Posted on 07/17/2008 10:35:53 AM PDT by Incorrigible
By CONNIE SCHULTZ [Wife of US Senator Sherrod Brown, (D) Ohio]
Oh, if only.
If only I'd known the New Yorker would run a cover depicting Barack Obama as a winking, tunic-garbed Muslim and his wife, Michelle, as an Afro-wearing, AK-47-toting terrorist.
If only I'd known that Barry Blitt's cartoon would show the Obamas fist-bumping in an Oval Office where a portrait of Osama Bin Laden hung over the mantel.
If only I'd known that editor David Remnick thought most Americans would celebrate this caricature as harmless satire.
If I'd known any of this, I would have invited Remnick to leave Manhattan and tag along with me to a baby shower in small-town, working-class Ohio. Then he, too, could have heard one of the guests describe her toe-curling encounter with the wife of a longtime county judge.
The two women have been friends for years. When their conversation turned to the presidential race, though, all smiles vanished.
"I'm voting for Obama," she told the judge's wife, who responded with disgust: "Barack Obama is the anti-Christ."
"You don't really think that," the woman said.
Oh, yes, she did. Nodding her head, she added, "You can read all about it in the Bible. In Revelation."
Keep in mind, this is one-half of a prominent political couple in a county where they know virtually everybody. Imagine how many people she might run into on any given day.
Maybe if David Remnick had heard that story, he would have felt the same sucker punch of shock that ended my appetite. At the very least, he might have had second thoughts about running a magazine cover that telegraphs just about every ugly misperception out there about the Obamas.
To most regular readers of the New Yorker, the cover was simply a poke at ignorant and bigoted voters.
To many of those voters, though, the cover is proof that even the New Yorker "gets it." And unlike just about any other New Yorker cover in recent history, they will actually see this one because it has been plastered all over the Web, cable news shows and in many of their hometown newspapers.
I live in Ohio, but the New Yorker has been part of my life since I was 17, when I found a copy in our doctor's waiting room. I was a factory worker's kid who quickly fell in love with the magazine that proved, week after week, that there really are two Americas: New York, and everyone else.
I still subscribe to the New Yorker, still love it, and I think Remnick is a brilliant editor. But the magazine's willful disconnect from the rest of the country doesn't hold the same appeal for me lately.
It's not that I don't think the New Yorker had the right to publish the cartoon. I do. It's just that, for a lot of us who live somewhere else, it isn't funny.
Oh, it's a mirror all right, but it doesn't reflect the people it was meant to harpoon. Instead it reveals far more about those who still think it's clever to ridicule the roughly 10 percent of Americans who believe this nonsense. Those people are just "knuckle-draggers" and "morons," to quote two of the many big-city writers defending the New Yorker this week. They also insisted that people like me need to get a sense of humor.
"Come on, laugh," urged the Chicago Tribune editorial. "Lighten up, people," chastised Tom Meyer, editorial cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle. We're suffering from an "irony deficiency," wrote the Los Angeles Times' James Rainey.
Maybe they're right. Maybe this current political climate has wrung the humor right out of me. But I'm so tired of people who don't live or work where I do insisting there's always a punch line to the ugliness around us.
Nearly every day I get e-mails insisting that Obama is a Muslim. The anonymous mailed letters are increasing, too, and so are the phone calls. Last Thursday I failed to convince a woman caller that Obama really is a U.S. citizen, and, no, the immigration department has not ruled otherwise.
She called me a liar and hung up.
Hilarious, I'm sure.
If only I could laugh.
(Connie Schultz is a columnist for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. She can be contacted at cschultz(at)plaind.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
“Barack Obama is the anti-Christ.”
This woman is entitled to vote however she wants to. She doesn’t have to ask Connie Schultz if Schultz agrees with her.
It makes as much sense as believing that Obama is some startingly new Messiah, who will solve all our problems by using methods that have failed here and all over the World. And it makes as much sense as voting for Obama because he’s black.
The funny part is that your cartoon is what the New Yorker was trying to communicate, but failed miserably.
The problem with the New Yorker cartoon is that they used a barely visible title on the cartoon to clearly convey the message. Good cartoons don’t require captions or titles. Palestinian newspapers run ridiculously anti-Semitic depictions of Jews in Israel in cartoons that are to be taken at face value. White supremacist magazines do the same with black people portrayed as monkeys with big lips, with the images accurately reflecting the viewpoint of the publisher.
If they meant to poke fun at the media or rednecks, then where the hell are the media or the rednecks in the image? You could have done it exactly the way your cartoon did it, or have Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh painting a picture and the cartoon of Obama was the resulting art, or the image could have been a part of a news broadcast with art of the news anchor included in the finished product of the comic.
It’s lazy and/or incompetent artistry. That’s the “crime” here. No business would be satisfied with this level of effort if they had hired this artist to create an image for some marketing or promotional campaign or an announcement.
If the Obama supporters had not made such a big deal about this cartoon, it would have been seen by the about ten people who subscribe to the New Yorker. Now it’s national news.
Many FReepers think Obama could be the anti-Christ. I've seen it posted here plenty. I don't think this is a made-up anecdote.
I live somewhere else too, and I still think it is hilarious.
It is hilarious for itself, and for the fact that it was intended as a lampoon of all the rubes on the other side of the Hudson, and south of the NJ border, and the blowback completely overwhelmed the intended elitist joke.
It kind of reminds me of one of Wile E. Coyote's attempts to bomb Road Runner, and the bomb blows up in his now soot-stained face. Priceless.
The Good News from all this? Obama and his appalling spouse will never subject us to another public “fist bump” ever again.
she is the author of the misleadingly-titled, “...and his lovely wife”
The true ignorance resides in those who believe in Obama.
If only his empty suit was the main issue, but no, it’s his true beliefs that are so very dangerous to our country.
>>Many FReepers think Obama could be the anti-Christ.<<
No that’s Hillary. LOL!
But seriously, so what? Even suspicious Christians are allowed to vote.
For every vote of someone thinking he is the Anti-Christ, there are 10 thinking he is the Messiah reborn.
PSSST Connie, 2006 was a bad year for Ohio, I hope we can do better in 2008 and 2012 and fix what happened in 2006!
Years ago, John Cheever used to publish stories in The New Yorker about such social faux pas and the insecurities of those who commit them.
Nobody is laughing because the “cartoon” was a reflection of reality. The whole point of the cartoon was to make satire of the truth and thereby provide cover for the hapless hussein and his hate-mate.
Bigots = role model for connie?
“If only I could laugh.”
See a doctor.
Best political cartoon ever!
I made a copy and hung it on my wall.
Of course the characters are exagerated... there supposed to be.
I love it.
Too bad the Obama’s are too snotty and self absorbed to laugh it off.
STE=Q
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