Opinion: Culture Elite's Protection of the Obamas »
Posted by: SonOfTheMask 1 month agoTo watch the contortions over that New Yorker cover cartoon of the Obamas is to understand whom it is impermissible to offend in the America of 2008.
Read Full Story at sfgate.com
Join the Discussion 
+ Add Comment
Comments So Far: 66
-
-
0%
NoSpinDave1 month ago
BOTTOM LINE...
If Obama were white with the same credentials to be president, the same experience, and the same platform, he would have about the same credibility as Ron Paul.
Got to love liberal white guilt. I never imagined it was enough to get some egomaniacal fraud elected President though.
Reply
-
-
0%
stephen-johnson1 month ago
FTA:
Yet, the reaction of our cultural elites is the more interesting and instructive.
For it suggests that Obama is an untouchable to be protected. As an African American, he is not to be treated the same as other politicians. Remnick and Hertzberg obviously felt intense moral pressure to remove any suspicion that they had satirized the Obamas. No problem, however, if they were mocking the American right.
Bottom line: If you wish to stay in the good graces of the cultural elite, don't mess with Michelle and Barack.
Buchanan hit it out of the park.
Obama is the Trojan Horse that big gubmint liberals are hiding in. They're trying to fool the public that an Obama adminsitration will be something new. In fact, it will be the Great Society redux. This is the Boomer Generation's last gasp to change the world.
Let's all pray that their efforts fall short.
Reply-
-
0%
stephen-johnson1 month ago
That would make him an octoroon. In other words, according to Plessy vs. Ferguson, he's an African-American:
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Plessy...
In 1890, the State of Louisiana passed a law that required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on railroads, including separate railway cars. Concerned, several black and white citizens in New Orleans formed an association dedicated to the repeal of that law. They eventually persuaded Homer Plessy, an octoroon (someone of seven-eighths Caucasian descent and one-eighth African descent), to test it. On June 7, 1892, Plessy purchased a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railway from New Orleans to Covington. The railroad company had been informed already as to Plessy's racial lineage, and after Plessy had taken a seat in the whites-only railway car, he was asked to vacate it and sit instead in the blacks-only car. Plessy refused and was arrested immediately.
Reply
-
-
0%
Klarissa1 month ago
Can't even show Obama with big ears, he is "sensitive" about them.
So much for freedom of cartooning.
Reply
-
-
0%
SonOfTheMask1 month ago
"Why did progressives recoil? Because the more savvy among them sense that, like much humor, this cartoon was an exaggeration that contained no small kernel of recognizable truth." And therein lies the issue. There are some people who insist than Obama is some kind of Islamic Manchurian Candidate...and that is silly. But, below that caricature there is an underlying uneasiness about how radical Obama might really be. His past and current associations make you wonder.
Reply-
0%
Radiofreeeuropa1 month ago
I like Obama, the New Yorker has every right to lampoon whatever they like. You know as well as I that a major smear campaign is being conducted via emails that paint this picture of Obama that is satirized on the cover, yes the less intelligent among us may actually not get it, yes they will think it further enforces the smear emails (I get 'em every day) they believe are real. No the New Yorker has no responsibility to ensure people don't misinterpret their cartoons. Controversy sells, that's the real issue. I bet the New Yorker seriously increased their sales with all the publicity. The MSM gives and the MSM taketh away. They create these diversions.
Reply-
0%
Radiofreeeuropa1 month ago
What I want to know is why no one is talking about the position reversals, reversals again and more reversals from the McCain camp. Goodness anyone who can call up google can find McCain condemning any given stance and praising it in another video. Talk about checking the wind direction with your finger? No one has quite exemplified this as much as McCain.
Reply
-
-
0%
gamahuche1 month ago
SOTM: I appreciate your posts as representing the moderate and intelligent right and actually opening the doors of discussion, unlike many of the prejudiced offerings from the rabid right .
However I think your premise that Obama is someone whom "it is impermissible to offend" is completely bogus.
The nattering nabobs of nihilism are busy dredging the gutter for filth and slime, with no regard for truth, honesty or decency, every minute of every day, in order to be offensive to Obama, including on this very media organ where we are presently gathered.
While the gloves are off on both sides I don't see any posters from the left impugning McCain's patriotism, for example.
It wouldn't be SO difficult to do that if you were a serious twister of facts and reality as many of those attacking Obama are, would it?
Reply-
0%
SonOfTheMask1 month ago
Gamahuche, thank you for you compliments.
To clarify, the premise that "it is impermissible to offend" Obama is not mine. The article is written by Pat Buchanan and the premise is his. Yes, that Pat Buchanan. Perhaps you feel he falls into that category you identified as "nattering nabobs of nihilism". I appreciate the alliteration by the way.
Also, it's not clear to me that opponents of McCain aren't denigrating his patriotism. Don't they routinely refer to his as McBush and seek to identify him as a Bush clone? And don't they also label Bush as a fascist, Hitleresque puppet master who seeks to destroy the Constitution and steal oil by illegal military force? Seems to me that suggesting that he's a clone of their perception of Bush as some sort of Nazi criminal dictator is impugning his character and patriotism, don't you?
I don't support either side engaging in character assasination. But both are...unfortunately.
Reply
-
-
-
-
catstevensComment removed: User banned.1 Reply
-
-
-
0%
HannibalBarca1 month ago
Well ranch, you and purpose were two who were offended with the humour that Ag and I carry on with; which never was directed at either of you, but somehow when Obama has it directed at him, he is not allowed to respond like you and purpose did.
Yeah that seems fair.
Reply
-
-
0%
MacR1 month ago
If you can not take the political heat or satire that comes out cause you are running for prez. Then it is time to get out of the race.
Does this mean if elected the people on late night shows like, The Tonight Show. Letterman and others can not make fun of his admin? His camp had its own gaffes about Hillary and then he complained about it being done back to him.
Now he is at it again, with everyone saying you can not say that about our guy.
Who wants to silence the free speech we have?
I am waiting?
Thought so.
Reply-
0%
HannibalBarca1 month ago
There is nothing wrong with free speech, say what you want.
But at the same time I have given and received a punch or two in the head for uttering free speech, it happens, but not on here.
Reply
-
-
0%
aniokly1 month ago
So. You cannot talk about Obama's ears, his middle name, his overbearing wife, his Black Nationalist Preacher, his bomber buddies, William Ayers, and Bernadine Dorhn, his POL friend Rachid Khalidi, and one of the 1993 WTC bpmbers serving time in prison who went to school with him. Lay off his Muslim school background and all of his Muslim relatives. Did I miss anything. He is a public figure, and you can say anything you want about him. You can talk about Sen McCain too, but his background is not nearly so colorful.
Reply-
0%
HannibalBarca1 month ago
And your last sentence says it; one of the reasons he gets half the attention of Obama is he is boring, no lift or life to his speech.
Reminds me of our Canadian politicians,,,boring.
Reply -
0%
CRYMTYPHON1 month ago
Naaah, you can talk about all that stuff.
You can draw nasty pictures of him and his wife and kids, using words or photoshop or whatever you want.
It's a free country and no one is going to stop you.
This was a discussion not about what you COULD do, but what good people SHOULD do; where the moral lines are.
Nothing to do with you or AlphaGnosis and company, Aniokly.
Reply
-
-
0%
gamahuche1 month ago
"After all, 12 percent of Americans think Barack took his oath on the Koran, 26 percent think he was raised a Muslim, and 39 percent think he went to a madrassa."
And BO is supposed to not be sensitive to disinformation??
Most of his attack-hounds on propeller revel in irrelevant, false and blatantly racist trashy gossip from whatever source.
I personally found the cartoon quite funny and think that Obama's campaign would have done better to ignore this particular non-event but I'm 100% certain that, had he chosen that route, these very same critical posters on this thread would now be telling us that means that he has no answer and that therefore the implied accusations must be true.
Reply -
0%
chevydog1 month ago
Personally I thought the cover was hilarious. It fits right in with the style that the New Yorker normally does; and it managed to spoof about every right-wing squawk about Obama that I've heard this season. Even Michelle's oufit coordinated well with her AK-47. The Obama campaign should hang a huge print of it on its wall.
Several other classic instances of terrorist/crime humor come to mind:
* Trudeau's BD defending Phred the Terrorist because "His parents pushed him into it."
* Woody Allen's Virgil Starkwell discussing with his wife what shirt he should wear to the robbery.
Reply -
0%
cloud151 month ago
Bush has an entire comedy central cartoon based on him....and Obama can't take a magazine cover?
Reply -
0%
mmrhe1 month ago
What I find interesting is the Far Right's HATRED of this "cultural elite".
Who defines this classification by the way? Apparently, it's code for people who are smarter than they are and therefore not to be trusted!
Reply
Submitted By:
SonOfTheMask
"I often wish that I could rid the world of the tyranny of facts. What are facts but compromises? A fact merely marks the point ...
Related Articles:
Why not submit a story?
Also Propping This Article
Groups Watching This
No groups are watching this story. Why not share it with your group?
