Remember what I said about campaign noise obscuring the issues last week? Well, The New Yorker turned up the volume with a poorly executed satire of the fear factor in this year’s election, running a cover illustration that cobbles together all of the nasty rumors being floated about Barack and Michelle Obama by the wingnuts on the right.
The Huffington Post offered a pretty cogent take on the cover:
The illustration, by Barry Blitt, is called “The Politics of Fear” and, according to the NYer press release, “satirizes the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama’s campaign.” Uh-huh. What’s that they say about repeating a rumor?
Presumably the New Yorker readership is sophisticated enough to get the joke, but still: this is going to upset a lot of people, probably for the same reason it’s going to delight a lot of other people, namely those on the right: Because it’s got all the scare tactics and misinformation that has so far been used to derail Barack Obama’s campaign — all in one handy illustration. Anyone who’s tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who’s tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism— well, here’s your image.
The New Yorker and the artist — Barry Blitt — defend the cover, but somehow miss the point. Yes, satirizing the conspiracy culture is perfectly fine and should be encouraged — but the satire has to work. It has to be funny. And it has to be clear who the target is.
And that’s the problem. There is nothing about this image that separates it from the garbage bouncing around on e-mail. The most significant visual clue as to intent, from what I can glean, is the magazine’s logo, which I guess would signal who the audience is supposed to be.
It is a joke that misfires badly and, in the process, ends up endorsing the very people it was meant to target.
Hank Kalet 
