The Obama New Yorker Cover

This week's New Yorker has a cover by artist Barry Blitt of Michelle and Barack Obama dressed in their native garb, which has apparently offended many in the liberal blogosphere. My first impression on seeing this cover was that the New Yorker had written an exposé revealing that Barack Obama is indeed a Muslim, Michelle Obama was a member of the Black Panthers (or the Mod Squad) and that the Obamas hate America and burn American flags in their fireplace. Then David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, issued a statement saying that the illustration is actually intended to be satire, a decadent form of humor invented by the Romans shortly before their civilization was overrun by barbarians.

I loved the illustration, which I thought was a very powerful statement about how Barack Obama should not be elected President, and as Jonah Goldberg noted, it could have been a cover illustration for the National Review, which used to be called the Harvard Lampoon before it went national and changed its name. But I must say I also agree with many in the liberal blogosphere who believe that satire and most other kinds of humor should be avoided at all costs. I have long been opposed to satire, which just causes unhealthy confusion and, like fluoridated water, weakens our body politic. How can we fight an enemy that doesn't have any sense of humor at all if our media is distracting us with such esoteric and ill-advised attempts at comedy?

I don't even understand the point of satire. If the editors of the New Yorker actually believe that Barack Obama is not a Muslim, Michelle Obama is not a dangerous revolutionary and that they do not actually burn American flags, as Remnick now claims, couldn't they have just said that? Wouldn't it have been simpler and clearer to run the illustration with a big X over it so that we knew what they were trying to say? We are not mind readers. It doesn't make much sense to say the opposite of what you mean and then attack people for being unsophisticated because they thought you were sincere. Do New Yorkers always say the opposite of what they mean and then expect you to understand? Real Americans, I think, prefer straight talkers, like John McCain, who means what he says when he tells us that he doesn't know very much about economics, can't figure out how to use a computer and believes that we will be in Iraq for 100 years.

Satire, I believe, is supposed to be funny, though I don't see how being dishonest is humorous. I think it's just sad. If the New Yorker wanted to run a humorous cover that showed Obama is not a Muslim, they could have accomplished that goal by depicting him slipping on a banana peel on the way to church. That would have made the same point and it would also have had the virtue of being funny.

Although this modest blog has twice been nominated for a Weblog Award for Funniest Blog and I have sometimes been unfairly accused of being satiric by my enemies, as I have said many times I am no expert on comedy and any humor in this blog is purely unintentional and deeply regretted. So I must defer to the liberal blogosphere, many of whose members are indeed experts at comedy. Although liberals are often unfairly accused of being humorless, the truth is that they are so knowledgable about what makes something funny that they rarely find humor that meets their very tough standards. They are like connoisseurs of fine wine who are unable to drink anything that is not the finest vintage. When a liberal says, "That's not funny!" it is a cry from the heart from someone who longs to see something that really is funny. It's too bad the editors of the New Yorker did not consult them first before they made their ill-fated attempt at comedy.

Atrios, for example, whom many consider to be the Benny Hill of the blogosphere, but pithier, points out that for satire to be effective, it must exaggerated beyond all reason so that even a moron will know it is supposed to be funny. Only satire that is way, way over the top has even a chance of making people laugh. Subtlety has no place in satire because it could easily be taken at face value. If someone like Atrios is fooled into believing that something intended to be satire is real doesn't that just defeat the whole purpose? It would be like an episode of MASH without the laugh track, which wouldn't be funny at all because you wouldn't know when to laugh. Many liberals believe that if they don't get a joke, it stands to reason that it would probably go over the heads of most people, who are not as smart as they are. Just to be on the safe side, it would probably be better if humor were avoided altogether.

If a magazine decides, however, that it does want to take the risk of publishing satire, in order to avoid unfortunate misunderstandings, satire should always be clearly labeled. As a reader of Andrew Sullivan pointed out, one of our greatest African-American clowns, Spike Lee, opened his film Bamboozled, with a definition of satire, so that no one would think he was being racist -- against black people, that is. If he had not put up this warning before the movie, many people in Hollywood (who might not have realized that Spike Lee is himself black -- yes, it's true! -- because most of them are completely color blind) would have thought that Bamboozled was a racist film and he would have had to go to rehab for alcoholism to save his career. The next time the New Yorker tries to run a satiric cover, they should include a label that says "Satire" in very big letters just as they label all of their advertisements. Although I am not generally in favor of solving problems with legislation, the time may have come when the government needs to mandate warning labels for satire like they do for cigarettes.

The illustration might also have been acceptable if the New Yorker ran it on the inside of the magazine where people who are sensitive to mockery would not have run across it casually on a newsstand. Or they might also have enclosed this issue in a brown paper bag the way pornographic magazines sometimes are to keep it away from the eyes of children and people with heart trouble (how many children have been traumatized for life and how many deaths this cover has caused will only be known in the coming weeks). While the cover may have met the community standards of a place like New York where people apparently don't mean what they say, there are some parts of the country where satire is just not acceptable in public.

Kevin Drum, whose expertise in comedy is rivaled only by his knowledge of politics, helpfully suggested that the illustration should have been in a thought balloon emanating from the head of John McCain. Of course, thought balloons are in and of themselves funny because the whole notion of a person having a balloon coming out of his head is very comedic. Just thinking about it makes me laugh as I type this. I think his main point, however, is that if you are going to use satire, you must make it very clear that you are distancing yourself from the ideas you are expressing. It is much easier to do this in person because you can express the ideas in a funny voice or contort your face or body in a bizarre way so that the listener knows that you are pretending to be someone else, but in print a device like a thought balloon can have the same effect. You would think the editors of the New Yorker would know that. If they need a crash course in what makes something funny, I suggest they take a look at Interiors, one of Woody Allen's earlier, funnier films. The entire film is like a thought balloon coming out of Ingmar Bergman's head.

There is not much the members of the liberal blogosphere and I agree on but I salute them on their efforts to stamp out humor and especially satire and bring more earnestness to our political discourse. The readers of The Daily Kos have been especially vigilant in their War Against Comedy and I commend them for it. I hope that the conservative blogosphere, which sometimes succumbs to very awkward and embarrassing attempts at humor, but fortunately is usually not funny at all, will join with liberals in this crusade. This past week, in fact, both campaigns learned that comedy and presidential politics don't mix. I hope that we can spend the rest of the campaign with the candidates and their surrogates not trying to be funny especially since we are living in very unfunny times. Elections are serious things and there is no room for levity in such a process unless that levity has been carefully scripted by a campaign speechwriter and sometimes not even then.

Update: Kevin Drum wrote me a very nice note: "Ann Althouse misunderstood my point too, so you're in good company......" It is indeed an honor to be in Ms. Althouse's company even if only metaphorically and not literally, which is what I think Mr. Drum meant.

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