Posted on 07/16/2008 8:02:43 AM PDT by afortiori
Satire, according to Jonathan Swift, is "a mirror wherein every man will commonly discern every face but his own". The New Yorkers cartoon of Barack Obama and his lady wife, according to its editor David Remnick, "takes a lot of distortions, lies and misconceptions about the Obamas and puts a mirror up to them to show them for what they are."
Swifts satire on satire could hardly have been better, er, illustrated. The cartoon, by veteran satirist Barry Blitt, omitted no detail in showing the Obamas kitted out as a combo of Muslim and Black Panther, with a photo of Osama bin Laden on the Oval Office wall and the Stars and Stripes smouldering in the grate. Within hours, even Senator Obamas Republican revival was heading for the moral high ground and denouncing the cover as "offensive".
(Excerpt) Read more at mirror.co.uk ...
Exaggerations aside, rather than say who Obama is, doesn't the cartoon ask the viewer just how extreme left the ever changing Obama would be if he didn't have to face election?
Satire, like all humor, has to be based on a certain element of fact to be effective.
I can’t wait until the McCain cartoon cover.
“Instead, you have sophisticates in the metropolis laughing at a portrayal of the fears of the lowly white hicks. This set-up could itself be the subject of a satire, but probably at some other time and in some other magazine.”
I think the best satire could be done on Hitchens and his fixed, self-absorbed notion of sophisticates and lowly white hicks.
No, it was a satirical cartoon, not a depiction of what could or would happen if X, Y and Z.
The cartoon dealt with the misconceptions about Obama and was clearly a swipe at Obama’s opponents. Only Liberals could take a satirical cartoon that is supposed to stick it to the conservatives and be offended. It is laughable.
Hey, the Obamas really do fist bump!
That’s easy, McCain in a donkey suit.
yeah man!!!
Just more evidence that the Left is a bunch of self-absorbed, humorless scolds.
My guess is McLame in DEPENDS.......
Your wait is over...
Hey Obama: if you can't stand the heat, get out of the free country - you don't belong here, and you most certainly don't belong (or deserve even slightly to be) in the White House.
As usual, Hitchens sounds clever, but in the end, confused.
Yes, to be effective, satire has to touch on reality, and the problem with this cartoon, for lefties, is that there is nothing in the cartoon that isn’t based on the real warts that trouble Obama and his sickening wife.
Obama’s costume is based on an actual photo of him dressed in Muslim garb. Michelle’s costume is an analogy of her attitudes toward whites and America. The burning flag reminds us of Obama’s often repeated symbolic gestures of disrespect for the flag. The portrait of bin Ladin reminds us that he is very cozy with Muslim terrorists in Kenya and that he wants to surrender in the War on Terror.
The Afro and the AK-47 remind us of the Black Panthers and the Pentagon bombers, who are among Obama’s closest friends and associates.
Too much reality for comfort, I’d say.
This jerk is going to protect the U.S. from it's enemies?
Oh ... I forget ... he's a wee bit better than Obama-Lama-Ding-Dong, and he is our only chance.
It's too bad ignorance isn't painful.
Remember the Denmark cartoons? Who got mad? Who didn’t get angry? Who always become angry when portrayed other than a saint?
The whole episode reads like one of those uncomfortable John Cheever short stories.
I would draw his as Captain Queeg.
Excellent analysis Cicero. But those libs are the ones that don’t get it. Either that or they do, and are very frightened by this misstep.
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