Obama and The New Yorker

15 July 2008 |permalink | email article

Founder Harold Ross famously declared in his 1925 prospectus for The New Yorker: “It has announced that it is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque.”

The magazine has never lost its touches of sophisticated humor that Ross, its first editor, wanted to create and over the years has developed a wide audience outside New York, if not in Dubuque.

Its cover art has always been edgy but perhaps never more unpredictable than under the editorship of David Remnick who has staunchly defended the July 21 cover depicting Barack and Michele Obama as the cable news debate rages on about whether it went beyond satire. I think it did and the far right will exploit it.

Barry Blitt, the artist behind the controversial cover, responded to a request for comment from Huffington Post to those who felt his work was offensive:

“I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous. It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.” He asked for a few days “to decide whether to regret it or not.”

Blitt’s most provocative prior New Yorker cover was the Ahmadinejad bathroom shot which provoked no howls from Iran.

The July 21 issue also has a substantive article by Ryan Lizza that explores Obama’s Chicago roots. Excerpts:

* “He runs as an outsider, but he has succeeded by mastering the insider game. He is ideologically a man of the left, but at times he has been genuinely deferential to core philosophical insights of the right.”

* “What was always impressive about his campaign from the beginning was his actual interest in winning. And his political genius has been his ability to bridge different worlds and different ideologies. This is different from the polarization of the last two presidencies. And this is the change he substantively offers.”

147