Racist New Yorker Cover

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0708/Obama_camp_criticizes_New_Yorker_cover.html

  The New Yorker magazine is running an article about the fear-mongering towards Obama. They will be illustrating this with a supposedly ironic cover. Ironic or racist? Michelle Obama is depicted as an Afro-coiffed blaxiploitation heroine with a rifle, Obama is depicted as a Muslim, an American flag is burning in the Oval Office fireplace and above the fireplace? A portrait of Osama bin Laden.

  Sure, I get the irony. But most people who see the cover aren’t going to read the article. Fox News will show this cover a million times a day (probably claiming they are shocked by the New Yorker’s racism). This cover will be taken out of context.

  Assuming, of course, that this is just the New Yorker being clueless rather than intending the right-wing appropriation of the cover.

  They should seriously consider pulping the cover, because they are likely to lose a lot of their left-wing readership.

  Also, can we expect “ironic” covers with McCain being tortured? Or maybe Bush drinking up a storm? Or perhaps an ironic and anti-Semitic cover of Joe Lieberman? Or would someone on staff have put a stop to that?

 I bought the New Yorker every so often. I just wrote them to say those days are at an end.