20 replies on “It’s funny. Laugh.”

  3. It’s tough trying to convince somebody that something is funny. Humor is something that, explained, ceases to be funny. And I can certainly understand not finding this funny. It’s finding it offensive that I can’t sympathize with. Obama isn’t being lampooned; legions of right wing dads are.

  4. I have no doubt that it’s funny and I have no doubt that the point of the satire is obvious to what The New Yorker considers to be their audience – their subscribers.

    The difficulty is that, with the publication of this issue, the audience of The New Yorker immediately and dramatically changed. All of a sudden, their audience is everybody in the country with a television or access to a computer. Now, it’s being judged by people who don’t happen to share the same education, political views or sense of humor as the typical reader of the magazine.

    It’s a tough call. Does The New Yorker refuse to publish work that its editors understand will be appreciated by the magazine’s target audience? Or, should they have anticipated the controversial nature of the work, in the midst of a heated political campaign, would mean that it would be circulated more widely and have declined to publish?

    I think that, on balance, they did the right thing in publishing the cover. Let Time and Newsweek worry about how people might mis-interpret their work. I expect complex and challenging thought to come from The New Yorker.

  5. I agree with Waldo.

    Harry – You’re right. But I think that their targeted audience won’t balk and they may see a bump from folks who otherwise view the New Yorker as being just a magazine about the New York City elite. It was shrewd on their part and creates a great bit of (controversial) publicity.

  6. Well said, Harry.

    I think it would have been funny if the image we see had been depicted on a canvas, being painted by a “right wing dad.” A right wing dad wearing a tee shirt with a Fox News logo. Then I would have laughed. As it is, I think it comes close but it doesn’t really it my funny bone.

    Stuff White People Like has jumped the shark, and the “McCain is Old” jokes have worn thin. I’m in the market for some good funnies nowadays! There’s not that much to make fun of Obama for (yet). I’m ready for a laugh.

  7. During the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, some friends of mine attended a Republican rally at UVA with signs that read “Marriage is for Fags” and “John Kerry: Draft dodger.” These were funny because they exposed the fact that the two sides held such divergent views that they read something entirely different into the same text. It was a bit of a Rorschach test. In the former examples, everyone was offended by “Marriage is for Fags,” albeit for different reasons, and while liberals saw the draft dodger poster as satire, many conservatives apparently praised them for raising the salient point.

    The point was, however, that these were inside jokes. Think Andy Kaufman. It was funny because these people went along with it and were made fools because of it.

    The first problem with the New Yorker piece is that it was run as the cover to the New Yorker. It should’ve been on The National Review. But the second, much more important aspect is that it’s just a rehash. Fox News did this joke like a year ago, and they’ve already run it into the ground.

  9. Harry: I think all of the well-educated progressives are wringing their hands that the Great Masses don’t have enough education to understand satire. I think we underestimate the intelligence of the American people. There has been a much bigger dust-up about this than the material warrants, as the well-educated elite fret that the ignorant guys down the street won’t “get it.”

    Frankly, those who are still inclined to believe Obama is a closet Muslim and his wife is a Black Panther were never going to vote for him anyway. I really don’t see the magazine cover changing anyone else’s vote.

  10. First off, I support their right to print it. But…

    This is not the first time that The New Yorker has fallen flat ‘trying’ to be clever instead of it (the content/concept) actually being clever and standing on its own.

    :fly on the wall at the TNY concept meeting:
    “Hey lets put Obama in some traditional Muslim garb, then we will hang an AK across his Black Panther wife’s back, burn a flag in the fireplace under a hanging picture of Al-Sadr’s cousin Larry. The belligerent hillbillies will freak! We should have them doing a fist bump!”
    “My God, Bob…your a genius. No one has ever thought or alluded to this before. Its new, bleeding edge! And we will sell a shitload of copies. Quick, put Google ads on the website.”
    :end fly on wall:

    Tired. Lazy. Similar to a stand up comic using the word fuck for fucks sake. This is the Andrew Dice Clay of magazine covers. As Harry said, I expect complex and challenging thought from TNY…but what I got was a Soldier of Fortune cover.

    Anyone read the story inside?

  11. I haven’t read the story because I haven’t gotten the issue. It bugs me that the issue is available for free online before I get the thing in the mail. What am I paying for, again?

  12. Obama isn’t being lampooned; legions of right wing dads are.

    Except that BHO’s muslim-ness has consistently and repeatedly been brought up by Democrats (during the primary) and by the Left (such as the New Yorker). Still, it’s probably fun for y’all to blame it on conservatives, true or not.

  14. Not funny. Not worthy of any particular outrage, but not funny. So par for the New Yorker’s course.

    What *is* funny? Statements like this:

    I think we underestimate the intelligence of the American people.

    That’s just hilarious.

  16. Except that BHO’s muslim-ness has consistently and repeatedly been brought up by Democrats (during the primary) and by the Left (such as the New Yorker). Still, it’s probably fun for y’all to blame it on conservatives, true or not.

    You might should study the cover a little more closely. The joke isn’t that he’s Muslim. The joke is that he hates America and is part of a secret global terrorist plot to overthrow the country, by virtue of being Muslim. That’s pure right-wing-dad material.

  17. Talk about how funny this is – and not “getting it”?

    The New Yorker is ROTFLTAO!

    The free media coverage did more to promote their magazine then they could have hoped for.

    And the bloggers are still “a buzz” over this publicity stunt.

    Nice job New Yorker. Your marketing guturs hit a home run this time.

    Buzz, buzz, buzz . . .

  19. funny or not, they have a right to print whatever they want and people have a right to react however they want.

    if it was on the cover of the limbaugh lettter, however, don’t you think the idealogues would try to shut down the entire operation for partaking in hate speech? don’t you believe you would be going crazy with hatred toward the right for printing the same thing?

    funny vs. offensive on the left seems to be entirely relative to whether or not something is consistent with one’s own political stance.

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