Prometheus 6

Well, I'm getting batted around over at Jack and Jill but I fell out laughing when I first saw the cover. I still think it is funny. The idea that Barack and Michelle Obama are black militant Muslim terrorists is absurd, which is the point of the cartoon.

Well, I don't think it's funny because...I just don't think it's funny. But I do get the point of it. And yeah- the reaction over there at JJP is a bit over the top.

This reminds me of Sen. Biden...after you hear the explanation you're like, okay but couldn't you SEE your foot as it careened toward your mouth?

It has been said that folks who read the New Yorker have odd senses of humor. I'll take that criticism and keep reading. I don't think folks understand that the founders of the New Yorker intended to promote a certain style of insouciant irreverence. The cover is in that tradition. They like Obama a lot.

I may be wrong, and I hope I am, but it's a little dismaying that the outrage over this drawing seems to be more intense than the outrage over the Pat Oliphant cartoon that was published immediately after Obama's Father's Day speech. Now that was racism from a supposed liberal.

Michelle. Not working past it at all.

the outrage over this drawing seems to be more intense than the outrage over the Pat Oliphant cartoon

You realize a lot of people are in fundamental agreement with the Oliphant cartoon. All he had to do is replace the stereotype with an average Black teenager and people would have leapt to his defense.

"I may be wrong, and I hope I am, but it's a little dismaying that the outrage over this drawing seems to be more intense than the outrage over the Pat Oliphant cartoon that was published immediately after Obama's Father's Day speech."

I may be over generalizing here but what I find disturbing is the lack of response to Oliphant's cartoon on the part of a younger generation of black folks who have been characterized as the post-civil rights generation. I am beginning to suspect that many of them carry the same "look down your nose attitude" toward less affluent blacks that was prevalent during the heyday of the Black Anglo-Saxons despite their protests to the contrary.

I know that I am in a distinct minority in terms of my response to the New Yorker cover but I think that a lot of folks are going way, way over the top. The folks who run the New Yorker magazine are not trying to marginalize and discount black folks. The recent piece by Calvin Trillin, for example, about John White, the Long Island resident charged with killing a young man who was part of a mob that was threatening Mr. White's son, was enormously sympathetic to him and Trillin did not try to skip by the racist sentiments held by whites and other non-blacks in that community.

The people who believe that Barack Obama is an undercover Muslim terrorist will continue to believe that even if, as I wrote over at Jack and Jill, the cover had depicted the Senator strangling Osama bin Laden with his bare hands. Referencing the power of visual images as a criticism of the cover simply ignores and glosses over the reality that these folks held this view of Obama with no factual evidence whatsoever to support their belief. It is akin to claiming that the Sopranos created the Mafia or that The Wire made drug dealing possible on the streets of Baltimore.

Folks at Jack and Jill are posting emails calling for black subscribers to any and all Conde Nast publications (owners of the New Yorker) to cancel their subscriptions. Others are making telephone calls to the corporate offices of Conde Nast to express their displeasure and many are sending emails to the cartoonist ripping him up one side and down the other. I just think this kind of behavior is not warranted and borders on the hysterical.

If you cannot laugh sometimes at the predicament of a presidential candidate who is being accused of things that are manifestly not true, then you either believe the lies or are so enamored of the candidate that you have lost any reasonable perspective. I do not look forward to a time when criticisms or poking fun at a black president becomes verboten in the national black community. I believe we are quickly approaching that era.

The defense of Obama's change of position on FISA seemed to largely, although not always, consist of folks saying, "Obama can do no wrong and anyone who criticizes him has ulterior motives." This is fundamentally no different from the stuff that we have had to put up with over the last eight years with George Bush. The sort of worshipful deference to the Supreme Leader that is a mark not of a democratic state but of an authoritarian dictatorship.

The firestorm of criticism being directed toward the New Yorker by blacks seems to reveal that somewhere between the close of the Civil Rights Movement and the emergence of this post-civil rights generation that we have lost our sense of irony. This is troubling because an appreciation of the gap between what one expects and what one ultimately receives from life has always been one of the cultural and psychological pillars of black Americans.

It now seems that the closer Obama comes to the White House the more that we demand that reality conform to our expectations. This is understandable given the long and troubled voyage of our people. Our journey, however, does not end or begin with the Obama family taking up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Obama capturing the presidency is a sign of how far we have come in 40 years but after he is sworn there is still real work to be done.

For those who "get it", this satirical image means one thing; but, this image will now circulate to the uninformed masses. I clearly understand the outrage of the Obama folks. Visual images are powerful things, and once its circulated, this particular one may have a more deleterious effect than is originally intended.

I saw an editor from the New Yorker try to explain this image this morning on MSNBC, but his explanations were evasive and hollow.

There are no uninformed people. The whole mess has been televised and radioed, and everyone knows either the Obamas or their characatures.

I react to it, but seriously...is that picture changing anyone's mind? 

Given the New Yorker's record, now that they know they fucked up I'm prepared to call it a foolish editorial decision unless I see another similar problem.

someone sent me the image for a project i'm working on.

i'm being classist here. when someone gives a fuck that obama shits on the black poor to get votes, then i'll care how the images of the obamas are represented in print. kevin drum knows the deal, but i think there are much bigger fish to fry.