There’s
a wonderful episode of Sex and the City, when vainglorious
writer, that aficionado of sex and the New York City life, Carrie
Bradshaw, finds herself on the cover of New York Magazine looking
worn and anything but glorious the words: ”Single and Fabulous?”
plastered above the thirty-something’s shop-worn face.
Bradshaw had been duped by the magazine’s publishers who had told her
the title of the article was to be Single and Fabulous…exclamation
point, not question mark. Big difference.
Bradshaw and the four girlfriends around whose lives Sex and the City
revolves act like the cover is nothing but an affront to their lives as
single women to each other in the scene following Bradshaw’s discovery
of self as satirical cover art. Later in the episode, each of the women
proceed to act out the emotional question marks of their lives. It
wasn’t pretty.
The message the magazine piece explored was anything but subtle but
certainly satirical, the cover forcing four women, if not all those
single women caught in their own ironic lives who watched the episode,
do what a good magazine piece does: think, ponder, and yes, question.
That’s what good satire does. And certainly that is what honest satire
as defined by the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in
exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc., according to that
purveyor of honest definition,
Dictionary.com ought to do.
In the Sex and the City episode, the writers were satirizing the new
American culture.
This week, another New York magazine, The New Yorker, is taking a
satirical look at political candidate Barack Obama. The New Yorker, long
a leader in the arena of the satirical is being lambasted for its cover art
designed by Barry Blitt depicting Obama and his wife Michelle, he in a
turban, she as a fist-bumping, gun-slinging wife, a big portrait of
Osama Bin Laden over their mantelpiece, in the fireplace a burning
American flag.
The image is an amalgamation of all the right-wing's attacks on the first
African-American presidential nominee, the guy with the Muslim-sounding
name, who has at times refused to wear an American flag on his lapel,
and whose wife has made some comments even Barack Obama wishes he could
forget.
Asked how he feels about the controversy surrounding his cover, Blitt
responded, “I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic
[let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous. It seemed
to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering
ridiculousness that it is.”
Now satire has long been a tool of political criticism. The identifiably
American form of humor emerged in the late Colonial era. Benjamin
Franklin published essays in the NEW ENGLAND COURANT that were widely
read and acclaimed for their satire, and his POOR RICHARD'S ALMANACK
(1733-1758) became famous for its brilliance. Samuel L. Clemens, aka
Mark Twain, blended wit and political criticism. In the Twentieth
Century there was the great Will Rogers, and, of course Lenny Bruce.
America recently lost George Carlin, but still has satirists Bill Maher
and Jon Stewart. But let’s not forget Obama’s hometown Chicago’s Second
City, the National Lampoon, and the myriad political cartoonists
who use their pen as sword poking fun at our politicians in our
newspapers across America every day.
So why is Barack Obama and company so outraged by The New Yorker
cover that his campaign quickly condemned the rendering with Spokesman
Bill Burton saying in a statement: “The New Yorker may think, as
one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical
lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to
create? But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we
agree."
And why did John McCain’s press secretary issue a similar statement
condemning the cover, as well as a barrage of ipso facto statements of
horror coming from the left and right wing bloggers?
What makes The New Yorker cover anymore incendiary than any other
of their satirical covers? Satire is not for the faint of heart. It was
never meant to be.
Well, no satire here. Just plain truth: the statement from the Obama
campaign was a brilliant attempt to play the victim of racism card and
shore up its liberal base recently retreating from its candidate when he,
in a
not so subtle way, moved his positions to the center.
Those writers on the left have long been the victim of racial guilt.
The right and candidate John McCain want to be careful not to be boxed
into being seen as racist as Senator Obama’s campaign so ably boxed in
Hillary and Bill Clinton.
By the way, the cover of the issue is aptly titled “The Politics of
Fear.”
American’s should be afraid, very afraid, when they lose their sense of
humor.
© 2008 HCJ Studios All rights reserved.