Obama fans need to get a grip on satire
I don't think he's a messenger from God, though. And that's at least one reason I don't line up with those now carrying on over a New Yorker cover like some fundamentalist Muslims did after a Danish newspaper carried cartoons that — in their view — made light of the Prophet Mohammed, sacrilegiously holding him up to ridicule in front of the world.
The angered crowd in this country seems likewise to think Obama is off limits, that he is too high up there to have to endure the slings and arrows of satire, although one thing I can say for them is that unlike the extreme Muslim protesters, they have not killed anyone yet, or threatened to, or quite demanded censorship.
Mostly what they have done is make bad, overly sensitive arguments. Glance at the cover of this pointedly liberal, highly sophisticated magazine that's always devoted itself at least partly to humor — it has the best cartoons to be found anywhere — and you'll note that it's really not trashing Obama at all.
The opposite is true — the magazine is taking a shot at the people who have ginned up nonsensical claptrap about the Democratic presidential candidate. You see, ladies and gentlemen now chafing over this thing, that's the way satire often works. It takes what its creators consider a stupidity or iniquity of some sort and puts it center stage, perhaps exaggerating it, so that the rest of us can catch onto its true nature, or maybe just have a hearty laugh at what we already recognize as doltish.
My suspicion is that New Yorker readers aren't likely to be terribly confused, but maybe the fear is that some witless, lunatic-fringe sort will pass a newsstand someplace, note the cover out of the corner of his eye, and then rush home, screaming to his wife, "Martha, Martha, it's true — Obama is an Islamic-fascist al-Qaida member, and his wife is a home-grown gun hand, and I now know this for a fact because, guess what? — I saw a drawing on the cover of a magazine!"
Excuse me if I somehow doubt this will occur with significant frequency or that the handwringing derives from much other than a sense of his devout followers that any portrayal of Obama ought somehow to trace a halo around his head. I say this without insisting that everything that passes itself off as satire is just great. Satirically intended messages can be tasteless, obscene, ill-informed, illogical, mean, propagandistic, humorless and worse.
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