Jen reminded us of that New Yorker cartoon, so I thought I’d take a look back. Mother Jones, July 13 2008.
Weren’t we just having a discussion here on the Riff about the thin line satire walks, between being the opposite of a thing and an endorsement of a thing? Well, brace yourselves, because the New Yorker has jumped right into the middle of that argument with a cover that made my jaw actually drop.
The July 21st issue features a be-turbaned Barack and an afroed, gun-toting Michelle Obama, celebrating their arrival in the White House with a good old terrorist fist-bump. They’ve also apparently done a little redecorating, tacking up a portrait of Osama bin Laden and tossing an American flag into the fireplace for good measure. The illustration, called “The Politics of Fear,” is described in a New Yorker press release as satirizing the “scare tactics and misinformation in the presidential election”; as the Huffington Post put it: “all that’s missing is a token sprig of arugula.”
I think at the time it seemed like handing the Republicans a gift.
Satire is hard.