From Yahoo! News Photos:
"
This illustration provided by The New Yorker magazine, the cover of the July 21, 2008 issue by artist Barry Blitt, shows Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim and his wife as a terrorist. The magazine says the cover is meant to satirize the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the presidential election to derail Obama (AP Photo/New Yorker)"I suppose I can see the satire they're trying to convey, but this was done entirely in very poor taste. It's done in a way where 1). people who have no grasp of satire will take it literally and 2). it does nothing to
negate all the ridiculous accusations that people throw around at the Obamas. Of course the whole satire explanation could just be a facade and it's very likely that they knew what the hell they were doing. SOMEBODY had to sign off on that before it went to press, so they knew
exactly what message it would send and the effect it would have.
Posts
2 bugged out:
Gotta disagree there. The second I saw it, I knew exactly what it was...a riff on the "terrorist fist jab" comment by Fox News' E.D. Hill. Plenty of people will get it, and the ones who would actually think it was accusatory were never going to vote for Obama in the first place. And unlike 90% of satire in the New Yorker, it's actually funny.
I understood what they were going for, but I also saw the misinterpretation coming. It was a satire that was in poor taste to get publicity.
It definitely worked.
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