Thanks for the Satire

The New Yorker magazine is renowned for its satirical covers. You can buy volumes archiving the covers going back to 1925. Now, it appears, it's time for another giant Obamaflap, this time over this particular effort.

There may have been controversy in the past over how successful a particular New Yorker cover has been, but never a chorus of voices saying it shouldn't have been published, that somehow this particular subject matter transcends the First Amendment. As we have subscribed to The New Yorker for decades, I don't regard this cover as particularly extraordinary as one of their political efforts.....it's perhaps somewhat broadly drawn for my tastes.

The more interesting question here stems from a comment I heard on a cable channel concerning the ability of the average person to draw the satirical inference from the cover, having viewed it "-on a newsstand." The conclusion was that it would take "-great mental effort" for the average person to think his or her way through to the lampooning the magazine intended. I wonder how many people would view this cover in passing and, their brains melting down from attempting analysis of the subject matter, have gone on to raise a controversy on this level. As I know The New Yorker and its probable readership pretty well, my conclusion: damn few.

The controversy stemmed from a rather blatant objection from the Obama campaign directly to the media. The second step, of course, was for the media to create a controversy where none might have ever come about. I can only infer that the Obama campaign wanted the controversy, their motives in doing this I can hardly imagine. Perhaps public attention to the candidate is flagging. The media, of course, and for the nth time, have proven the perfect no-cost tool in inflating a passing incident to a mouth-foaming issue, this time over the putative martyrdom of Barack & Michelle by The New Yorker.

Whatever anyone thinks, its publication is clearly Freedom of the Press (and I'm not defending The New Yorker....), all the rest being opinions & taste. Nothing here goes beyond New York Times v. Sullivan, which means it is in violation of no civil or criminal law. End of story.