I read and I watched the barkers trading opinions on whether the cover should have run and how it rated on the tasteless meter. It’s split. But when I see Carville defending it down the line to Bill Bennett who pretty much says what I did, I have to give pause. I remember that I chuckled verbatim in the way that Barry Blitt wanted me to when he cartooned a cover with Achmed Dannyjob sitting in the loo with his pants around his ankles and tapping some (likely) senator’s foot in the next stall. If I liked the present President of Persia (we’ve never met) I might have thought it was unfair treatment of a guy who is doing his best to make his country get along with the rest of the world. But then I remember his foolish comments about no gays in Iran and the drawing fit like a glove.
Cartoonist are supposed to be funny as part of their message. But not just funny, because they are usually trying to make a point and draw us in through humor. Not every one laughs at the same kind of stuff and though we might “get” a joke it may not rate so much as a smirk.
The spate of late night jokes about McCain’s age are curious. The only other place you see these jokes really are when they are re-run in the main stream media. Most are lame and make me squirm in a way that the cover did. I suppose it is his fault that he is old and we usually applaud that. But do you see any goofy guffawing at his mother’s age? The only one I’ve heard, he told, about her trying to rent a car in France. The agency said they wouldn’t let a 95 year old have a car, so she bought one.
Caricaturizing Levantines with XXL schnozzes is common as dirt and just as funny, unless, you are predisposed to having those people made fun of because you think they deserve it. People who were interviewed for TV yesterday, peeps on the street, thought the Os were Muslim (not that there’s anything wrong with that). So instead of the cover trashing the 527 type lies and disinformation that is out there in pretty good numbers, a lot of people will have their fears or prejudices reinforced. Of course the mag can print anything they want, but “brilliant” as NY Mag’s John Heileman called it, and similar praise from Joan Walsh of Salon, is a little self serving. I notice that most of the paid commentators are coming down firmly on one side or the other while CYAers are in the “I don’t know, whadda you think?” school. For me, the joke needed to be funnier.
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I am such an elitist that I thought the NY cover was hilarious, but what do I know?
ReplyDeleteI'm with Bear...I thimk the New Yorker cover is waaay chuckle-worthy.
ReplyDeleteHaving been raised on MAD Magazine, done many book reports by reading the Classics Illustrated versions of my reading assignments, and been in total thrall to R. Crumb (perhaps the greatest social satirist of the 60's and 70's), I am a fanatical believer in the power of comics and cartoons to expand our vision while turning conventional wisdom inside-out. I say satirize with extreme prejudice anything that moves and half of what doedn't. By my standards, the New Yorker rates at least a B+/A- for this effort.
Of course ther will be attempts such as
THIS to mirror the theme from the other side of the political fence. These will always fail, no matter how funny and well executed, for one fundamental reason:
The right-winger misinformation campaign to falsely smear the Obamas (and all Democrats and even Repulican apostates for that matter) as unpatriotic terrorist-lovin' Manchurian Muslims has saturated the media landscape to the point that our MainstreamCorporateMedia actually cover these stories, usually uncritically, and rarely report the fact that these claims are wholly fabricated malicious fantasies.
The low-information (aka ignorant) American Infotainment consumer/voter therefore takes away that these stories MUST be true, or why would they be on the TeeVee in the first place?!?
You even have the "news reporters" and punditocracy so confused that we witness the grotesque spectacle of MSNBC's superstar Chris Matthews referring to Obama as "Osama" TWICE in the same week..on the air!!
(He did apologize profusely in a Ralph Kramden, homina homina kinda way)
By contrast there is no analagous left-wing anti-McCain message machine that has any real presence in mainstream print or tube coverage. McCain's foibles, flippity-flops, angry outbursts and complete ignorance of the basic facts on major issues has apparently been declared off limits by the press corpse in this country.
Maybe we need lots more satirical cartoons to get through to the American public before we make another monumental blunder by electing another Republican to further flush this once great nation into the septic tank.