The republicans are running the country to ruins with their warmongering policies. They abuse their ownership of the media with stories such as this on a respectable magazine such as the New Yorker. It used to be respectable until they published this on the front page.

Barack Obama and John McCain: New Yorker cover is 'tasteless and offensive'

Wonder how come Barak has had to over soooo many obstacles while McCain is smoothly sailing like a skipper.

To some extent the above statement hold true.

Long Tyam no see my fren RedCock. :-)

satire, my rear end! :P...
this sort of yellowish journalism, if anything it will do, will bolster the support base for obama IMO.

Obama and his campaign will keep sailing.


Looks like his heart will go on and on

I thought the cartoon was hilarious.  If anything is offensive, it is the media trying to spin a head-line story out of it.

Hi  Ratobhaley, long time indeed! :)

It's an attempt to induce wealthy, powerful and racist individuals to band together in order to influence the voters to shun OBama in the ballot box in November based on the grounds depicted in the picture.

Why did they pick a domestic magazine of the wealthy instead of international ones like Time or Newsweek for the cover? Get the idea?

Hi Mr Hyde

I can only hope you are joking. These "wealthy, powerful and racist individuals" don't really need to see this cartoon in order to vote against Obama. (BTW, there are plenty of wealthy and powerful people supporting Obama too). Interestingly enough, many of those opposed to Obama because of his race, aren't really rich and powerful - they are working class whites making under 55K (going by opinion and exit polls in PA, OH, WV etc)

"Why did they pick a domestic magazine of the wealthy instead of international ones like Time or Newsweek for the cover? Get the idea?"

What are you talking about?  Time and Newsweek  doing satire on their cover? That's not their league. On the other hand, the New Yorker, considered by many to be left-leaning, has done satire forever.

Also, who exactly is "they" that's picking what cartoons to put where?

 

May We Mock, Barack

Maureen Dowd

When I interviewed Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for Rolling Stone a couple years ago, I wondered what Barack Obama would mean for them.

“It seems like a President Obama would be harder to make fun of than these guys,” I said.

“Are you kidding me?” Stewart scoffed.

Then he and Colbert both said at the same time: “His dad was a goat-herder!”

When I noted that Obama, in his memoir, had revealed that he had done some pot, booze and “maybe a little blow,” the two comedians began riffing about the dapper senator’s familiarity with drug slang.

Colbert: Wow, that’s a very street way of putting it. ‘A little blow.’

Stewart: A little bit of the white rabbit.

Colbert: ‘Yeah, I packed a cocktail straw of cocaine and had a prostitute blow it in my ear, but that is all I did. High-fivin.’ ’

Flash forward to the kerfuffle — and Obama’s icy reaction — over this week’s New Yorker cover parodying fears about the Obamas.

“We’ve already scratched thrift, candor and brevity off the list of virtues in this presidential cycle, so why not eliminate humor, too?” wrote James Rainey in The Los Angeles Times, suggesting “an irony deficiency” in Obama and his fans.

Many of the late-night comics and their writers — nearly all white — now admit to The New York Times’s Bill Carter that because of race and because there is nothing “buffoonish” about Obama — and because many in their audiences are intoxicated by him and resistant to seeing him skewered — he has not been flayed by the sort of ridicule that diminished Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.

“There’s a weird reverse racism going on,” Jimmy Kimmel said.

Carter also observed that there’s no easy comedic “take” on Obama, “like allegations of Bill Clinton’s womanizing, or President Bush’s goofy bumbling or Al Gore’s robotic personality.”

At first blush, it would seem to be a positive for Obama that he is hard to mock. But on second thought, is it another sign that he’s trying so hard to be perfect that it’s stultifying? Or that eight years of W. and Cheney have robbed Democratic voters of their sense of humor?

Certainly, as the potential first black president, and as a contender with tender experience, Obama must feel under strain to be serious.

But he does not want the “take” on him to become that he’s so tightly wrapped, overcalculated and circumspect that he can’t even allow anyone to make jokes about him, and that his supporters are so evangelical and eager for a champion to rescue America that their response to any razzing is a sanctimonious: Don’t mess with our messiah!

If Obama keeps being stingy with his quips and smiles, and if the dominant perception of him is that you can’t make jokes about him, it might infect his campaign with an airless quality. His humorlessness could spark humor.

On Tuesday, Andy Borowitz satirized on that subject. He said that Obama, sympathetic to comics’ attempts to find jokes to make about him, had put out a list of official ones, including this:

“A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, ‘I was expecting the farmer’s daughter.’ Barack Obama replies, ‘She’s not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American dream.’ ”

John McCain’s Don Rickles routines — “Thanks for the question, you little jerk” — can fall flat. But he seems like a guy who can be teased harmlessly. If Obama offers only eat-your-arugula chiding and chilly earnestness, he becomes an otherworldly type, not the regular guy he needs to be.

He’s already in danger of seeming too prissy about food — a perception heightened when The Wall Street Journal reported that the planners for Obama’s convention have hired the first-ever Director of Greening, the environmental activist Andrea Robinson. She in turn hired an Official Carbon Adviser to “measure the greenhouse-gas emissions of every placard, every plane trip, every appetizer prepared and every coffee cup tossed.”

The “lean ‘n’ green” catering guidelines, The Journal said, bar fried food and instruct that, “on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include ‘at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white.’ (Garnishes don’t count.) At least 70% of the ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel during transportation.”

Bring it on, Ozone Democrats! Because if Obama gets elected and there is nothing funny about him, it won’t be the economy that’s depressed. It will be the rest of us.

I love all of Maureen's articles except this one.

Maureen Down...r u kidding me? Left wing propoganda !

Obama, the word perfect candidate, is resounding too hollow right now. I was leaning towards him until his vote on the FISA bill not long ago, completely flip-flopping on his original position of not giving phone companies retroactive blanket immunity to spy on people. He had clearly said that he was voting against it until he voted for it. Anyone remembers Kerry?

What about his views on gun control couple of weeks ago where he says he is clearly in favor of the Supreme Court decision which overturned the DC law on gun ban that now allows owning guns to everyone. These are NOT liberal issues and who is he trying to sway? He has clearly switched his position to be more centrist ignoring his base of voters that actually elected him to be the democratic nominee.

 

I am beginning to think Obama might actually stand to gain from this brouhaha. After taking on (well, sort of)  the left on FISA and the SC decision on gun ownership, he's now taking on the supposedly "rich and powerful" in the party as epitomized by arugula-eating, Birkenstock-wearing readership of the New Yorker.

The question is does this put him in the league of Kerry or of  Reagan and Clinton ? Changing positions is common place in presidential politics but most winning candidates do not  let it define them. McCain's been all over on several issues too so it will be interesting to see how that charge holds against both candidates.

 

 

You can get away saying anything raciest to a WHITE president from "Cowboy, Hillbilly, Red Neck". But say something to the Blacks, then it is "racist" all over again. Media has called upon Bush with all the possible names you can think of, portrait him dumb, ignorant Texan who cannot give a descent speech. T-Shirt and Bumper Sticker making fun of him are all over.Although protected by the freedom of speech, there's a hypocrisy in itself, which will be more visible in the coming future once Obama gets elected. If there should be a freedom to make fun of a white president, then it should be the same of the black president.
The burning flag was uncalled for in the cartoon.But Obama in "Nation of Islam" dress (mind you-it's not middle eastern Islam dress) and his wife with a gun is nothing but the media trying to stir up news. When did a women with a gun become a terrorist? Last time I remember the stereotype of a terrorist was someone with bombs strapped on their waist and ski mask, not just with a gun. What now, all the hunters are the new terrorist? Michelle Obama has 2 choices-be mick with low profile like Laura Bush in which she'll be less scrutinized by the media or be like Hillary-powerful- but should be ready for criticism, sometime they can be painful. Obama should be thankful that their kids are not being involved. Remember Jenna Bush and all the dramas... Barack Obama is a Muslim name, he has to live with it. People will make that connections no matter what, it's a human natural behavior irrelevant to race.
For all those Obama fan, race WILL be an issue, be prepared for it. If you think you should be ALLOWED to make fun of Bush regarding his race, it should be the other way around too. Racism exist in every race, not just white, that includes Nepali too.
Ps: I'm going to vote for Obama, not because of his race but of his policy and what he stands. If he start flip flopping more, I'll go with McCain.
My 2 cents.