To The Editors of the New Yorker:
It would be easy to critique a satirical cover, if there was one. One of the ingredients of true satire is it is to get you to believe the opposite in an irreverent way. Your cover failed. While it is understandable in this salacious newsentertainment industry to sell magazines, it is entirely possible to do so without racism.
Portraying Michelle Obama as a militant with an assault weapon and Obama as a Muslim, instead of a Christian, while a picture of the most wanted man in the world, bin Laden, is over a fireplace with a flag burning in it is at best predictable. But not from the New Yorker.
Until now.
Like so many before you, you have fallen to the depths of Vogue and others. Racism can be subliminal. This wasn’t. The flagrant disrespect and regard for a Presidential candidate, the first African American one, is unconscionable. This new post racial phenomena, has not moved past racist dialogue but reintroduced it . By pretending it is only a few, you and others have in effect caused a wound to fester.
New Yorker Cover
The most objectionable part of all, is the implicit notion that being a Muslim in this country is tantamount to evil, negative, un-American, and should somehow become satire. The vilification of any group by another is the quintessential hallmark of the “good old boy” America we know and love.
This election proves each day how “exciting ” the process of selecting the leader of the “free” world can be.
Not for one minute do thinking people believe this was a mere bad call , or that the timing was happenstance. Not everyone will understand that even if you did mean it as satire , which it clearly isn’t, you in effect are saying it would be off-putting, wrong, anti-American to be Muslim, if he were one. Somehow in all of this, the hate and fear that permeated the last Administration has seeped into the collective mindset of the masses and the MSM.
When a respectable (past tense) publication publishes racist propaganda under the guise of satire, it smacks of business as usual in America. It is abundantly clear that those on the left and right are having a very hard time coming to terms with an African American as a potential candidate. Also obvious is a woman who is not a simpering apologetic white gloved Barbie doll can be transformed into a stereotypical militant Patty Hearst cum Black Panther caricature. A future First Lady. You accomplished what you set out to do, those few Americans who choose to believe the lies you claim to debunk by this cover, are satiated. You have in effect, rubber stamped their prejudices and fears whether you admit it or not.
Congratulations to the editors of the New Yorker, you have joined the ranks of the fear mongers. Sales should do well, on the backs of those who are in the minority. You have also lost the respect of many who supported your, up until now, highly regarded “magazine”.
Pleased to say I have come to think of the New Yorker these past years as literary Kool-Aid for intellectual wanna-bes with no real wherewithal for in depth analysis.
Whenever I see a New Yorker in hand, I think “shallow attempt at sophistication and urbane savvy, hollow pretense without gravitas or concern for real issues of merit.”
The quality of writing has been plummeting for well over a decade, and I honestly think all it takes is a few connections and a good dose of cynical cheap modernity with some gratuitous vulgarity thrown about here and there to get a story published in its pages, the former being the most compelling push towards the 15 minutes.
(No wonder I can’t catch a break.)
But glad to see that I have been vindicated in my arrogance and superior gestalt, once again.
Comment by bluesmokeofparadise — July 15, 2008 @ 7:31 am |