15 Responses to “Definitely Not Helping”

1. Balloon Juice, on July 14th, 2008 at 8:01 am Said:

   [...] Larison explains why I am wrong: [...]

2. azizhp, on July 14th, 2008 at 8:15 am Said:

   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.

3. Daniel Larison, on July 14th, 2008 at 8:55 am Said:

   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.

4. Charlie, on July 14th, 2008 at 9:15 am Said:

   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”?

5. Daniel Larison, on July 14th, 2008 at 9:41 am Said:

   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.

6. Charlie, on July 14th, 2008 at 10:31 am Said:

   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.

   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.

7. Daniel Larison, on July 14th, 2008 at 10:35 am Said:

   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.

8. Charlie, on July 14th, 2008 at 11:00 am Said:

   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.

9. Benny One Six, on July 14th, 2008 at 11:15 am Said:

   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…

10. conradg, on July 14th, 2008 at 5:42 pm Said:

    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.

11. nhgriffin003, on July 14th, 2008 at 11:25 pm Said:

    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.

12. Eunomia » The Power Of Images, on July 15th, 2008 at 12:19 am Said:

    [...] Definitely Not Helping  10 nhgriffin003, conradg, Benny One Six [...] [...]

13. HG, on July 15th, 2008 at 10:56 am Said:

    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!

14. HG, on July 15th, 2008 at 11:15 am Said:

    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.

15. The Personal Is… Kinda-Sorta Political? « Brave New World Watch, on July 16th, 2008 at 8:02 am Said:

    [...] 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.) [...]

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