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Criticism of the New Yorker

I wrote about the Obama camp's denunciation of the New Yorker cover here.

But I found a fairly interesting criticism--one that the Obama campaign certainly did not make--by Nick Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize Winning Cartoonist who serves as president of the American Association of Editorial cartoonists (amazing that such a thing exists).

?I think, as a piece of satire, it utterly fails,? Anderson told Politico. ?The artist and the New Yorker editor [David Remnick] have claimed that it is so over the top that it is clearly absurd. But it?s not sufficiently over the top. It is merely depicting what the whisper campaigns have been suggesting.?

Anderson added that the cover might have been more effective if it had included the title of the cartoon, ?The Politics of Fear,? on the front of the magazine.

?It would have been even stronger had they shown an enemy of Obama painting the picture, or imagining it in their head,? he said.

First, I think Anderson's examples are a poor description of what "more over-the-top" would mean. Indeed, they tend to make the cartoon less absurd, not more. More over the top would have Obama setting up an IED or praying toward Mecca.

But I don't think going more over-the-top was right answer either. I think the suggestions Anderson makes--either a thought bubble over the head of someone else, or a title like "the Politics of Fear"--would have made the cover a lot more palatable for most people (though still, maybe not the Obama campaign). Maybe that would have been better.

On the other hand, it wouldn't have (1) drawn so much attention, and wouldn't have (2) had what the New Yorker claims is the purpose of the satire -- holding up a mirror to prejudice (not demonstrating that a cartoon thought bubble contains it).

On the whole, I don't think it's offensive. But I can certainly agree with the argument that there were easy ways to make it less offensive, if admittedly less effective.

Full post as published by Expressio Unius on July 14, 2008 (boomark / email).