pigpile
pardon my pigpile but this is really the biggest news story of the day?
what i love about this whole brouhaha is that it brought itself to life inside a vacuum of its own creating. tell me that’s not heavy. right-leaning news outlets are all about the muslim, kill whitey, unpatriotic, terrorist fist-bumping rhetoric. no one outside of people who are 100% plugged into left-leaning news commentary actually know that any of this back-and-forth is going on (i took an independent poll). then the obviously left-leaning and obama-loving new yorker puts image to the left-leaning news commentary about right-leaning rhetoric and everyone (obama included) lambastes them and it’s all over every news outlet in the country and everyone is running to make sense of what’s happening. and unless my math is incorrect, i’m pretty sure that this story is going to collapse under its own weight right about… now.
July 15th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Point well made. But I think it was a lazy attempt at satire that only served to make those who know better to be rightously outraged or just more in the know and shrugging and those on the right and idiots to continue to be on the right and look and point at the cover and say, see?! All it did in the end was extend the polarities already in existence. Satire should provoke new thought and discussion not the media nonsense that is going on now. Maybe instead of the missus they could have had an ancient, crazy, POW freaked-out McCain… At least then the caricatures and perhaps the whole point behind the cover would have been more even-handed. You know it’s going to be some Heath Ledger Dark Knight cover next week anyway and no one will remember to care about this week’s.
July 16th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
this new yorker cover was no different in tone from their regular old soft satire that’s good for a laugh and gets you to buy the magazine (as a side note: this one was almost as funny as the bush/cheney brokeback mountain cover, thanks for the heath ledger segue sarah).
the difference, at least to me, is that obama doesn’t seem like he can take a joke, even one that satirizes those who are being critical of him. the thing is, there are already a ton of jokes about mccain (his own lame jokes, his age, his incredible temper, etc), but at least he owns them. i have this weird feeling watching obama’s campaign. it’s like he thinks he’s walking a tightrope and if he loses control for one tiny second, it’s over. dude makes me nervous at his inability to roll with things. not that it matters to me in how i vote, but i suspect that people will vote for someone who can take a joke — clinton could take a joke, gore couldn’t, kerry couldn’t. obama maybe needs to learn how to.
July 17th, 2008 at 5:42 am
Obama and his peeps do need to learn how to take a joke - excellent, excellent point. True true and true.
July 17th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
though fresh on the heels of my reply, i was doing some thinking and it seems that maybe john mccain could stand to joke a little less, re: this barb about an 18-year-old chelsea clinton.
q: why is chelsea clinton so ugly?
a: because her father is janet reno.
ouch.