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Obama and the New Yorker

neanderthal

Monkey
Mar 1, 2005
215
0
Pittsburgh
The guy responsible for the cover of New Yorker was on NPR yesterday. He said everybody would surely recognize the characterization of Obama as a Muslim and his wife as an activist as sarcasm. I'm not sure everyone see it that way.
 

stevew

resident influencer
Sep 21, 2001
40,494
9,525
if this cartoon bothers obama then he is a total pussy...


i've never seen bush cry about any cartoons depicting him..
because they were accurate.
 
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stosh

Darth Bailer
Jul 20, 2001
22,238
393
NY
The NY'er should be arriving at our office today.

It's funny when I read that he was upset about it I realized off the bad that it was satirical but now actually seeing I see is point a little more. Either way be a bigger man and move on past it.

His run for the white house doesn't need another bump IMO.
 

Samirol

Turbo Monkey
Jun 23, 2008
1,437
0
The problem is that it isn't satire, it looks exactly like the image that conservatives are trying to paint. It was horribly, horribly, failed.
 

Lowlight7

Monkey
Apr 4, 2008
355
0
Virginia, USA
The problem is that it isn't satire, it looks exactly like the image that conservatives are trying to paint. It was horribly, horribly, failed.
The people who would believe that garbage ALREADY believe it. They've been reading it in chain emails for over a year. The same people who think that a Nigerian bureaucrat has 3x the GDP of his country in a frozen account needs their "immediate and pleasurable assistence". Those people don't read the New Yorker.

Taken with the cover article (has anyone even read it?) it has an extremely strong vein of irony and sarcasm, which are supposed to be the hallmarks of satire. The point of satire is to attack something the creator has disdain for.
 

Westy

the teste
Nov 22, 2002
54,232
20,015
Sleazattle
The people who would believe that garbage ALREADY believe it. They've been reading it in chain emails for over a year. The same people who think that a Nigerian bureaucrat has 3x the GDP of his country in a frozen account needs their "immediate and pleasurable assistence". Those people don't read the New Yorker.

Taken with the cover article (has anyone even read it?) it has an extremely strong vein of irony and sarcasm, which are supposed to be the hallmarks of satire. The point of satire is to attack something the creator has disdain for.
I see the problem less to do with the caricature and more that it is on the cover. 99% of people who see it will not open the magazine nor read the article making it extremely easy to to take out of context. The real irony is that the author probably ends up sending the wrong message to most people.

Really it is all probably just a ploy by the magazine to get some exposure.
 

Lowlight7

Monkey
Apr 4, 2008
355
0
Virginia, USA
I do, sometimes.

I also read The Economist, Backpacker, The Family Handyman, Counterterrorism & Security, and SWAT Magazine.

The clerk at B&N looks at me sideways. It's fun.
 

stosh

Darth Bailer
Jul 20, 2001
22,238
393
NY
I do, sometimes.

I also read The Economist, Backpacker, The Family Handyman, Counterterrorism & Security, and SWAT Magazine.

The clerk at B&N looks at me sideways. It's fun.
Or you watch

MSNBC, OLN, DIY, and The Military Channel
 

Westy

the teste
Nov 22, 2002
54,232
20,015
Sleazattle
I do, sometimes.

I also read The Economist, Backpacker, The Family Handyman, Counterterrorism & Security, and SWAT Magazine.

The clerk at B&N looks at me sideways. It's fun.
You should have seen the looks I got when I once bought a Parenting and Nugget magazine at the same time.

I was making collages.
 

MikeD

Leader and Demogogue of the Ridemonkey Satinists
Oct 26, 2001
11,669
1,713
chez moi
It's a failure of satire, because it's given itself no distance at all from the issue it's satirizing.

It's like when I used to teach photography, and the art chicks would "seek to subvert the discourse of pornography by appropriating its form," and produce...pornography.

When I pointed this out, not too subtly, I was not appreciated, but eventually I got the message across. "Look, this picture is raising more issues about your rack than about the functioning of pornography as a cultural discourse..."
 

1453

Monkey
The problem is that it isn't satire, it looks exactly like the image that conservatives are trying to paint. It was horribly, horribly, failed.

:crazy:fail^2

yeah, you know, from the amazingly racist right wing puppy-clubbing advocating hate-magazine the New Yorker.

It's an effing joke. You either get it or you don't.

I might finally subscribe to the New Yorker after all.

If one can't even endure one cartoon from the NEw Yorker, time to go back to state level politics and keep shaking hands with community "leaders".
 

Samirol

Turbo Monkey
Jun 23, 2008
1,437
0
:crazy:fail^2

yeah, you know, from the amazingly racist right wing puppy-clubbing advocating hate-magazine the New Yorker.

It's an effing joke. You either get it or you don't.
no, I get it, it is meant to be satire, but it fell flat.
 

MikeD

Leader and Demogogue of the Ridemonkey Satinists
Oct 26, 2001
11,669
1,713
chez moi
1453, Samirol's actually right here. It's got nothing to do with the New Yorker's readership or Obama's feelings on the issue--it has to do with the mass-cultural role that the image will take on separate from the context of the magazine.

If the cover showed a redneck DRAWING the satirical image, it would have attained the minimum distance it needed to avoid this pitfall. But in the end, the didn't mean to hurt Obama's campaign, but they did (in whatever small way...)

All in all, however, it's no huge deal and will be over soon, so no real whining is necessary by anyone, and it'll go away.
 

sperkins

Monkey
Feb 26, 2008
396
0
Well the cover of the magazine was supposed to be a satire and I guess not many people got that. Oh well.
 

fluff

Monkey Turbo
Sep 8, 2001
5,673
2
Feeling the lag
It's a failure of satire, because it's given itself no distance at all from the issue it's satirizing.

It's like when I used to teach photography, and the art chicks would "seek to subvert the discourse of pornography by appropriating its form," and produce...pornography.

When I pointed this out, not too subtly, I was not appreciated, but eventually I got the message across. "Look, this picture is raising more issues about your rack than about the functioning of pornography as a cultural discourse..."
And you gave up teaching photography for what reason?
 

Lowlight7

Monkey
Apr 4, 2008
355
0
Virginia, USA
Making fun of Barack Obama: Here goes
By Joel Stein
July 22, 2008


I believe comedic change is possible. Since The New Yorker dropped a bum joke on its most recent cover, comedians have appeared on every news outlet to whine about how hard it is to make fun of Barack Obama. Really? They have an arsenal of jokes to use against a 71-year-old ex-POW cancer survivor and Obama is too touchy a subject?

I'm here to help. I called some comedian friends to compile a guide to making fun of Obama. The consensus is there's not yet one standout attribute to pound away on (John McCain is old! Bill Clinton cheats on his wife! President Bush is stupid! Al Gore is a robot! John Kerry makes me feel inexplicably sad inside!), but there are areas to explore. If we just work a little harder, and sacrifice a little bit, we can achieve greatness. We are the immature jerks we have been waiting for.

He's a nerd: Yes, he seems cool because he plays basketball and fist-bumps and knows about pop music. But that's because we're comparing him with other politicians, all of whom are older than our grandparents. Compare Obama with other 46-year-olds and he's Urkel. He's the kid at the Model United Nations conference who says, "Guys, guys, c'mon. Let's not make fun of Eastern Europe." And the brutal truth is, even if women faint at your rallies, you'll never feel cool inside when you have Alfred E. Neuman's ears.



He's ridiculously earnest: Obama is the kind of guy who not only talked you into showing up for Hands Across America, but afterward insisted that it was awesome. On "Saturday Night Live," Fred Armisen plays up Obama's weird pauses and brow furrows like he's Yogi Bear getting bad news from a doctor. Comedian Marc Maron does a really smart bit about how Obama stares out into the distance while giving a speech. "The first time you see him you're like, 'What's he looking at?' But then you're like, 'I don't know, but it's good and full of hope. And he's the only one who can see it. If we vote for him, maybe he'll take us there.' "

He's manorexic: No one loses weight on the campaign trail, when you're grabbing fast food and eating whatever is offered out of politeness, but this guy is always turning down doughnuts. It's like he signed up for running for president because he thought "president" was some kind of 10K race.

He's effete: He's well-dressed. He eats arugula—which he buys at Whole Foods. He mocks those who use guns. He is, as we mentioned, quite thin.

He called his own grandmother a racist: We all have racist grandmothers, but we don't brag about it to everyone. I like to imagine that his granny wasn't that bad and that Obama was just supersensitive. Like she would tell him it was bedtime and he would yell, "Oh, I have to go to bed because I'm black!"



His name is weird: The unfunny people beat us to the Osama/Obama bit, which really could have been mined. But Obama also dropped the "Barry" nickname in college. Do you remember those classmates who suddenly found their culture and had to share it with you like they were on the ninth step of AA? You just wanted to trudge through "Portrait of a Lady," but they felt compelled to sit you down in the dorm hallway and explain how they're no longer Susie, they're Mei Mei now. Then they recounted their whole journey of identity by using a lot of words that made it clear that Mei Mei was going to be a lot less fun than Susie was.

His platitudes need deconstruction: "We are the people we've been waiting for"? Actually, I'm pretty sure we're the people who put all our money in Yahoo and then bought a house to flip and now are hocking everything we have. We're the people China has been waiting for.