Being a fan of both cartooning and political satire, I find it difficult to get too wrought up over The New Yorker’s Michelle and Barack cover which has the internets in an uproar this morning.
Yeah, I know that the moronic right will make wicked use of it (it will be hilarious hearing those guys and gals trying to convince their basest base that the New Freakin’ Yorker is the voice of wisdom) and that the Rovian elements taking over the McCain Campaign (or whatever it is), having begun to show their true colors already today by accusing the Democratic candidate of wanting to lose in Iraq to insure his election, will find ways to distort and misinterpret the art, but what else is new?
In fact, the more I think about it I kinda agree with a comment I read this morning (damned if I can remember where, or I’d link to and give credit to the author) that the essentially “cute” nature of the art tends to actually diminish the terrorist thing and allow even the dimmest among us to see the humor.
Okay, not the dimmest. That 28% or so of Bush-voters-no-matter-what, they be immune.
In the Catholic Church of my misspent youth, we use to call that sort of thing Invincible Ignorance.
July 20, 2008 at 12:13 pm
[...] rethought my original feelings about that cover, essentially for several of the reasons offered in this post and, more to the point, to points made in the links therein to commentary, both textual and [...]