Many have criticized this instantly-infamous New Yorker cover. How many of those voicing outrage are play-actors, and how many are genuine simps?Any thinking person will immediately understand that this image is meant to satirize how the paranoid right envisions Barack and Michelle Obama. Alas, thinking persons are now in short supply.
In 2004, left-wing blogs published a cartoon "map" of Democratic National Committee headquarters in which Osama Bin Laden had an office near John Kerry's. (I can no longer find the drawing on the web, but some of you will recall seeing it.) Everyone understood that the image was intended to parody Republican fearmongering. Has the public grown dumber in a mere four years?
Perhaps Barack Obama also thinks that Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal is a cookbook.
The cover has overshadowed the contents of the article. As Steve Diamond's analysis demonstrates, New Yorker author Ryan Lizza allowed himself to be snookered by his sources. Even so, the piece portrays Obama as a master triangulator, soulless and calculating, playing the lefty only to win in a left-leaning district. His actual instincts, to the extent that they are at all heartfelt, seem rather conservative. Although Lizza should have delved deeper -- much, much deeper -- into the Rezko/Blagojevich morass, the piece does demonstrate how Chicago pols who begin as reformers tend to join the ranks of the corrupted.
A sample:
On issue after issue, Preckwinkle presented Obama as someone who thrived in the world of Chicago politics. She suggested that Obama joined Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for political reasons. “It’s a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners,” she said. “It’s a good place for a politician to be a member.”I've long suspected that Obama has no genuine religious beliefs. He just doesn't speak that language. Yet, times being what they are, he has felt constrained to publish a pamphlet proclaiming him to be a "Committed Christain."
Ironically, his greatest scandals concern the religious figures in his life -- Wright, Pfleger, Meeks. Rumors of a youthful flirtation with Islam continue to perfume his reputation, and may have more substance than most Dems would prefer to believe. (Although the "madrassa" smear was exposed long ago, Barack Obama did take optional courses in the Koran during his Indonesia period. I see nothing wrong in this -- only in lying about it.)
If we lived in a saner society, a man could call himself an agnostic or an atheist and still be able to achieve the presidency. Benjamin Franklin, ever the diplomat, once said that he never joined a church because he felt at home in all of them. Could a man like Franklin run for president today?
Racial barriers are gone. Religious barriers remain.
PS: I should note, before my readers feel constrained to mention it, that longstanding rumor associates Franklin with the occult. While on the continent, he attended a few gatherings of the notorious Hellfire Club. Despite the name, that group's "rites" were more Bacchic than infernal.
4 comments:
The New Yorker cover is even funnier now that we know Obama is a neocon.
"Any thinking person will immediately understand that this image is meant to satirize how the paranoid right envisions Barack and Michelle Obama. Alas, thinking persons are now in short supply."
When was it last different? The above is far too compound and subtle a message to be put out in the present epoch by means of any mass-reproduced image, as its publishers knew very well. More people look at a picture than read the associated article. The picture gets the most eyeballs, followed by the headline, followed by the first 1-2 paragraphs, followed by the rest. So it says in Ogilvy on Advertising, the adman's bible.
Re. the quasi-Franciscans of Medmenham, little has leaked out, even to this day, casting light (Rosicrucian lamp pun intended) on what the 'Inner Circle' members did in those caves on the other side of the river Styx.
In the Society of Dilettanti, the offshoot of the 'Hellfire Club' which still exists, why does the 'Imp' carry two lighted tapers? :-) Charles Sebag-Montefiore, one of the two Joint Secretaries, says in a privately-printed pamphlet that the origins were Satanic.
BTW is it common American usage to refer to England as being on the continent? Over here in Yurp, the UK, Ireland, and even much of Scandinavia are locally excluded by their respective denizens.
b
Has the public has grown dumber in a mere four years?
This is a trick question, right?
Joe, while I'm not going to pretend that the only reason I visit this blog is to watch your trainwreck of propaganda that I do very much associate with a nacent racist tendency that you have yet to realise, which is fairly common for a lot of people in general (not Obama specific), you caught me in a mood where I'm going to stray a bit and give you the benefit of the doubt.
While I know you love to consider yself and so many others "Obots," I don't know many liberals or progressives that have taken issue with this New Yorker cover, nor do I know many that don't see it for something else. Personally, I see it as another rather desperate attempt by the Obama campaign to grab media attention over something trivial, and stifle the very real and large dissent that has cropped up over the very predictable FISA 180 of Obama. It's yet another day where he doesn't really have to address a substantial base that knew they were going to get snubbed, and has felt snubbed, because the media likes this silly crap better.
That being said, despite your best efforts to make this so black and white, and considering your outright demonization of those of us who voted for Nader, I really don't understand your angle. You see, I voted for Nader after a period of content where I didn't feel like the Democratic party needed to move in the direction that the Gore campaign was taking us. You can pretend there's a difference but, particularly with government and surveilance, Gore was right on board with that in regards to his heavy ionvolvment with the CDA and the Clipper Initiative. It was one of many reasons I decided not to vote for him.
That being said, since you were obviously a Gore supporter, and given that were coming out of a terrible 8 years, my question is who are you going to support? I'm not about to vote 3rd party this time as I feel it truly is not the time. And, despite your attacks here where you've disrespectfully referred to myself and people like me as brainless "Obots," I'm not under any illusion that Obama is some savior candidate. I've always known that he has his fair share of flaws, as just did every Democrat on the bill when I voted in the primary. You now have a link to PUMA and, given your recent antics, it very much appears that you don't want to see the Democratic candidate in there. I'm not about to pretend that I'd put Obama in there but, given the choices, if I'm correct in assuming you will not be voting for him, how are you any different than the Nader voter you've loved to demonize?
You can take this as an insult if you want, but it's a genuine question. And given your insulting rhetoric in the past, which I hope you are strong enough to admit was intentionally insulting and that you don't pull some victim card, how exactly are those of us who actually used to enjoy what you had to offer to read on your blog to take this, if not anything but hypocrissy given your stance on Nader voters in 2000?
Believe it or not, I'm not throwing anything in here as an insult towards you. It's my honest take on you given what you have been saying lately. My question for you is, given your stance towards Obama, what are youproposing? I happen to be signing on with Glenn Greenwald's approach. But, you've yet to really make it clear what you think is an answer to a less than perfect candidate. And I'm not currently under any illusion that a vote for any other candidate under the climate is going to help the country, or even necesarilly teach a lesson.
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