Definitely Not Helping
Posted on July 14th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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Almost everyone except for the people who work at The New Yorker seems to have grasped that, whether intended as satire or not, the effect of the cover image is disastrous for the Obama campaign. The timing might have been worse, but not by much, since Obama is getting ready to go on his trip out of the country. The image is the most complete expression of the inexplicable desire of Obama supporters to “help” the candidate by portraying him in what are actually the most unflattering and politically damaging ways possible while simultaneously believing that they are pre-emptively defending and praising the things they are describing. This cover image is slightly different, in that it is trying to undermine the worst attacks by revealing them to be nonsensical caricatures, but nonetheless the artist seems incapable of imagining that there are many voters, particularly those who don’t know that much about Obama, who will see this image flashed on their television screens or attached to chain e-mails and think, “I knew there was something about that Obama I didn’t like, and now I see what it is!” No doubt many Obama supporters thinks this gives a lot of voters too little credit, but they have been giving them too much for a long time. Besides, this isn’t just a question of voter savviness–the power of suggestion can be great, and in a tightly contested race, in which the challenger has not yet won the confidence of a majority of voters, any lingering doubts that prevent people from supporting the challenger could be decisive. The less informed undecided voters are, the more susceptible they will be to such an image, which will plant seeds of doubt where there might have been none before.
In an era of instant, mass communication, the image will be, indeed already has been, circulated widely and will gradually lose whatever “ironic” edge it once had. That the image derived from a New Yorker cover and was intended for an audience of high-information, predominantly left-leaning voters who already support Obama will be irrelevant or will add to the “credibility” of what the image conveys. Then the word will go forth in forwarded emails everywhere: “Even The New Yorker thinks Obama is a secret Muslim, etc…”
The artist, Barry Blitt, takes for granted that the portrayal of the Obamas he is ridiculing is self-evidently absurd, which is the essential failure of imagination that accompanies every one of these episodes of some starry-eyed friend of Obama “helping” the candidate. While casually mentioning how many foreign relatives he has, his purported greater understanding of the Islamic world and how very excited many Arabs are that he may be elected, the “helpers” seem to be unable to imagine how these same claims–to say nothing of the more bizarre fantasies built on top of them–would inspire dislike and hostility in many voting constituencies. They seem to conclude that because they find such a reaction to be wrong and misguided that it will not be significant, which makes no sense. They also seem to have made the strange judgement that just because a candidate is being attacked in wildly contradictory and irrational ways that the attacks can easily be offset by showing how irrational and contradictory they are, which misses the point that they are irrational.
P.S. This entire episode reminds me of the art school subplot in Ghost World with The New Yorker in the role of the art teacher promoting an art project that “ironically” uses blatant racial stereotypes. Had the editors at the magazine been more attentive Steve Buscemi fans, they would have seen the problem with using the image.
Update: Sullivan says that “the notion that most Americans are incapable of seeing that [it is satire] strikes me as excessively paranoid and a little condescending,” but it is not so much a question of capability as it is one of willingness. Some people will see it as a confirmation of what they already believe or suspect, others will “get” it but still find it outrageous, and still others may understand that the intent was satire but will still come away with the impression that there could be some element of truth to the stereotyping. The fairly small number who just laugh at it and think that it skewers smear artists will not begin to offset the number of people who will either take offense or take the image all together too seriously.
Filed under: politics
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I have to disagree with you also, Daniel. In a utshell, the people most likely to be offended are the high-information liberal voters. And the low-information ones arent going to be influenced one way or another by this, because they are low-information. I explain in more detail at Nation-Building.
That’s a fair point. I guess I can see how the entire controversy might stay contained among political junkies and bloggers who keep speculating about its effects, but it also seems tailor-made for the chain e-mails that have been going around for months. The thing is that the high-information liberal voters are offended because they know the portayal is false (and they object to the use of stereotypes, and so on). Many undecided voters–the people who still don’t know which candidate is opposed to the war, for example–don’t know enough about the Obamas to have any idea whether it is false or not, and it creates a bad visual association with the candidate. Maybe it will end up doing little to harm him, but it certainly isn’t helping in any way.
I also think it could hurt him with some undecided voters even if those voters understand the New Yorker’s intentions perfectly well. If an undecided voter wonders whether Obama is an elitist who secretly thinks the average American is an idiot, and also a cosmopolitan who thinks we’d all be better off if we were more like Europeans (or Manhattanites), then it won’t help to have perhaps the most elitist and cosmopolitan magazine in the country saying, in effect, “Ha, ha, your concerns are absurd and you’re only worried because you’re a moron.”
I guess the impact of this is blunted by the fact that the average voter doesn’t know or care what the New Yorker has to say about anything. The question is, can both lines of attack be employed by anti-Obama people who reach a broader audience? In other words, can they say, “This cover shows that these rumors you’re hearing have a basis in fact, even though those pro-Obama snobs at the New Yorker are trying to make you feel like an idiot for being worried”?
That’s an interesting point, and it made me think of something else. Suppose someone sees this and knows nothing about the magazine, except its name, and concludes that this is some East Coast urban liberal publication that is *celebrating* the outcome portrayed on the cover, and that the scene is not the “nightmare scenario” of someone else but the dream scenario of the people at that magazine. That would seem crazy and even more “paranoid,” as Sullivan calls it, but there are plenty of people who believe, or have been conditioned to believe, that this is the outcome desired by anyone who isn’t fully on board with the “war on terror” and who opposes the war in Iraq.
I’m not sure many people would conclude that the editors of the New Yorker literally want a Muslim president who’d burn the American flag, and a terrorist for a First Lady. What’s more likely is that this “defense” of Obama might come off like “defenses” of George W. Bush’s alleged cowboy qualities. A lot of war supporters reveled in that characterization of Bush, and said things like, “Damn right he’s a cowboy, and he’s going to drag the black hats out of the saloon and show them who’s boss!” That turns out to have been a poor forecast of how things would go in Iraq, but even at the time it could only alienate people who weren’t already 100 percent supportive of Bush and his policies.
Similarly, this New Yorker cover can be read as a defense of a lot of policies and ideas supported by people who work at the New Yorker and read the New Yorker. “We want a better relationship with the Arab world; we wouldn’t really care if the US president were a Muslim; we don’t think flag burning should be illegal; we think that 60s-era radicals and various Kalashnikov-wielding leftist revolutionaries may have had a few good points; etc.” The effect isn’t to say, “Ha, these conspiracy theories are silly.” It’s to say, “Ha, the average American’s sense of where the country would end up if New Yorker readers/writers were in charge is silly.”
Just as responding to a charge of recklessness by saying, “Damn right Bush is a cowboy” just made the guy and his supporters seem even less serious and less responsible, responding to these rumors by saying, “Ha, ha, what if Obama WERE a secret Muslim?” may just reinforce the idea that he’s a cosmopolitan elitist whose candidacy lights the fires of–and should ONLY light the fires of–other cosmopolitan elitists. Your average undecided voter–whether or not he understands the alleged subtleties of this parody–probably doesn’t think it’s very funny to depict a portrait of bin Laden hanging in the Oval Office, and they probably wonder what kind of a candidate would draw the support of people who find that sort of thing to be the height of sophisticated wit.
That could be. It could turn on how Obama’s supporters are perceived, that could make many voters question whether they want to “associate” with those sorts of people by voting for him.
On the other hand, I wonder if the editors who approved the cover even care about these larger issues. They may not, and probably should not. They’re trying to amuse/inform/stimulate their readers; they aren’t a subsidiary of the Obama campaign.
In an era of instant, mass communication, the image will be, indeed already has been, circulated widely and will gradually lose whatever “ironic” edge it once had.
Excellent. Cuts right to the heart of the matter. It’s a striking image and will be around forever…
I don’t have much to say about this cartoon, except that it’s very, very funny. Tastes differ. I’m not condescending enough to imagine I know how it will “play” among those “less sophisticated” than the average New Yorker subscriber. My guess, however, is the people are as usual underestimating the sense of humor of those classes they consider beneath themselves. I’m not sure it hurts Obama. It continues to develop the meme that it’s all about Obama. And more importantly, it gives us insight into how comedians plan on making Obama funny - a challenge to be sure. For Clinton, they settled on blow jobs, for Bush, it’s stupidity. For Obama, it seems to be outrageous claims that he’s a secret muslim terrorist. The difference here is a subtle implication that it’s not Obama himself who is funny, but the people who ridicule him. That’s not a bad way of being comedically targeted.
I agree that some people get the wrong idea about the picture, but I have to wonder, would these people have voted for Obama if they harbored these concerns in the first place? The “elites” will be offended, but won’t change their vote. As such, I don’t think the picture will help Obama, but will only damage his nonexistent support of voters that questioned his patriotism.
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The problem with the cover is that it isn’t satire. If I didn’t know it was from the New Yorker I’d assume it was a cover of Newsmax or National Review or something. Media Matters has a bit up today about G. Gordon Liddy saying that the New Yorker finally got Obama right.
Satire is supposed to ridicule or scorn or make views look ridiculous. The New Yorker seems to think that the depiction itself is sufficient to accomplish that, but the bar for satire in America has been raised because that are self-evidently ludicrous have been elevated to mainstream respectability. Dear god, I flipped to CNN HN one night to see Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Beck informing me that Captain Planet is fascist propaganda which is part of the LIberal Fascist plan to created a one world government!
Here
http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/07/problem-with-new-yorker-obama-cover.html
I turned my comment into a post with some quotes from The Authoritarians.
[...] This is very reminiscent of the behavior we saw last month when I commented on the NYT article that claimed homosexual “marriage” was better than traditional marriage. Liberal commenters claimed that conservatives were reading into the article something that wasn’t there. The typical leftist M.O. is to claim that something much less radical is being advocated (e.g. a new way of life as “equal”, rather than better, compared to the traditional way), and that those who don’t see how unseriously the claim is allegedly meant are just stupid or unappreciative of nuance. (Compare the New Yorker cover “satirizing” people who believe Obama is a Muslim.) [...]