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Bigots Aren't Laughing, So We Shouldn't Either
Newhouse News ^ | 7/16/2008 | Connie Schultz

Posted on 07/17/2008 10:35:53 AM PDT by Incorrigible

Bigots Aren't Laughing, So We Shouldn't Either

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.


TOPICS: Politics/Elections; US: Ohio
KEYWORDS: husseinobama; newyorker; obama
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HA HA!  Somebody call a WAAAAAAAAAAmbulance for poor Connie.  A pretend New Yorker stuck in flyover country.

I find her baby shower conversation likely exaggerated or Connie simply doesn't understand someone speaking in jest.

Liberals causing headaches for other Libs!

 

Here's a real ironic cartoon for the New Yorker readers:

 

 

1 posted on 07/17/2008 10:35:54 AM PDT by Incorrigible
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To: Incorrigible

Connie Schultz: get over yourself, lady.


2 posted on 07/17/2008 10:40:17 AM PDT by jpl ("Present." - Barack Obama)
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To: Incorrigible

The problem with that cartoon is that is how the MSM see all right leaning folks. that cartoon is not meant to be funny it is meant to depict...


3 posted on 07/17/2008 10:42:13 AM PDT by VaRepublican (I would propagate tag lines but I don't know how...)
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To: Incorrigible
Obama projects what he projects.

His willful, long term associations who are domestic terrorists, American haters, corrupt financeres, etc., his stances on the issues, his own words have established the frame work and nuance by which he will be judged.

...and his running away from his own past does not help him in the least:

THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH _ OBAMA'S UPBRINGING

4 posted on 07/17/2008 10:42:20 AM PDT by Jeff Head (Freedom is not free...never has been, never will be. (www.dragonsfuryseries.com))
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To: Incorrigible
It's just that, for a lot of us who live somewhere else, it isn't funny.

I live somewhere else, and I thought it was hilarious.

5 posted on 07/17/2008 10:42:25 AM PDT by freespirited (Never vote for a man who gets his nails done.)
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To: Incorrigible
The thing I think is truly ironic, and funny, about the New Yorker cartoon is that the Obamessiah isn't Muslim, but a liberal Western protestant mainliner, which means he is even more pro-islamofascist than most Muslims. The cartoon is perfect.
6 posted on 07/17/2008 10:42:35 AM PDT by colorado tanker (Number nine, number nine, number nine . . .)
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To: jpl

“Bigots Aren’t Laughing, So We Shouldn’t Either”

In which a hip, sophisticated, enlightend, progressive wanna-be attempts to score a tally with her betters in the promised land of NYC, with a hit piece on the mythological great American white Christian male bigot.


7 posted on 07/17/2008 10:43:45 AM PDT by EyeGuy
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To: Incorrigible
Gosh, I wonder if she knows that Swift's Gulliver's Travels was satire too?
8 posted on 07/17/2008 10:44:14 AM PDT by Flycatcher (Strong copy for a strong America)
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To: Incorrigible

Offended? And here all along I thought the outrage was over lampooning conservatives. Regardless, thank you “The New Yorker” (VRWC charter member since 7/2008)


9 posted on 07/17/2008 10:45:57 AM PDT by atc23
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To: Incorrigible
I bought my first New Yorker yesterday.

If Obamalama loses, I might just get it framed.

10 posted on 07/17/2008 10:47:28 AM PDT by SeafoodGumbo
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To: Incorrigible
"I'm voting for Obama," she told the judge's wife, who responded with disgust: "Barack Obama is the anti-Christ."

This must be one of those "bitter" people who insists upon "clinging" to religion, according to BHO.

How predictable; that an Obamanist would go out of her way to characterize any opposition to her Savior in the most extreme manner that she can possibly dream up.

The Left has to distort reality in order to make their points whereas normal people only have to state the clear, obvious and entirely verifiable facts in order to mount a devastating argument.

11 posted on 07/17/2008 10:48:09 AM PDT by Stoat (Rice / Coulter 2012: Smart Ladies for a Strong America)
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To: Incorrigible

Smugly she is.


12 posted on 07/17/2008 10:48:52 AM PDT by Gene Eric
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To: Incorrigible
"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.

The woman who wrote this is nothing but a damn hypocrite.


13 posted on 07/17/2008 10:49:12 AM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: Incorrigible
Clueless can be reached here :

cschultz@plaind.com

14 posted on 07/17/2008 10:49:35 AM PDT by tx_eggman (Privatizing profits and socializing losses is no way to run an economy)
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To: Incorrigible

But Connie dear....

The New Yorker has been deluged by readers’ complaints about the cartoon.

I guess the supposed “Sophisticatd Readers” of the New Yorker don’t get the joke either!


15 posted on 07/17/2008 10:49:54 AM PDT by Wil H
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To: Incorrigible

Ohio Democratic Senator-elect Sherrod Brown and his wife Connie Schultz

16 posted on 07/17/2008 10:51:17 AM PDT by kcvl
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To: Incorrigible
"most regular readers of the New Yorker"

No such thing. Leftist, elitist moonbats and leftist, elitist, moonbat wannabes are the regular readers.

17 posted on 07/17/2008 10:51:40 AM PDT by isrul (Help make every day, "Disrespect a muzzie day.")
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To: Incorrigible; Clemenza
there really are two Americas: New York, and everyone else

LOL! As a native New Yorker I can say that the other "America" this rube is talking about is about four neighborhoods.

Neighborhoods that are inhabited almost exclusively by rubes like herself, not native New Yorkers.

The kind of people who "can't take it anymore" living in perfectly serviceable communities in the South and Midwest because of "all the narrow-minded" people (like their parents, teachers, pastors, etc.) there who refuse to acknowledge "my special gifts and talents."

18 posted on 07/17/2008 10:53:15 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: Incorrigible

Holy crap! Connie is married to Sherrod Brown!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Schultz

figures


19 posted on 07/17/2008 10:54:10 AM PDT by netmilsmom (I am Iron Mom. (but really made from Gold/ titanium alloy))
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To: kcvl

Beat me by ONE minute


20 posted on 07/17/2008 10:55:25 AM PDT by netmilsmom (I am Iron Mom. (but really made from Gold/ titanium alloy))
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