that cover
It takes me a second to decide what I think about the New Yorker cover. (You know the one.) The problem is the problem with politics: the more important question of something like this is not what I think but what I think this or that segment of the American electorate think. In the case of thinking about this cover and its ramifications for the electorate, it amounts to basically this.
The interesting thing is to hear liberals parse the cover’s satire quotient. It would be proper satire if it showed the subject of the focus — the believer of this image, I see tell. If they say so, but talk about running into that “Elitist” land. Someone at the Huffington Post suggests that this ain’t satire, it’s burlesque. Indeed. And… half a dozen of this — six of the other. BRILLIANT ANALYSIS… let us find precise definitions and fight over terminology, please.
After watching the vice-presidential debate of 2004, I was asked who I thought won. I started parsing out the meaning in terms of electoral debris, and then was stopped with the question “Who do YOU think won?”, which four years out occurs to me as a meaningless question. Cheney won — he was an evil lier, but Edwards looked like an empty suit. Does that matter much? Hard to say.
Rumble through the political implications of The New Yorker cover. Better still rumble through the implications of its a Focal spot light in the 24 hour news cycle. And then ask the meaningless question of what I think of it. The answer to that question is, Hm… I kinda like it.
The only thing I can say is that I spotted immediately with Obama’s presence in the fight that the election campaign was going to be full of these things — The New Yorker cover, some pundit referencing Oreo cookies, etc. And here we are. I give it all a bit of leeway.