Friday, July 18, 2008

Obama Caricature in The New Yorker

Pat Buchanan nails the real issue in the caricature of the Obamas that ran in The New Yorker. Note his telling comment, "Obama is our first affirmative action candidate." That means: he is not qualified; he is not criticized (by the mainstream press). He gets a pass by virtue of pigment. This is not the vision of Martin Luther King, who wanted his children (and, by extension, Obama) to be judged "by the content of their character," not the color of their skin.

3 comments:

pgepps said...

I laughed with delight when I saw this cover photo, and I hope it will keep coming up in conservative conversations from here to election day; someone was either very subversive or very short-sighted, over at The New Yorker. :-)

Tom Hinkle said...

The intent of the cartoon was to lampoon the misinformation and distortions of the right-wing about the Obamas. When 12% of the public is still ignorant enough to think he's a Muslim, that's really a pretty good satire. But the problem is, the right-wingers are generally too stupid to get the idea that this indeed was a satire, and the Obama campaign and many of the pundits rightly asserted that most people of that ilk wouldn't "get it." And still they haven't.

pgepps said...

yawn, Tom, yawn. No one cares what 12% of the public thinks, because you can get higher percentages than that for pretty much any conspiracy theory. Political ignorance is endemic--there's a reason we call them "sheep."

It's possible to outsmart yourself when oneiric satisfaction through satire is in view, and it is in precisely this line we find the smug "I write sophisticated commentary, you cleverly bait the boobs, he can't get it" spilling out from the fist-pumping set.