The Bad Frame: Why Are the New Yorker, Salon and Other Liberal Media Doing the Right's Dirty Work?

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted July 14, 2008.

New Yorker magazine hits the newsstands today with a shocking cover -- a caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama depicting the presidential candidate in a turban, fist-bumping his wife who has a machine gun slung over her shoulder, while the American flag burns in the fireplace. The cover is shocking in that it depicts the Obamas in bizarre, caricatured images and associations that reflect the very stereotypes with which the conservatives, particularly Fox News, have been trying to frame both the Obamas. Thus, instead of satire, the cover becomes a political poster for conservatives to reinforce their messages. Sen. Obama was shown the cover image by a reporter covering the campaign on Sunday, and while seemingly taken aback, he declined to comment.

But the Obama campaign quickly put out a release condemning the magazine cover. Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, said 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."

Unfortunately the impact of this image will extend far beyond the reading audience of the New Yorker; cable news and the right-wing media noise machine will amplify the derogatory image to millions more. And the New Yorker of course will reap enormous publicity, clearly translating to increased sales and notoriety for the brand, and for corporate owner Conde Nast -- one of the largest and most powerful media companies in America.

But the publicity could very well backfire. Editor David Remnick and artist Barry Blitt's attempt at satire seems so arrogant and indulgent in its insensitivity, and so out of touch with political and media dynamics of tabloid TV and blogs, that it just might make a lot of people angry, including some subscribers. The cover turns the magazine into a potential Molotov cocktail, to be gleefully tossed by Fox News and the conservative blogs, into the already combustible tinderbox of race and Muslim stereotypes just below the surface of America's public discourse. (Remnick has since done an interview about his decision to run the cover.)

John Aravosis at America Blog writes:

A liberal publication like the New Yorker thinks it's funny to make Mrs. Obama some radical black panther, and Barack Obama basically a terrorist (you'll note that he looks just like Osama bin Laden on the wall). ... And this is funny? Is the New Yorker so out of touch that they don't realize that much of America, or at least too much of America, harbors these very concerns about Obama and his wife?

I'm sure the New Yorker thinks they're actually poking holes in the myth by making light of the stereotypes. Yeah, and tell us how this pokes fun at the stereotype? It reinforces it. And yet again, you'd never see them try anything like this with John McCain. God forbid you even ask a question about John McCain's experience, the media will destroy you. But paint Obama and his wife as America-hating flag-burning violent terrorists, and it's funny.

Jake Tapper of ABC News adds:

"Intent factors into these matters, of course, but no Upper East Side liberal -- no matter how superior they feel their intellect is -- should assume that just because they're mocking such ridiculousness, the illustration won't feed into the same beast in emails and other media. It's a recruitment poster for the right-wing.

""This is as offensive a caricature as any magazine could publish," says a high-profile Obama supporter, "and I suspect that other Obama supporters like me are also thinking about not subscribing to or buying a magazine that trafficks in such trash."

Lindsay Beyerstein, who blogs at Majikthise, makes an important point in emphasizing that:

"Our national discourse is impoverished when it comes to racially loaded images like the New Yorker cover. When I saw the cover, it was clear to me that the cartoonist was trying to covey a true and important point: All the Obama myths, like his Muslim father, fit together into a coherent and poisonously racist wingnut caricature. These aren't just random rumors. The anti-Obama mythos is a continuation of the ugly narratives that conservatives have been spinning since the civil-rights movement and before. That said, if you put those images on the cover of a national magazine, you're helping Fox spread those sick memes -- whether you intend to or not. It's easy to say "my work means what I mean it to mean, and if you don't get it, that's your problem" -- but it's never that simple. If you're approaching an assignment from a position of incredible privilege, say as a cover cartoonist for the New Yorker, you can't just write off the unintended consequences of your expression. If you insist on doing so, maybe that is racist."

See more stories tagged with: salon, new yorker, framing

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.

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