Churlish Brits have long claimed (unfairly, in my humble view) that most Americans are so earnest that they just don't get irony, or even satire, hence the boomer howls about the Burn Baby Burn and traitor Johnny Walker Lindh overtones of the latest New Yorker cover. First Baby Mama Michelle, portrayed in scary Angela Davis/Patty Hearst mode, is fist-bumpin' a turbanned O'Bama in the Oval Office while the stars and stripes blazes in a fireplace, overlooked by a sly Bin Laden portrait above the mantle. Not a real subtle joke, and an image that stirs the atavistic fears of many Wasps and Fox News viewers. It appeals to folks like G. Gordon Liddy [the Nixon-era "chief plumber" who was pardoned by Jimmy Carter but bashes the Dems at every opportunity.] But get over it!! Every blog--including Feral Beast ;) -- newspaper and tv news show is brandishing this newsy and copyrighted cover, so the subversive image has gone all over the world. But Democrats should not act like Muslims carrying on over a Danish cartoon. (Not that I am equating Barack with the prophet. Hmmmm. Treading carefully here.) By now, the image already adorns pirated t-shirts hawked in Bangkok back alleys, I reckon.
Click on this post from Media Bistro' to see an explanation of some of ther other covers by the same illustrator. (shown below)
One wonders if a similar cover of Hillary Clinton would have elicited such a response, or how about one of Hillary and Obama in bed together, or one of George Bush in an apron, or maybe a foreign head of state being propositioned in a men's bathroom a la Larry Craig, or the entire Oval Office swimming in post-Katrina waters for that matter, or sailors kissing? Considering these are all subjects depicted on previous Barry Blitt New Yorker covers the answer would have to be no.
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