The New Yorker

[lollardfish]

I love the New Yorker. My father buys me a subscription every year for Xmas and has for about 10 years now. I read almost all of almost every issue, skipping the articles that bore me (local New York theater/opera/music/dance), devouring the film reviews and the politics, and regularly learning an immense about. The magazine is often ahead of the curve - it ran its first long piece on Obama before he was asked to do the keynote address at the Dem convention. It ran a piece on evolution in the PA courts/school system before the decision was handed down (after the decision it was in all the papers). Seymour Hersh writes for them (I hope you read his recent piece on Iran. Among other conclusions, the Bush admin. has been giving money to Baluchis in Iran. Kalid Sheikh Mohammad and Romsi Yousef were both Iranian Baluchis, to give you an idea of the issues here.

Anyway.

Next week this cover will be running, but since it's already online, the shit is hitting the fan as we speak. Here's what the editor of the New Yorker has to say about it - it's satire.

It may be satire. I'm embarrassed to have it showing up in my mailbox. I'm considering canceling my subscription.

What's going on here? Am I victim of my own double standard? I was happy enough having Bush the cowboy or idiot showing up on the covers. I think I'd be just as offended if the New Yorker ran a cover showing Clinton as a dominatrix or with a penis (or with Bill's penis) or something else as crude. The cover /is/ expressive of the current lies being perpetrated by the right against Obama (the piece is called "The Politics of Fear"), so I guess it's a great job by the artist.

But I'm embarrassed to have it showing up in my mailbox.

What do you all think?

Comments

[pameladean]

What I thought of was a cartoon of George and Laura in a car, George doing a line of coke off Laura's arm while she swigs whiskey from a bottle and drives the car through a stop sign, killing a bunch of teenagers. I think that would offend me but I don't actually think it's as bad as the New Yorker cover, because you can't tell such pervasive evil lies about white people. The background isn't there.

P.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that would offend me too, and yet somehow that stuff never became a target of the left wing (at least not effectively) or the MSM during '00 or '04.

[bellebonnesage.livejournal.com]

But those aren't lies...

Just saying.