Liberals, when caught out in some violation of progressive
propriety, often invoke their history of fine sentiments as a
defense. Recall that Geraldine Ferraro, given what she regards as
her unimpeachable record in support of all good things, was
flabbergasted that anyone could see racism in her scoffing remarks
at Obama’s success and in her complaints about Hillary Clinton as a
victim of reverse discrimination.
A rude shock of this sort is now rattling the progressive cocoon
at the New Yorker. Understanding themselves as surrogates
for Obama, the New Yorker editors didn’t think themselves
capable of offending the esteemed candidate or deviating from the
canons of liberal good taste.
So the furor over their “satirical” cover depicting the Obamas as revolutionaries
leaves these sharp and sophisticated editors befuddled and perhaps
hurt. After all, they are obviously on the right side of history
and were just doing their part to help the candidate. It will no
doubt sting to be treated at fashionable parties this week as
dim-witted advocates whose zeal to protect their hero has ended up
damaging him.
Is this another case of liberals undone by their own cocoon
mentality? The frantic explanations of David Remnick and others at
the magazine would suggest so. Apparently it never occurred to them
anyone might take offense, since in their minds all right-thinking
people should immediately see that the images used in the cover
bear no connection whatsoever to reality.
The cover was designed to expose the “prejudices” and “dark
imaginings” of Obama’s critics and the “absurdity” of the charges
thrown at him, says Remnick to the Huffington Post, revealing
his anxiety at having offended the Obama campaign.
“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.”
Dark imaginings, prejudices, idiotic notions — it is all so
obvious to Remnick. So why isn’t it to everyone else?
The cover’s artist, Barry Blitt, adds that he was simply
illustrating how “preposterous” it is to think of the Obamas as
unpatriotic and wanted to capture the “fear-mongering
ridiculousness that it is.” Meanwhile, journalist Clarence Page, a
trusted arbiter of taste for the establishment, chips in that the
cover lampoons the “crazy ignorance out there.”
While an image like this seems fantastical to Remnick and
company with their exalted understanding of such things, it doesn’t
seem fantastical to Obama’s campaign operatives, who remember all
too well the factual, not fantastical, image of Obama in Islamic
garb that Hillary’s campaign disseminated via the Drudge Report to
the blue-collar hinterlands. Nor were the weeks of coverage of
Obama’s militant black separatist church just a fantasy to them but
a fire they have yet to put out. The New Yorker cover
greatly annoys them by stirring all of this back up.
Remnick argues that the cover isn’t satirizing Obama but his
crackpot critics. Somehow he forgot that the subject of the satire
actually needs to be in it. Perhaps if the image had been
restricted to the Osama portrait and flag burning in the fireplace
he could have gotten away it. But mixing factual elements — the
Obamas have fist-bumped, Obama has been pictured in a turban, they
did attend a black separatist church — with fantastical ones
explains its too-close-for-comfort feel.
Were the Obama campaign more restrained, it would have ignored
the cover. But his staffers couldn’t help themselves; their quick
and sensitive reaction reveals that they know Obama’s most
significant liability is that many Americans continue to see him as
an unknown quantity with an outside-the-mainstream philosophy and
past.
Just when Obama thought that he had put his problem with elitism
behind him, it rears back in the form of bumbling supporters at the
New Yorker who have provided common folk with an
ill-advised satirical image that cements their “crazy
ignorance.”
