It was a slow news day, indeed, that prompted the major media to pounce on The New Yorker magazine like a pack of salivating jackals on a tender, wounded baby antelope. Chris Matthews lambasted it, Wolf Blitzer certainly caught his beard in a ringer, and the perky ire of all those blonde Fox News vixens and supple MSNBC brunettes reared its awful head. Bill O'Reilly came out against the magazine, whilst wearing a grin normally categorized as "shit-eating," probably just because The New Yorker is a manifestation of that all-pervasive "liberal media" so influential among the wry, esoterically-witted crowd comprising most of this country. Even crotchety, wet blanket John McCain expressed disapproval of the cover and defended his rival (though I hear that he doesn't go for complex irony and instead favors the Fatty-Arbuckle-riding-a-bicycle-with-a-comically-oversized-wheel variety of humor that was so popular in his youth).
This controversy was nothing more than an orgy. In case you're not familiar with the cover, it depicted Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., standing in the Oval Office dressed in Islamic garb, while the American flag crackles in the fireplace and a portrait of Osama Bin-Laden hangs above the mantle. He is delivering a fist-pound to his wife, Michelle Obama, who is decorated with an AK-47 and a giant afro " a la '60s Communist leader Angela Davis.
The idea was to hyper-ironically parody all of the silly and stupid preconceptions about Obama that are popular with the far right wing. But it backfired. Lacking any white women in peril or Iranian military training exercises to exaggerate, the major news media blew the entire thing out of proportion, arguing that the common man would misunderstand The New Yorker's cover, believing that it was intended to be hurtful towards Obama or reinforce their own prejudices.
There are a few problems with the logic of transforming this into news. First of all, if people don't get the cover and think that it is an attack on Obama, they will merely be disgusted and further steel themselves against the evil forces massing against him. And when the average simpleton who does believe that Obama is a Muslim heads down to his local newsstand to buy a copy of Jugs or The Weekly Standard (or whatever masturbatory periodical you prefer) and catches a glimpse of The New Yorker's cover, he will only think, "I already believe that!" and chuckle at how this cluttered fiasco of a world seems to reflect his wildly misguided opinions back at him. No one should want his vote, anyway. As for those of us who do appreciate The New Yorker's brand of jaded humor (though it probably could have tried harder,or been a little more clever in any case), we'll just chuckle smugly until our monocles fall and splash into our wine glasses.
This all goes to show how the media talks down to the average viewer, demanding--almost compelling--that he or she not understand the rudiments of satire. If the average person isn't able to grasp a subtlety, it is likely the fault of the same infotainment complex that attacked The New Yorker. This insidious machine emphasizes nothing but bombast and the sensational, bringing everything down to the lowest common denominator of understandability. I wonder if Jonathan Swift had to deal with this sort of crap when he wrote "Gulliver's Travels" or "A Modest Proposal" (not that The New Yorker's cover is comparable, but still...). Maybe. Maybe the Crown was worried that people would try to sail to Lilliput or that the Irish would start eating their infants. But for some reason (call it a hunch), I think that the impulse to elevate every minor squawk of edgy dissent or departure from bland conventions into an issue is a hallmark solely of our own glib time and place.
In case you were offended, don't let The New Yorker's cover turn you off. Inside, you can find a 17-page sample of the expiring John Updike's excruciating English, or maybe a poem suffering from such thorough enjambment that it is, in fact, the alphabet. But all kidding aside, The New Yorker is still pretty cool. It is the media vultures that treat satire and edgy taste like carrion who are beneath my contempt. Although Islamic extremists may burn down the nearest Danish embassy when a prickly cartoon ruffles their feathers, is our method all that preferable?
