Scanner

No, I disagree.  The carton is funny and successfully points our the bizarre fantasies of those who continue to make fear-based arguments about an Obama presidency, whether cynically or in earnest.  Where in this picture are lies attacked?  The whole scene is absurd, and that is the satirical attack.

I see what they were going for, and I'm a big fan of satire ... but I think they missed the mark.  It certainly doesn't seem very clever.

I agree with PAB : not that it's funny (it's pretty weak) but it seems obvious to me that it's all the 'terrorist fist jab' bollocks that's being pilloried here NOT Barack or Michelle Obama.....are you (and the Obama campaign) seriously suggesting that this is, on some level,  The New Yorker's actual perception of Obama?

You people wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the eras of Hogarth, George Grosz or Hunter S Thompson.

How could anyone with a brain see this as a true representation of Barak Obama?  The president is burning a flag in the White house fireplace.  His wife is brandishing a machine gun.  They've installed a picture of OBL over the mantle.  It is an obviously absurd image drawing attention to the absurdity of claims made by enemies of Obama.  How would you define satire?  According to Wiki "A very common, almost defining feature of satire is its strong vein of irony or sarcasm."  Hmmm, irony and sarcasm, you don't say.  I think I know what irony means.  Wiki defines it as "Irony is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what a speaker or writer says and what he or she means, or what is generally understood."  I wonder how that could be an apt description of this magazine cover.

While I agree with all of the "this satirizes people's fears about Obama, not Obama himself" views expressed so far, I feel the need to go further in criticizing Scanner for reporting on this article in the way they did.  Did you honestly fail to catch on to the true intent of the cartoon?  Or are you just so incredibly paranoid about anyone daring to attack the Democratic candidate that you have to react with a tragically violent knee-jerk to every single incident in the world that might be seen as maligning his reputation?

Yes, clearly satire (not especially funny) directed at the Obama haters.  Please stop taking yourselves so seriously folks; be serious about the issues.

Count me in the "dumb idea" camp.  It's not clever, it is potentially misleading, and it's not funny.  See, satire requires a grain of truth.  To satirize something, it must expound upon a commonly recognized theme.  To claim this is satire also lends it a bit of credibility.  Without a doubt, this cover will only have the effect of convincing a few more people that the ridiculous concepts portrayed have some truth, even if they don't acknowledge it at a conscious level.  Plus, there is no insight here.  

This is the equivalent of farting very loud in public then claiming you did it to show why farting in public is absurd.  Where is the joke?  Where is the insight?  

Not funny, not clever, not insightful, and it can only help the Republicans.

I was solidly in the "FUCK the New Yorker!!" pack ... until I read all this.  I can now see that it could very well be poking fun at the idiotic right-wingers who try so melodramatically to make mountains out of mole hills, instead of an outright attack on Obama.  I think it's a little too inflammatory to be funny, but I'll concede there's a chance the New Yorker isn't just flat-out evil.

I found it to be pretty funny. I think it would be wrong to censor it because some people don't get the joke.

I don't think The New Yorker was really intended for the small town mid-west folk that still think Obama is a muslim.

btw - I'm from a town of 5,000 people in Missouri.

I agree that that cover is satire--it is lampooning all the ridiculous rumors about the Obamas. But I agree with Brian that it is in bad taste and that a lot of people will take it the wrong way and I think it was kind of irresponsible on the part of the New Yorker to not consider the consequences of it's highly scrutinized actions. How could they not have understood that this would start an unnecessary shitstorm and that some people would take this at face value? They can do what they want of course and I don't believe anyone should be "censored." But I heartily believe that people should be called on being fucking idiots.

As an initial matter, "editorial discretion" is not "censorship."  No one has a right to run his or her cartoon on the front page of The New Yorker.  Likewise, condemning, even boycotting, The New Yorker because of an abuse of its editorial discretion is not "censorship."  "Censorship" occurs only when the government forbid or punishes (or threatens to punish) some form of expression.  So stop talking about "censorship" here; it is an utterly irrelevant concept in this context.

As for the substance, sure it's "satire," but it's piss-poor satire.  First, it's simply not funny.  Second, there's no context, other than, perhaps, the knowledge that The New Yorker is a liberal magazine, to indicate that it is satirical rather than an endorsement of the view that the Obamas are pro-terrorist Muslims.  Third, it juxtaposes ridiculous images -- a President burning the American flag, a portrait of bin Laden in the Oval Office, the First Lady sporting an assault rifle -- with real images:  Obama *did* wear traditional Kenyan clothing to honor his hosts there; he and his wife *do* fist-bump.  It is too easy for a viewer unfamiliar with The New Yorker's politics to assume that the former images are intended to be as true as the latter.  That's why this cover fails, and despicably so.

The New Yorker's circulation is just over one third of one percent of the U.S. population, a cohort I was in a couple of decades ago. I still check in with the magazine online occasionally and I can assure all that the editorial staffers are so clueless about the United States outside of highrise midtown Manhattan that they are probably genuinely surprised by the idea the cover might have a negative impact on Mr. Obama's campaign. Of course, if you all in the media had not chosen to clamor about the cover in your giant echo chamber, 99.6 percent of Americans would never have seen it.