Unforgivable!

New Yorker Cover Depicts the Obamas as Terrorists

            By Lloyd Williams

The closer Barack Obama gets to winning the White House, the more determined his adversaries have become to derail his campaign by any means necessary. Remember how Hillary refused to drop out of the race in May because she said that June was the month Bobby Kennedy was assassinated? Hint-hint. Or how one of her surrogates, former Senator Bob Kerrey, stated that Obama might be a Muslim Manchurian Candidate pre-programmed to hide his true anti-American agenda until after becoming President? Hint-hint.

Similar hateful sentiments have been echoed in the caricature of the Obamas contained on the cover of the July 21st issue of The New Yorker magazine which shows the couple sharing one of their famous fist-bumps in the Oval Office, ostensibly celebrating soon after his inauguration. What is disturbing about the controversial tableau is that Barack is depicted in Arab garb complete with turban, and looking suspiciously like Osama bin Laden whose portrait has replaced that of a prior president on the wall. The not so subtle suggestion being made here is that a vote for Obama is a vote for an Islamic radical terrorist.

Meanwhile, Michelle is attacked in a different way, being drawn with a big afro and a machine gun slung over shoulder in front of a fireplace with a United States flag burning in it. These images are designed to imply that she’s a Sixties-style black militant who hates her country and advocates a violent revolution.  

How dare The New Yorker put an automatic weapon in her hands! Are they trying to get her killed? What the heck is its rationale except to hint that she’s a traitor guilty of treason who deserves to be shot? And why link a natural hairstyle with anti-American sentiments, as if to say that African-Americans who don’t straighten their hair but wear it as God intended are automatically suspicious and unpatriotic!

Listen, this country has a rancid, wretched history of vigilante and state-sanctioned violence when it comes to dealing with black folks it deems a threat to the status quo. All I have to do is mention a few famous martyrs like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton and Medgar Evers to remind you of that long, ugly legacy of extermination marked by thousands of lynchings and assassinations.      

So, sorry, I’m not buying New Yorker Editor David Remnick’s defense of his periodical’s incendiary cartoon as a satire of popular misconceptions about Obama. That shocking and offensive cover was no sophisticated parody, but rather a scare tactic, a fairly literal prediction of America’s worst nightmare as defined by some race-baiting bigots.

Frustrated at failing to derail his campaign, Obama’s detractors have grown increasingly desperate. And desperate times call for desperate measures. The power elite has ostensibly declared open season on Barack and Michelle as they stand poised on the brink of becoming the first black President and First Lady of the United States with this thinly-veiled appeal to the redneck class to do polite white society a favor by putting a bullet in their heads.

Remember how Muslims all around the world reacted in unison to that Danish cartoonist’s drawing of the prophet Muhammad with a bomb tucked in his turban? Well, African-Americans ought to have sense enough to complain to the New Yorker and to boycott all of its advertisers for such an irresponsible, potentially devastating hit job one would expect from the Ku Klux Klan, not from a supposedly intellectual, Ivory-towered publication.     

Attorney Lloyd Williams is a graduate of the Wharton School and a member of the NJ, NY, CT, PA, MA & US Supreme Court bars.

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Other Responses to Cover

To the Editors of The New Yorker:

Whatever your intent—and I do believe that it was done with malice and forethought--you have offended millions of African Americans, Muslims, liberals, and patriots by your senseless and tasteless fear-mongering and by your recourse, in the cover of the recent issue of The New Yorker, to offensive stereotypes that appeal to the baser instincts of human beings.—Dr. Miriam DeCosta-Willis

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JOE SIXPACK is probably not even aware of the existence of a magazine called The New Yorker, and is certainly incapable of reading any article in it.  I actually thought Michelle Obama looked good with the Angela Davis hairdo.  As a good mom, looking out for her kids in an obviously racist country, she has good reason to exercise her second amendment right to cling to her assault rifle. 

The flag burning in the fireplace was even more offensive to me than the picture of Osama above it.  The New Yorker has a first-amendment right to engage in symbolic flag-burnings, but must not, even in jest, attribute the practice to anyone else. 

This is the second time The New Yorker has crossed the line.  (See below.)—Wilson

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Rudy,

Thank you for the forward on the New Yorker cover. Like you, I'm not swayed by the emotion or politics of Senator Obama even though he is the better choice of the two senators simply because the change that he suggests can at least be proven by his lack of time in Washington. However, the gall of the media to make Candidate Barack Obama their exotic sock puppet is beyond reproach.  Did they ridicule the "angry white male" of 1994 by cloaking him in a Klansman's robe, burning a flag with the Star of David while gazing at a photo of Bull Connor on their mantle? The exaggerated features of Michelle remind one of the Hottentot or at least Pam Grier, so for whose gaze are these caricatures? I agree, this isn't satire, but it is sad . . . and tired.—Raymond

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Hmmmm, I DO at least sort of 'get' the message behind the cover, but the problem of satire such as this achieving the exact opposite of what was intended is as old as the hills. As a Briton dare I mention, in this context, that equally old stereotype that Americans don't 'do irony'? Therefore, trying to pull anything like this off may be considerably riskier in the U.S. than in the UK. —Chris. 

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So when I got the call from 23/6 early this morning, asking me if I could take on a caption job for their site, I had not yet seen the New Yorker's latest cover and did not realize what I was getting into. They sent me the cover and asked me to give it my magic touch. I studied it for hours and then responded with something I never thought I'd hear myself say. "Fellas, I'm stumped." . . . Seeing the Obamas in Muslim and military garb just doesn't inspire the kind of fleeting, amused chuckle educed by the best New Yorker mini-masterpieces. . . . I mean, a picture of Osama bin Laden on the wall? How is that funny? . . . Sorry, New Yorker art department, but this misguided "commentary" has alienated a nation of readers who can't be bothered to think about the nuances and repercussions of political media, and just want a funny picture to laugh at, preferably one of a dog wearing a king's crown. Barry Blitt just didn't have it this week. So I'm afraid there's only one caption I can come up with for this. "I don't get it."—Gordon Weinfarb

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When Joyce King gets back, join us in asking her to update her piece on "dysconscious racism."  The New Yorker cover and their editor's excuses are examples.Rhonda and I are definitely going to try and find out if it's been updated because a lot of our folk need to read and get to an understanding of its pervasiveness, particularly among those who are "liberal" and would never think that they were perpetuating a systemic problem of major import.—Chuck

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Judging The New Yorker by Its Cover—A certain amount of post-cover introspection is important at this point. Perhaps your next cover should depict New Yorker editors discussing/arguing about political cartoons with its cartoonists. That might be a nice Manhattan-style, oblique apology. Many of us would have seen your cover as satire against Obamaphobes had you not placed Osama bin Laden over a fireplace where the American flag is burning. But the larger questions are: Why an oblique cartoon? Why exactly did you feel it more appropriate to scapegoat a Black woman and her mate? Why does Barack look ofay while his wife is sketched as the one with more cajones? Do you imagine you could have been any Whiter in your subconscious, cartoonish decisions regarding the Black male? And more importantly, Why didn't you have the cajones to satirize and to caricature the Obamaphobes directly?—Mackie J.V. Blanton

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I live in Carrollton, TX and read The New Yorker regularly, especially when articles by Seymour Hersch are published. (This will change  immediately.) I write to express my disgust and disappointment with this month's magazine cover. While I understand and love satire, I do not think the magazine accomplished the goals stated by your editor in a CNN interview two days ago. One of the strengths of satire is timing, but the timing of this offensive cover is totally off. There are many uninformed voters who do not know Sen. Obama and many voters who do not want to know him. This magazine cover will be used by those who relish in the use of fear, negative stereotypes, outright lies and racism to defeat candidates worthy of consideration and to elect incompetent ideologues like George W. Bush. The Senator has spent so much time, effort and money working to dispel  incorrect information about him—much of it unnecessarily disseminated by the news media—that it has been harder for him to focus on solutions to problems he feels he can resolve as President. The New Yorker is not helping to solve any problems, especially the biggest elephant in the room—American ignorance and racism.—Rhonda

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The New Yorker's Auto-Reply

Thank you for writing. We appreciate your comments and, if you have a question, we’ll do our best to respond. However, owing to the volume of correspondence, we cannot reply to every e-mail individually.  About this week’s issue: Our cover, “The Politics of Fear,” combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are. The burning flag, the nationalist-radical and Islamic outfits, the fist-bump, the portrait on the wall— all of them echo one attack or another. Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that's the spirit of this cover. In this same issue you will also see that there are two very serious articles on Barack Obama inside—Hendrik Hertzberg's Comment, The New Yorker and Ryan Lizza's 15,000-word reporting piece on the candidate's political education and rise in Chicago The New Yorker.

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To the Editor

As journalists and human beings we all understand that public life is not a kindergarten and that politicians and others in the public eye are always at risk of hard rough challenges. We also believe that journalism has the right and the duty to expose falsity and corruption wherever they are found.

That being said, we believe there are certain bounds within which responsible journalism must find itself constrained: we have no right to rob people of their dignity, their privacy or their reputations. And, as your Justice Holmes once said, Freedom of speech does not give anyone the right to shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre.

Your editor, David Remnick is quoted by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post as defending the Obama cover as a 'satire' – as a way of making fun of all the rumors. We confess that we and everyone to whom  we have spoken,  must have missed the point of the satire. We see no 'fun' in it. What we see appears to be  a clumsy, maladroit drawing which is obviously directed at the Obamas personally and not at 'rumors'.

Satire – if it is satire – requires wit and point, it requires art, in turning the obvious on its head to illustrate the truth hidden beneath. Satire does not need to be amusing, but it should be able to provoke an insight, a glimpse of a larger truth and the recognition, wry or rueful, perhaps, that we have been led, perhaps even tricked, into a new point of view, a perspective hitherto unnoticed.

Your plain, bald posterisation of the major untruths circulated against Barack and Michelle Obama does not provide any of this. In the present state of race relations in the United States and round the world, this is incendiary stuff, the equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theatre.

It seems  calculated to provoke hatred and contempt for Barack and Michele Obama and other people of colour,  and like, the Danish cartoons featuring the prophet Mohammed, likely to incite violence.

All of us have been readers of the New Yorker over the years and none of us can remember anything so patently inhumane or  propagandistic ever appearing before anywhere in the magazine.

We think you owe the Obamas and  the world, an apology

We are three senior journalists fropm the Carribean with over a hundred years of experience between us

John Maxwell jankunnu@gmail.com
Canute James canute.james@cwjamaica.com
Rickey Singh rickeys@sunbeach.net

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posted 16 July 2008