Indeed, as I sat down to write these words, there beeped into my mailbox an e-mail with this subject line: "WOW, The New Yorker got it exactly right, for once." Said without a trace of irony....
Somewhere between the stained blue dress and the vice president shooting a guy in the face, between swift boat lies and "war on terra" alibis, the absurd became the ordinary, facts became optional and satire became superfluous.
When hysteria and satire meet
By LEONARD PITTS JR.
"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled . . . ''
-- Jonathan Swift,
A Modest Proposal, 1729
Satire is tricky. It makes its point by exaggerating wildly with a straight face. In inflating a thing beyond all common sense or propriety, it seeks to render inconsistencies and hypocrisies glaringly apparent. Satire seeks truth in the ridiculous. For illustration, see any given episode of The Colbert Report.
What makes satire difficult is that sometimes, people don't realize they are being had. Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal, for instance, had some convinced he wanted to eat babies; they didn't realize he was actually attacking people's blithe unconcern with the plight of the poor. For that matter, when All In the Family came along 2 ½ centuries later, some folks saw Archie as the soul of reason.
I have experience in this. Some years back, I satirized a study that said many Americans feel news media routinely get the facts wrong. In a column ''defending'' media accuracy, I made misstatements so grandiose -- Bob Hope was host of the Tonight Show; Quincy Jones was his bandleader -- I thought no one could miss my point.
Silly me. I got hundreds of e-mails ''correcting'' my supposed errors.'
So I feel the New Yorker's pain. The magazine is under fire for a cover illustration depicting Barack Obama in the Oval Office wearing a turban, bumping fists with his wife, Michelle, who wears an Afro, fatigues and has an assault rifle slung over her shoulder. Osama bin Laden watches from a portrait on the wall. An American flag burns in the fireplace.
A touch of ridiculousness
The Obama and McCain campaigns have pronounced the cover offensive. There have been calls for a boycott.
Me, I like the cover. It strikes me as an incisive comment on the fear mongering that has attended Obama's run for the presidency. Still, I understand why it is incendiary: some of us will take it seriously.
To be effective, satire needs a situation it can inflate into ridiculousness. But the hysteria surrounding Obama has nowhere to go; it is already ridiculous. In just the last few days, we've had Jesse Jackson threatening to castrate him and John McLaughlin calling him an "Oreo."
Add to that the whispers about Obama's supposed Muslim heritage (not that there's anything wrong with that), the "terrorist" implications of bumping fists, and Michelle Obama's purported use of the term "whitey" (a word no black person has uttered since The Jeffersons went off the air in 1985), and it's clear that "ridiculous" has become our default status. What once were punchlines now are headlines.
So, as absurd, as over the top, as utterly outlandish as the New Yorker image strikes the more sophisticated among us, there is a large fringe out there for whom it will represent nothing more or less than the sum of their fears.
Indeed, as I sat down to write these words, there beeped into my mailbox an e-mail with this subject line: "WOW, The New Yorker got it exactly right, for once." Said without a trace of irony.
But increasingly, that's who we are in this country: ignorant, irony-impaired and petrified. So maybe we should just cancel the campaign and ask that the last intelligent person turn off the lights when he or she leaves. And bring the last book with you. Nobody here will need it.
Somewhere between the stained blue dress and the vice president shooting a guy in the face, between swift boat lies and "war on terra" alibis, the absurd became the ordinary, facts became optional and satire became superfluous.
We are beyond satire, my friends. These days, there's nothing more ridiculous than the truth.
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Excellent
Very well said.
"King and chief probably had a big beef;
'Cause of that now I grit my teeth." - Chuck D.
What I can't figure out is
What I can't figure out is with people believing whatever they want about Obama, who actually thought folks would look at this and realize it's "satire"?
I thought it was satire
I thought it was satire because I am quite familiar with the New Yorker's style when it comes to its cove art. What I do not understand are folks who are arguing that because there are people in this country who believe that Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist, the New Yorker should not have used the cartoon. Huh?
Nearly every instance that P6 has posted some piece here lifted from The Onion I have recognized it almost immediately as satire although he does not declare that it is taken from The Onion. Maybe, some of us have built-in satire detectors and others don't.
Honestly, I have to ask
Honestly, I have to ask folks who didn't see it as satire what the last satirical cartoon they recognized was.
Folks have trouble with irony too. I'm feeling mass market magazines ought to leave both alone if they don't want controversy.
Oh, PT
Methinks though dost detect too much. Kidding. I couldn't resist!!!
"King and chief probably had a big beef;
'Cause of that now I grit my teeth." - Chuck D.
"I'm feeling mass market
"I'm feeling mass market magazines ought to leave both alone if they don't want controversy."
Mmmm - 'cept the New Yorker is not a mass market magazine. Never was. Chain bookstores such a Barnes & Noble and Borders carry it in their magazine sections but not supermarkets like Wegmans etc.
Harold Ross, the founder of the magazine, once told a group of prospective investors that the magazine was not intended for the little old lady in Dubuque. During the 23 years that the Conde Nast corporation has owned the magazine it has changed but ever so slightly and slowly that long time subscribers did not wig out. The magazine will probably never run a long three part series on corn and grains again but it is proud of its legacy which includes publishing James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and John Hersey's Hiroshima in their entirety before either appeared in book form.
The first I saw the picture,
The first I saw the picture, it was connected to the "controversy." So, my frame of reference had already been disjointed. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure what difference people who already believe Obama's a secret terrorist make. They're a lost cause. I guess it's because I think they're may be some on the fence, and this'll push them over to the "terrorist" side. But, I guess, satire is supposed to be obviously false. So many people already believe Obama's a terrorist, the notion isn't obviously false. And the media has done such a terrible job of refuting lies about Obama, the notion that some magazine is just kidding isn't obvious. And white America has such paranoia about outspoken black people anyway, especially black women with big afros, the notion that the New Yorker was making fun of irrational fears wasn't readily obvious to me, either. Then again, I'm not sure I've actually paid that much attention to New Yorker covers, and so.
And I confess, every since we actually went to "war" against Iraq, my satire radar has gone haywires! With the exception of Comedy Central and African American comedy, it's hard to tell what's true and what's just satire. Nothing that comes from mainstream and/or white America strikes me as "obviously false" anymore. Especially when it comes to the Obamas. I thought the whole rumor about Michelle's "whitey" tape was satire until the second or third blog outraged about it. The conservatives Colbert mocks would be hilarious if they weren't serious. So, there's that with me, too.
Don't worry about it...it's
Don't worry about it...it's just more psychodrama.
Hey, P6. What's up with
Hey, P6. What's up with Ishmael? I thought about replying to whatever it was he last left, but decided not to feed the beast, as it were.
Ishmael be banned - no more beat downs on Ishmael
To be deleted by p6
He left a comment as Ishmael
He left a comment as Ishmael the Banned which got devowelled. Some of this stuff:
I'm in a strange mood recently and I just don't feel like dealing with replays of old excuses.
I'll stop devowelling him when he tells me what he thinks of Moynihan's solution to the problems of Black folks in that report he dropped the url for.
Except I won't devowel that
Except I won't devowel that last one.
Frankly, he reminds me of Cobb.
"Frankly, he reminds me of
"Frankly, he reminds me of Cobb."
Minus the rhetorical excess and bombastic assertions.
He's in Michagan though, so
He's in Michigan though, so it's not Cobb.
"I'm in a strange mood
"I'm in a strange mood recently and I just don't feel like dealing with replays of old excuses."
I think your feelings are normal. I get real tired of trying to have discussions with folks like Ishmael and their response is to drop a link to Moynihan's report as if that settles the argument or answers the question.
I just went by Blackademics
I just went by Blackademics for the first time in a while. Ish hangs out there sometimes. Which means he's seen all the responses to Moynihan.
So if he has already been
So if he has already been taken to the woodshed on the Moynihan Report who did Ishmael think he was dealing with on this site? Monkeys who can use computers?
That's what volunteer
That's what volunteer slavebreakers do. I've seen them turn after getting their head handed to them by me, and accost people in the same forum with the arguments I'd just beat up.