The impending publication of the New Yorker with the cover featuring a political caricature of Senator and Mrs. Obama raises a series of important questions that have, in the past few hours, attracted significant discussion on Daily Kos and other blogs. I would like to raise three of these questions here.
Could the satiric intentions of the article's author and the artist who drew the image have been accomplished in a way that was both meaningful and respectful?
Has the New Yorker, in publishing this image on its cover, debased political discussion or participated in the vibrant tradition of American satire?
Assuming the editors of the New Yorker chose to publish the cartoon on the cover of the magazine in order to satirize vicious smears circulating on the internet, why do the smears continue to have traction with the American electorate despite the persistent demonstration that they are false?
Will the image on the cover of the July 21 New Yorker contribute to the refutation of the lies or will it perpetuate them in the consciousness of a significant sector of the electorate?
The artist who drew this New Yorker cover could have made the same point in a different way, perhaps depicting Senator and Mrs. Obama in more realistic light in one frame and then in another frame showing them as they may be perceived by those who believe the falsehoods propagated on the internet. Such a depiction might have clarified the satirical purpose (communicative intention) of the artist.
Even so, I'm not certain that this kind of image has its place on the cover of the magazine, rather than in a smaller format inside the magazine. It remains to be seen how those who continue to spread vicious lies may use the image. The decision to place the image on the cover of the magazine may have been motivated by the best of intentions (to raise important issues for national discussion) or for other reasons, such as the hope that the cover would increase sales of the magazine. (Surely the editors were not hoping that the left wing blogosphere would support a campaign to urge magazine subscribers to cancel their subscriptions.)
Ultimately, the placement of the image on the magazine's cover may serve to debase political discussion by encouraging and supporting the very smears satirized by the image itself, the smears (I assume) demonstrated to be lies in the text of the article itself. Certainly the editors should have recognized this risk and must have taken this risk in order to achieve some benefit.
The editors may have intended to participate in the tradition of satire; I would like to ascribe these noble intentions to them. It remains to be seen how the media will interpret the image and whether the American electorate will agree with those interpretations.
It also remains to be seen whether or not those who say they believe one or more of the outrageous lies satirized in this image are using these lies (e.g., "I won't vote for Obama because he's a Muslim") because anti-Muslim statements are more socially acceptable (in the US than what may be the racist reality underlying their opposition to the presumptive Democratic nominee (i.e., "I won't vote for Obama because he's Black.") Please note I'm not arguing that such sentiments are justifiable; indeed, I find them abhorrent and would vote for Obama if he were Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Baptist, Catholic, Agnostic, etc. I am merely pointing out that I believe that more Americans would feel comfortable with the public expression of explicit anti-Muslim sentiments than with the public expression of explicit racist sentiments.
The "use" of the "I can't vote for a Muslim" or "I won't vote for someone whose middle name is Hussein" excuse is difficult to understand after the intense attention paid to Senator and Mrs. Obama's longstanding membership in Chicago's Trinity Church.
Accordingly, we can hope that the image on the cover of the New York will attain its artist's communicative intent: a serious discussion of the merits of the candidates for President of the United States and the dismissal of scurrilous lies irrelevant to the very substantive discussion our nation needs as we prepare for the very serious business of electing our next president.
I urge Kossacks to be measured and respectful in their discussion of this issue in order to help elevate the national discourse to the serious discussion of the issues. In this regard, we have a brilliant model in the respectful rhetoric of Senator Obama himself.