As he flies around the country, Senator Barack Obama has a fondness for magazines. The New Yorker is often among the titles at the front of his campaign plane.
The July 21 issue of The New Yorker, though, is not likely to make it on board.
The cover of the magazine depicts Mr. Obama wearing a turban, while he offers a fist bump to his gun-toting wife. An American flag singes behind them in the fireplace, Osama bin Laden sits prominently on the mantle wall.
Asked about the drawing at a news conference here Sunday, Mr. Obama held his tongue, saying: “I have no response to that.” A campaign spokesman, though, was not so measured at a sketch that the magazine calls satirical: “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,” the spokesman, Bill Burton, said in a statement. “But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive –- and we agree.”
The issue is common sense - we don't dispute the historical use of satire on the cover of the New Yorker, and in fact as satire I know, understand and appreciate what they were trying to say and what and how they were trying to say it. I don't think people think the New Yorker was being racist. It's just common sense to expect these intellectuals to use common sense and not run tasteless satire, no less than a comedian should be telling tasteless jokes, especially in the wrong forum. This was just such a forum. Too sensitive an issue, although sometimes it's better to get up in your face and speak the truth. I just don't think this was the place.
In closing, however, I like the picture. The thought of Black Powah finally redecorating the White House is scintillating!
No comments:
Post a Comment