determine the weapons they may
use and to limit the terrain upon which they are to be permitted to
fight, they will lose this election. They have to peel the bark off
Barack.
As for the New Yorker, it emerges from the episode as not just
unheroic, but just another magazine desperate not to offend its
readership or the people whose approbation it seeks as the measure of
its moral worth.
