By: Marc Morial
President and CEO
National Urban League
I want to add my voice to the growing chorus of Americans who were offended by the unfunny cartoon that appeared on the July 21 cover of The New Yorker magazine. As has been widely reported, the New Yorker cover, in what they claim was a sincere attempt at satire, depicted caricatures of Barack and Michelle Obama fist-bumping in the Oval Office, with Barack wearing Muslim garb, Michelle dressed like a sixties-era machine-gun toting revolutionary, the American flag burning in the fireplace and a picture of Osama Bin Laden on the wall. The cartoonist, Barry Blitt and the New Yorker editor, David Remnick, have defended the cover as "satire meant to target distortions, misconceptions and prejudices about Obama." The Obama campaign called it "tasteless and offensive." I agree.
With more than 10 percent of American voters holding the false belief that Senator Obama is actually a Muslim, or worse, that he has sympathies for terrorists, now is not the time, and the New Yorker front cover is not the place to play games with this misconception. As is so often the case with mainstream assumptions that thrive in an airtight cultural vacuum, the New Yorker assumed that because its urbane, white readership, would immediately get the "joke," everybody else would too. How wrong they were.
Outrage at the insensitivity of the cover is raging across the wide swath of America that lives outside the universe of Manhattan. Millions of Americans who have never picked up a copy of the New Yorker understand the unique nuances and potential pitfalls of a presidential campaign featuring the first African American candidate who happens to have a funny sounding name and a seriously powerful and intelligent black wife. It is hard to believe that a supposedly sophisticated and politically astute publication like the New Yorker doesn't get it.
A substantial percentage of White Americans either believe or want to believe the worst about Barack and Michelle as a smokescreen for other historically entrenched fears. For this small but significant subset of citizens, the cartoon cover confirms those fears. The New Yorker's political and racial tone deafness is especially troubling since the issue of patriotism has been front and center in this campaign. Senator Obama's opponent, John McCain is being unambiguously hailed at every turn as a courageous patriot who spent five years in a POW camp during the Vietnam War.
The New Yorker cover and its defensive posture in the wake of the widespread objection to it, demonstrate, not only a disrespect for the candidate, his wife, and this most important presidential campaign, but also the need for more diverse and dissenting voices in the editorial boardrooms of American media. I understand and applaud the important role that humor and satire play in exposing the worst and promoting the best of the American experience. But let me be clear: It is in no way satirical to suggest that Michelle Obama is unpatriotic. It is simply not amusing to infer that somehow Barack Obama has affection for a man who has killed 3000 Americans.
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