Just hours after it's release, the most recent New Yorker magazine, due out Monday, has been denounced from both the Obama and McCain presidential campaign as offensive and tasteless.
The cover depicts Barack Obama, dressed in a turban and thobe, fist-pumping his wife in the Oval Office. Michelle Obama, made up to look like a 1960s Black Panther, is carrying an assault weapon. In the background, a portrait of Osama Bin Laden hangs on the wall, as an American flag burns in the fireplace.
Using indignation and characterization, the cartoon is a preposterous exaggeration. Josh Greenberg (2002) notes "Political Cartoons operate as frames for the organization of social knowledge insofar as they make use of various rhetorical devices-- metaphors, catch phrases, depictions, etc.--that purport to capture the essence of an issue or event graphically."
In our knee-jerk world of instant information and misinformation, thanks in large part to the Internet, we have become increasingly sensitive to political
correctness. There is little tolerance today for representations deemed racially offensive -- of which the New Yorker cartoon is one. The problem is, as a commentator on the Dallas Morning News Web site points out, "The average American voter, especially the average Bush/McCain voter,
is not smart enough to understand satire. They'll think the magazine is
literally saying Obama and his wife are militant terrorists." Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post suggests, "The main problem with the New Yorker cover -- if it's a problem at all
-- is that its humor is intended for a relatively insular, like-minded
readership: subscribers to the New Yorker, a presumably urbane audience
with strong Obama tendencies. No matter what the New Yorker says about
holding up a mirror to prejudice, the cartoon certainly didn't do that.
It was more like a spyglass."
Political Correctness: The Shame Factor
The cartoon gets at an underlying truth. It points out how easy it has become to stereotype political candidates. In the cartoon, for example, there are nearly a dozen visual metaphors at play: turban, afro, combat boots, thobe, sandals, burning flag, terrorist portrait, fist pump, thick lips, oval office, and assault weapon. The cartoon acts a cognitive map pointing out how ridiculous the bombast has become toward Obama in recent months, especially from Fox News. The visual metaphors serve to play upon the viewer's fears. In fact, the artist, Barry Blitt defended the cover arguing, "I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous," he wrote. "It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is."
Syd Hoff, in his introduction to Editorial and Political Cartooning (1977) observes that it takes courage to be a cartoonist. "Courage is needed because there are always some readers who will be offended by the point of view of an editorial cartoon and will demand the job and maybe the hide of the artist."
If Blitt's cartoon doesn't re-energize the debate over political correctness in this country, it is hard to say what will. Terms like "offensive" and "tasteless", used by both Obama and McCain, intimate political correctness because that's what people expect them to say. It hurts to be reminded how well we have allowed politics to degenerate into an unremitting torrent of blatant stereotypes and sound bites. We react negatively to such a cartoon, because we no longer understand the visual metaphors at play here. Everything must be taken literally, because that's that way we can always hold the moral high ground. The initial reaction to the cartoon suggests that America is losing its capacity to detect sarcasm and no longer values parody unless it's done on Saturday Night Live or by John Stewart or Stephen Colbert. Columnist Joel Achenbach missed the humor of the cartoon. "The natural response is to cringe rather than laugh. Of course, political cartooning by nature deals with caricatures and heavy-handed images, but usually they're leavened by some kind of quip, some verbal wink. In this case there's no punch line."
We cannot find it within ourselves to examine our own cultural biases enough to understand that Blitt's cartoon has a long history in American political humor. As a form of parody and humorous exaggeration, the cartoon is intended to push some buttons. We are supposed to look at it and see the attacks on Obama what they are -- mean-spirited and fear-raising.
As one commenter on the CBC Web site contends, "It's not the New Yorker's fault that people are too stupid to understand that the cartoon is mocking the right-wing hate machine and not insulting Obama. I laughed out loud (at work no less!) when I saw the cover. How can anyone take that seriously."
Credit: Barry Blitt, The New Yorker
Credit: Chicago Tribune/WGN