Is it satire? Or the equivalent of an unintentional hit piece caricature that will be welcomed and exploited by his political enemies? Whatever: the bottom line is that the New Yorker, long the darling in liberal circles, is now under fire from the campaign of Democratic presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama and many liberals for a magazine cover that is a seeming medley of negative images about Obama and his wife Michelle.
The cartoon you see above — which will provide cable talk and screaming head political shows with hours of programming and a “high concept” visual that can be run over and over — has been soundly condemned by the Obama campaign and even by the McCain campaign (which most likely considers it a plus in terms of undermining Obama’s preferred imagery). The Politico reports:
The Obama campaign is condemning as “tasteless and offensive” a New Yorker magazine cover that depicts Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in a turban, fist-bumping his gun-slinging wife.
An American flag burns in their fireplace.
The New Yorker says it’s satire. It certainly will be candy for cable news.
The Obama campaign quickly condemned the rendering. Spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement: “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.”
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds quickly e-mailed: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”
The issue, which goes on sale Monday, includes a long piece by Ryan Lizza about Obama’s start in Chicago politics.
It’s clear from the New Yorker’s political grounding that it wasn’t meant a hit peace on Obama — but depicting his wife as a radical with a gun, a room in their house as a burning flag, a portrait of Osama bin Laden on their wall was bound to generate some buzz that will most likely not boost its subscription rate among its reader demographics. Or is it indicative of what some consider a reality: controversy, schmontroversy…if you get lots of ink and broadcast time, you hit the jackpot..
The larger issue is: when campaigns spend literally millions of dollars to create images and additional millions to scuttle negative images, a cartoon such as this meant as satire does have the possibility of perpetuating stereotypes.
Most political cartooning (we run lots of political cartoons here on TMV) latches on to conventional wisdom or stereotypes and exploits it. The problem here: in this cartoon the New Yorker depicted racial and religious stereotypes — and there is a real prospect (shall we say “certainty?”) that many who see the cover on cable telecasts or on news stands will never open one page of the magazine itself to read the piece that accompanies it.
This cover has quickly become very controversial. The Obama campaign has called it “tasteless and offensive.” Why did you run it?
Obviously I wouldn’t have run a cover just to get attention — I ran the cover because I thought it had something to say. What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama’s — both Obamas’ — past, and their politics. I can’t speak for anyone else’s interpretations, all I can say is that it combines a number of images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some, about Obama’s supposed “lack of patriotism” or his being “soft on terrorism” or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers. That somehow all this is going to come to the Oval Office.
Also:
Prior to greenlighting the cover, did you consider that it might be co-opted by Obama opponents as anti-Obama propaganda? If so, did that possibility give you pause?
It always occurs to you that things will be misinterpreted or taken out of context — that’s not unusual. But I think that’s the case of all political satire, whether it’s Art Spiegelman or Thomas Nast or Herb Block or Jon Stewart. I bet there are people who watch Stephen Colbert and think he’s a conservative commentator, or maybe they did at first….a lot of people when they first saw Colbert said, “What is this? ” What he was doing was turning things on [their] head.
The McCain campaign immediately e-mailed a similar statement from Tucker Bounds: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”
Of course, the McCain people must say that, despite some staff no doubt chuckling behind closed doors over their opponent’s new challenge. That’s the problem with satire. A lot of people won’t get the joke. Or won’t want to. And will use it for non-humorous purposes, which isn’t the New Yorker’s fault.
A problem is there’s no caption on the cover to ensure that everyone gets the ha-ha-we’ve-collected-almost-every-cliched-rumor-about-Obama-in-one-place-in-order-to–make-fun-of-them punchline.
So you’ll no doubt see this image making the internet rounds in coming months by people who don’t want to see the satire. And won’t include the magazine’s press release saying, ““On the cover of the July 21, 2008, issue of The New Yorker, in ‘The Politics of Fear,’ artist Barry Blitt satirizes the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the presidential election to derail Barack Obama’s campaign.”
And, indeed, it you look at the issues involved here you get this:
–The New York has a long record as a liberal magazine. It clearly was not meant as a hit cartoon.
–Political cartoons are run all the time in the United States and some are even more pointed than this one.
–This cartoon typifies all the stereotypes about race and falsities about Obama’s background that have emerged from the septic tank of furtive and non-furtive whispers and emails in recent months. This places this cartoon within a different context.
–It is not labeled as satire on the cover so anyone looking at the magazine — ignoring the old axiom that “assume” makes an “ass” of “u and me” — might assume that the piece inside deals with the aspects the cartoon shows.
–The cover will be run as an illustration on cable shows and most likely on some future blog posts (running it on a post such as this one about the controversy is illustrative and a necessity) written by people who don’t like Obama and/or feel he said or did something that they consider radical.
–It will most definitely appear in emails without any note about what it’s original intent was.
It also underscores a fact of American political life: demonization of candidates now doesn’t even have to be intentional.
If it’s thrown out there, it’s most likely someone will see something lying on the field that looks like a football and take it — and run with it.
Here’s a cross section of blog reaction:
This piece of legislation — and what Congress has done to the fourth amendment—which protects the privacy of ordinary citizens from unreasonable invasion by the government — matters.
Those who defended the telecoms for breaking federal law at the request of the Bush administration kept talking about the telecoms’ subjection to ‘the heavy hand of government.’ This was always spurious argument in the case of the telecoms, who had no more obligation than you or I to comply with an unlawful demand to break the law (none) and the same obligation as you or I would have to refuse to comply. And in fact, not all telecoms chose to go along with the demand.
FISA, on the other hand, unleashes ‘the heavy hand of government’ against ordinary citizens.
When I read certain arguments from so-called conservatives — like this one (exposed at The Daily Dish) or this one (skewered at Think Progress) — I’m tempted to vote for Obama just to distance myself from the idiocy of these voices.
I have similar (though not identical) thoughts whenever a so-called liberal misrepresents McCain’s “100 years” comment … or accuses him of offering nothing more than “Bush’s third term” … or defends Wesley Clark for dissing McCain’s military service.
I include the “not identical” caveat because it seems the conservative voices are often, at their core, meaner and less defensible. Granted, this perception could be the direct result of my tendency to hold conservatives to a higher standard than I hold liberals; my first priority is to attempt to clean up the house in which I live before I try cleaning up my neighbors’ houses.
Then again, out of frustration, I might just punch the ticket for both Obama and McCain in November — negating my vote and proving nothing, but giving me a helluva good story with which to bewilder my grandchildren.
Liberal Bloggers Accuse Obama of Trying to Win Election
Nominee Called Traitor to Democrats’ Losing Tradition
The liberal blogosphere was aflame today with new accusations that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) is trying to win the 2008 presidential election.
Suspicions about Sen. Obama’s true motives have been building over the past few weeks, but not until today have the bloggers called him out for betraying the Democratic Party’s losing tradition.
“Barack Obama seems to be making a very calculated attempt to win over 270 electoral votes,” wrote liberal blogger Carol Foyler at LibDemWatch.com, a blog read by a half-dozen other liberal bloggers. “He must be stopped.”
But those comments were not nearly as strident as those of Tracy Klugian, whose blog LoseOn.org has backed unsuccessful Democratic candidates since 2000. Read the rest of this entry »
It is a good article on the right-wing radio talk show host who just signed a new contract with Clear Channel Communications that will bring in for him about $400 million over the next eight years.
It has also a couple of excellent, large, black-and-white photos of the talk show host, both of them, of course, portraying him in his favorite cigar-smoking poses. The cover photo, in my opinion, shows a rather intense, sinister looking face holding a cigar between tightly-puckered lips. The other inside, full page photograph shows Limbaugh blowing smoke up somewhere.
I heard that Limbaugh is very pleased with the photos, but I don’t think the Magazine did the kind, gentle, “cuddly teddy bear” any favors.
As to the story itself, I don’t think there are any surprises or new revelations. Here are some of the “so-what-what-else-is new“:
Limbaugh is very wealthy and proud of it. Chafets seems very impressed by Limbaugh’s black Maybach 57S, “which runs around $450,000 fully loaded;” his “half a dozen similar rides on his estate;” his five homes on the estate including the big 24,000 square feet house where Limbaugh lives with a cat; the massive chandelier in the dining room, “a replica of the one that hung in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel; and of course “a life-size oil portrait of El Rushbo“ himself. There are other very impressive and expensive amenities, such as a salon “meant to suggest Versailles,” and his main guest suite “designed as an exact replica of the presidential suite of the George V Hotel in Paris.” At the time of his visit to the Limbaugh estate, Chafets also noticed, “on the table…a brochure for Limbaugh’s newest airplane, a Gulfstream G550,” that Limbaugh said cost $54 million.
Chafets tells us about Limbaugh’s tough and long struggle to broadcasting success; his hearing loss episode; his 2006 drug bust, “ after years of addiction to painkillers,” and his subsequent treatment and rehabilitation.
We also read of Limbaugh’s disappointment that McCain is the GOP presidential candidate (during the primaries Limbaugh called McCain “a phony conservative and apostate Reaganite”). But “of course, his problems with McCain won’t prevent [him] from trying to defeat Obama or from trying to push McCain toward his views.” And, Limbaugh tells us that he will “approach Obama with fearless honesty,” while denying accusations that he started “scurrilous rumors about Michelle Obama.”
And we know of Limbaugh’s intense “dislike” for Liberals, and their mainstream, drive-by liberal media, feminazis, tree huggers, Michael Savage, NPR, environmental whackos, gays, etc., etc.
We also know of Limbaugh’s intense liking of and admiration for Ronald Reagan, Antonin Scalia, Matt Drudge, Clarence Thomas, Ann Coulter, Dick Cheney, Mary Matalin, Camille Paglia, Karl Rove, Thomas Sowell, etc.
As to Bill O’ Riley, Limbaugh calls him a “Ted Baxter,” and, according to Chafets, Limbaugh has “a deeply conflicted attitude toward Sean Hannity…He speaks of the younger man with the same condescending affection that Muhammad Ali once showed Jimmy Ellis, a former sparring partner turned challenger.” But he wanted Chafets to remember “I have no competitors,”…“Hannity isn’t even close to me.”
Finally, back to Obama. According to Chafets, Limbaugh feels that attacking and ridiculing Obama “will be delicate work.” …“There is nothing worse than being branded a racist,” he told Chafets, and “If they successfully tar you as a racist, you are David Duke.”
Chafets recalls a May 16 Limbaugh monologue on what you can’t say about Obama:
With Obama we started out, we couldn’t talk about his big ears ’cause that made him nervous. We’ve gone from that to this: Not only can we not mention his ears, we can’t talk about his mother. We can’t talk about his father. We can’t talk about his grandmother unless he does, brings her up as a ‘typical white person.’ We can’t talk about his wife, can’t talk about his preacher, can’t talk about his terrorist friends, can’t talk about his voting record, can’t talk about his religion. We can’t talk about appeasement. We can’t talk about color; we can’t talk about lack of color. We can’t talk about race. We can’t talk about bombers and mobsters who are his friends. We can’t talk about schooling. We can’t talk about his name, ‘Hussein.’ We can’t talk about his lack of experience. Can’t talk about his income. Can’t talk about his flag pin. This started out we can’t call him a liberal. It started out we just couldn’t talk about his ears. Now we can’t say anything about him.
Yes, it is going to be tough for Limbaugh to “delicately” attack and ridicule Obama. But, I am sure he will manage.
Recently, one could hear on the Rush Limbaugh show a “cute” musical parody, “Barack the Magic Negro,” sung to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” by an uncanny Al-Sharpton impersonator. The idea for the song came from an op-ed piece by a black commentator, David Ehrenstein, in The Los Angeles Times.
Sharpton commented to Chafets, “I despise his ideology, but Rush is a lot smarter and craftier than Don Imus. Limbaugh puts things in a way that he can’t be blamed for easy bigotry.”
As a follow up to Patrick’s previous post, I thought I’d post the graphical representation of the Political Compass scores of the first ten people to respond to Patrick’s post. As I explained in my response to Patrick’s post, I personally feel that Political Compass is a highly subjective tool that suffers from a number of limitations and that the results are somewhat misleading. However, what numerical data we’ve obtained might as well be displayed in graphical form.
For purposes of space, I’ve abbreviated each members name to just the first three letters/numbers. Should more people reply to Patrick’s post (or my own), I’ll be sure to update the graphic above.
UPDATE: The original graphic has been altered to incorporate additional scores obtained since this article was posted.
Over recent weeks there have been several posts which have gotten into the debate over what moderate or liberal or conservative truly mean. As several people correctly pointed out there is a natural tendency for people to assume that mainstream means their own viewpoint.
I myself have fallen into the trap before and so to test myself for real I have gone to several of the political ideology tests on the web to find out where I really stand. I thought it might be fun for the rest of you to do the same.
One of the best sites I have found is Political Compass. This site looks at political ideology both from an economic viewpoint and also from the aspect of government and authority. It assigns you scores ranging from -10 to + 10 for each viewpoint and shows you where you stand.
In terms of interpretation of the scale I’d say that scores from 0 to 2.5 in either direction place you in the category of moderate, scores from 2.5 to 7.5 in either direction place you in some form of mainstream liberal/conservative and anything beyond 7.5 puts you in the extreme category (since by definition of the scale -10 or +10 are as far over as you can get and include folks like Hitler/Stalin/etc). It is an international quiz so you are able to compare yourself to people around the world.
If course most of the questions are subject to interpretation and so if you take the test 3 or 4 times in a week you are likely to get slightly different scores each time. But it seems that there is a fairly small range to your scores.
The second test is Vote Match and is geared more to US politics. You answer a series of questions and it matches you to Presidential candidates or members of the Senate. Again, there is a degree of interpretation but it is also a fun quiz.
So take the tests and post your scores.
Just to start the ball rolling, when I took the Compass test I ended up with a small range of scores but my economic results tended to be in the 1-3 range while my authority result ranged in the 0 to -2 range. So in all cases I ended up as a moderate but with a slight left tilt on authority and a slight right tilt on economics.
In the Match quiz I looked to Senate members (there is a choice to show your top and bottom 10 Senate matches) and interestingly ended up with an equal match of GOP and Dems in my top 10 but mostly GOP in the bottom. My best matches tended to be Evan Bayh, Arlen Specter and the like.
Many Democrats have had reason to comment lately on the conventional wisdom that Democrats must always tack to the center to win an election in this country.
Count me among those who want to see more challenges to that conventional wisdom (which to me just means ‘last year’s assumptions’). While I understand the reasons why candidates do it, the fact is that eight years of neoconservatism has moved all the goal posts way to the right.
To repair the damage done by Bush and his gang of neocons, what’s needed isn’t a balancing bipartisan approach but immediate corrective action. It’s outmoded ‘conventional wisdom’ to believe that Democratic candidates always have to tack centerwards (meaning shift right) to prevail in a general election or to attract swing voters and independents. I don’t buy it.
What most Democrats I know want now is an entirely different approach. With the Republicans still mechanically spouting policies consistent with Bush-era neoconservatism, what’s needed to achieve balance again isn’t compromise action, but corrective action. What most Democrats I know want is a different choice: in our government’s approach to the economy, national security, civil liberties, health care, energy policy and the environment and on and on.
And back-room deals and trade-offs between our elected representatives just aren’t going to cut it. We want to see changes that will restore to us as a nation and as individuals what we lost during Bush’s failed regime.
“Will the one who wants to be the bringer of ‘change we can believe in’ keep his promise if elected on November 4? To win this election, Mr. Obama is ready to abandon or modify some of his strongest commitments. So he decided to refuse public financing for his campaign and the spending limits attached thereto. Thus he is prepared to vote yes in the Senate for a bill that would justify the wire tapping authorized by Mr. Bush. He has also revised his position on the presence of troops in Iraq and has given assurances to pro-Israeli organizations. … These are the rules of the game and we shouldn’t exaggerate the importance of such tactical gestures. And neither should anyone imagine that politics has ceased to be politics, nor that it’s possible to win an election in the United States or elsewhere without being a realistic politician.”
This is a crucial post from Crooks and Liars for disillusioned Dems (like me) and for anyone, anywhere who has considered voting for McCain (unlike me). It’s extracted from a June 19 post by Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report, the The Carpetbagger Report.
I’ve been disappointed by Obama’s recent stance on several issues, aptly summarized here, and have acknowledged the accuracy of the following:
But though I am all for casting a cold eye on Obama’s policy shifts and inconsistencies, I don’t wish to imply that he is less consistent than McCain. Let’s just review the list which Crooks and Liars has helpfully compiled:
Don’t get me wrong. In my opinion — and as a Clinton supporter, I followed the exchanges extremely closely while they were happening— Bill Clinton has every right to be angry about the way Hillary was treated by the Obama campaign. I don’t think his anger is productive, mind you; and I think he is undermining Hillary’s chances. But if Hillary values her political career, she needs to give Bill a time out.
Hillary, as a mature woman, knows the best way to prove someone wrong is just to prove them wrong. You don’t get there by sulking in your tent or complaining; you get there by rising above the slurs and gossip, as Clinton-supporter and lifelong civil rights activist Maya Angelou advised Hillary to do in this poem. Bill used to know how to rise above the fray. Why isn’t he doing it now? I can understand why he would be wounded by the racism charges. To accuse someone of being a racist — a vile thing for a person to be — is, by definition, to accuse them of vileness. It is a grave insult. It seems to be principally these allegations that are fueling Bill Clinton’s outrage and wounded feelings. Most of us would feel the same.
Even so, he needs move on —for his own and Hillary’s sakes.
Are we seeing so many political positioning moves on the part of Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican Senator John McCain that the two of them could open up a special road show of “Riverdance?” NBC’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro note the fancy footwork:
But what we find fascinating is that as Obama has moved to the center on some thorny subjects, McCain keeps on making overtures to the right. At his meeting yesterday with social conservatives in Ohio, according to participants, McCain said that he was open to learning more about their opposition to embryonic stem cell research (which he supports), that he would talk more openly about his opposition to gay marriage, and that he would listen seriously to their requests that he choose an anti-abortion running mate (bad news for Tom Ridge?). In modern politics, the formula has always been the same: You curry favor with your base in the primaries and then you tack to the center in the general election. McCain isn’t necessarily following this path. Then again, McCain didn’t win his nomination by running to the right, either. Nothing he’s done this campaign year has been conventional.
And that has been the case this year. Repeatedly, the mainstream and new media have been wrong about what is “going” to happen or even “very likely” to happen — and not just in the case of McCain.
This includes all the speculation about Senator Hillary Clinton returning to a Senate where Democrats might be lukewarm to her. She was reportedly greeted by interns, Democrats and Republicans like a political rock star.
But what do these shifts by the two presumptive party nominees say about what’s going on? This:
Certainly he’s disappointed many of his supporters. As I said, while I more or less expected it, I felt a distinct thrill of disappointment when I read his statement. While I realize that liberal Dems tend to tack to the right once they know they’ve got the nod, it seems a bit…previous. We haven’t even had the convention yet.
The problem is, Obama can’t win if he looks ’soft’ on terrorism because the Dems have let the Republicans own the whole national security issue and define the requirements. I guess it’s too much to hope that the Dems would wrest the issue away from the right and challenge the Bush administration’s (and the nation’s) assumptions about the most effective way to fight it. Why did the left let this issue become the right’s sole property? I see it as a stunning failure of imagination as well as a failure in courage and leadership.
Realistically, it’s probably too much to expect him to take this on single-handedly right as he’s initiating his campaign for the general election. Isn’t it? I am too cynical — or, as I prefer to frame it, ‘pragmatic’ — to expect him to push a progressive platform while he’s trying to beat McCain and yet….I can’t help feeling that Edwards would have repudiated this terrible legislation. But isn’t that precisely why people said that Edwards could never win in the general? And Obama never really presented himself as an Edwards sort of progressive.
Bear in mind I don’t feel particularly inclined to defend him — he was never my choice for presumptive nominee. I am trying to understand the thinking behind this decision and to spin it in a way I can stomach.
“The North American Democratic Party is poised to become a political miracle-maker. You’ll be tempted to think that the miracle would be elevating a Black (sorry, African-American is the politically correct term) to the presidency of the most powerful country in the world. Nope. I was referring instead to the miracle of causing another Republican to succeed the most ill-fated and unpopular administration in living memory. The ill-fated part is my own; but the unpopular part is a global opinion which is shared by the Yankee electorate . I don’t remember the exact numbers, but the popularity polls crown our dear George W. with the incredible achievement of being more detested than Richard Nixon himself during his period of even greater disgrace.”
He then points out that there are two main issues in the U.S. election, Iraq and the economy. On both he says McCain will get the better of Obama.
“While the Americans have realized that the war has been a fraud induced by powerful interests which led them to commit an injustice, I think over time they will become more inclined to giving the mandate for making for a dignified withdrawal to a man who has the credentials of a war hero, rather than to someone who simply opposed the invasion. They need someone to put an end the conflict and that, furthermore, will allow them to think that victory was achieved.”
There’s much consternation among progressives and the Republicans over recent developments in Obama’s unmasking as the tough, take-no-prisoners politician — and centrist Democrat — he is and has always been. Jazz Shaw comments here at TMV on Obama’s ‘Rovian’ roleplaying here.
In a piece which seems to me to be simultaneously mean-spirited and [very] grudgingly admiring David Brooks writes of ‘The Two Obamas.’ Andrew Sullivan — who seemingly admires the trait — calls his comment on Obama’s [intelligent, strategically unexceptionable] decision not to go the public funding route ‘Niccolo Obama.’
Charlie Crist—the Republican Governor of my very own state— is right: “Once somebody has truly paid their debt to society, we should recognize it, and we should honor it and we should welcome them back into society and give them that second chance.” (NYT) I’ve always thought that it was disgraceful that Florida permanently banned ex-felons from voting, serving on juries, or obtaining state licenses, unless they went through a prolonged process of getting their rights restored. This didn’t often happen.
I always assumed that there must be other states had the same rules, but it turns — according to The New York Times — out that in 47 of them, ex-inmates get their rights restored automatically. So Florida was in a tiny minority, the other members of which are Kentucky and Virginia. I’m glad Gov. Crist has moved us forward, even though it’s just a few baby steps.
