The New Yorker published its July 21 edition this week, with a cartoon on the cover depicting U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, in a way that reflects some of the worst fears of what I suspect is a nontrivial percentage of the electorate. On the cover, shown on the right, Barack is wearing a turban, Michelle is sporting an AK47 assault rifle and ammunition belt across her chest; the pair exchange a “fist bump” under the gaze of a turban-bedecked Osama bin Laden in a portrait hanging over a fireplace where an American flag is burning. The cartoon has a caption “The Politics of Fear”, but this listed on the bottom of page 2 rather than on the cover.
I have no doubt the cartoon is intended as a satirical critique of some of the more egregious and hyperbolic extrapolations and projections that have been appearing in the press, e.g., Fox News anchor E.D. Hill using the infamous Fox News question mark to make sideways editorial comments (which I’ve intentionally invoked in the title of this post) in asking “A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab?”, unsubstantiated rumors of a video of Michelle Obama making “anti-white” statements, the ridiculous controversy over Obama’s [earlier] refusal to wear a flag pin, and, most recently, a Newsweek poll released on Friday that reported some surprising statistics about how many people believe various flavors of the rumors about Obama’s connection to Islam:
Twelve percent of voters surveyed said that Obama was sworn in as a
United States senator on a Qur’an, while 26 percent believe the
Democratic candidate was raised as a Muslim and 39 percent believe he
attended an Islamic school as a child growing up in Indonesia. None of
these things is true.
This follows an earlier Pew Research poll released in March showing that 10% of Americans believe Obama is Muslim; among those most likely to believe this are people in rural areas (19%), white evangelical Protestants (16%), conservative Republicans (16%) and people who never attended college (15%).
What I wonder is how the satirization intended by the cartoon is likely to affect the level of misinformation about Barack Obama – will it decrease the misinformation by opening up a dialogue (through all the controversy it is engendering), or will it increase the misinformation – and misinformedness – due to the media’s echo chamber effect (“a group of media outlets that tend to parrot each other’s uncritical
reports on the views of a single source, or that otherwise relies on
unquestioning repetition of official sources”) and confirmation bias (“a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that
confirms one’s preconceptions and avoids information and
interpretations which contradict prior beliefs”).
In my last post, writing about my experiences at Foo Camp 2008, I noted a session in which a prominent former blogger was subjected to online harassment with strong sexually-oriented and violent images, e.g., a Photoshopped image in which a noose was inserted in a photo of her head and neck and another Photoshopped image that superimposed a pair of panties over her face in a way that might be interpreted as muzzling or suffocating. Some of the people defending the authors of these images and similarly harsh words posted in an online forum dedicated to harassing this woman claimed that these were intended as “satire”, and that she and others were simply taking these words and images too seriously. I found myself wondering what the response might have been if similar images had been created and posted with, say, Hillary Clinton as the target of the “satire” … I suspect the FBI would have been involved and arrests would have been made. I now wonder what the reaction would be if Michelle Obama had been the target … and even wonder whether she already has been such a target (!).
I’m hearing similar “overreaction” sentiments being expressed about the New Yorker cartoon – that people who are reacting negatively are simply taking it too seriously. I do tend to take things too seriously at times, but I’m not alone … and I wonder how many “serious” people are – or were – in the “undecided” category of the U.S. electorate. The “satire” directed against the aforementioned blogger led to her departure from the blogosphere, and while I don’t think the “satire” directed against [the people who spread or believe rumors about] Barack Obama will cause him to drop out of the race, I am concerned that this may negatively affect his chances for being elected president.
Despite numerous reports over the last several years that Saddam Hussein had no connection with the 9/11 attacks, an earlier Newsweek poll suggests that a surprisingly large proportion of the American public believe there is a link:
Even today, more than four years into the war in Iraq, as many as four
in ten Americans (41 percent) still believe Saddam Hussein’s regime was
directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist
attacks on 9/11, even though no evidence has surfaced to support a
connection. A majority of Americans were similarly unable to pick Saudi
Arabia in a multiple-choice question about the country where most of
the 9/11 hijackers were born. Just 43 percent got it right — and a
full 20 percent thought most came from Iraq.
[I cannot find a direct reference to this poll on the Newsweek site, purportedly reported in June 2007 … so maybe I’m just spreading rumors here … the second-hand reports of the poll certainly confirm my biases.]
I hope we’ll soon see additional polls to determine the impact of this controversial cartoon. Among the questions I’d be interested to know answers to are:
- How many people saw the cover in a physical magazine vs. a reproduction of the cover in traditional news media or somewhere on a web site?
- How many people had even heard of the New Yorker before, or know that the New Yorker often engages in satire, especially in its cartoons?
- What are people’s initial reaction to seeing the cover? Satire? Character assassination? Confirmation of their deepest political fears?
- How do the statistics mentioned above change over the next week or two, e.g., how many people now believe Obama is a Muslim?
- How many copies of this issue of the New Yorker are sold? (I bought one)
- How does the number of subscribers change?
And, of course, on November 4, we’ll know the outcome of a much more important poll … the question is whether we’ll know how much this “satire” has affected that outcome.
Comments
8 responses to “Satirization or Assassination?”
The only reason that this Mr. & Mrs. Obama satire DOES have impact — and may very likely spread — is because like all good satire, or good humor for that matter, there’s more than a germ of truth in it. Otherwise, the satire would utterly roll off the Obamoids’ backs, having no impact.
Hmmm, I hadn’t thought of it that way. I’m wondering what germ of truth is contained within this satire – whether it is a truth about the Obamas or a truth about the misinformed perspectives of segments of the American media and public (who, as I understand it, are the intended targets of the satire).
Kia ora Joe,
How simple to call it “over reaction” by those who might see some offence in such “satire”. Will they have a cover next week of McCain and his wife in some sort of entrenched privileged white rich scenario smirking at the rest of America? I doubt it. The racist element of the cover is fairly obvious and the damage is done. Witnessed by the first comment above, rumour vs. Truth. I find it fairly absurd to state Obama is fueling the flame as it were by responding to such trash. It matters little if it impacts him personally, it has already impacted potential voters. Hope all is well.
Rangimarie
Noho roa mai ra,
Robb
Robb: thanks for chiming in on this matter. I’ve read about – and viewed – some proposed magazine covers that would “satirize” John McCain, and I don’t see the humor in those, either (not that I mean to imply that you find any humor in any of these). I would not be surprised to see a short-term escalation in vindictive visualizations of both candidates (and their wives), but hope it will burn itself out soon.
I’m reminded of various things I’ve read about the power of visualization, e.g., The Power of Positive Thinking (which also talks about the power of laughter, and so may embrace healthy satire). All my encounters of this meme have been in the context of visualizing success in some endeavor. I suspect that if visualization does work, it would also empower and reinforce negative or fearful thinking.
This, in turn, reminds me of the classic “Daisy Girl” commercial used against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 U.S. presidential campaign, depicting a girl picking and counting the petals of a daisy sequeing to a countdown sequence and an atomic bomb explosion, reinforcing fears that Goldwater’s hawkish inclinations would lead us to nuclear Armageddon if he were elected. Whatever the satirical intent of the New Yorker cartoon, I suspect it will have a similar influence on the conscious and unconscious thinking of significant segments of the electorate as the anti-Goldwater political commercial, substituting our current collective worst fears of Islamic terrorist attacks for our earlier collective worst fears of nuclear missile attacks. And although the Johnson campaign immediately pulled the “Daisy Girl” commercial after the predictable controversy it stirred up, the damage had already been done … just as in this case, I share your fear, the damage has already been done.
Assuming the article intends to call attention to the problem of misperceptions is a little like the preacher who waves a handful of pornographic pictures in front of the congregation. We get a chance to check out the pictures on the way to condemning them. So what do we believe, really, about Obama? How many parts of us are being fed by this “satire”? The dark projections onto Obama and the way they come forward through a rather cruel parody reflect not so much about the candidate and his wife as an underlying violence toward these people, perhaps precisely because they hold a positive moral vision. Americans love hope but also mistrust it and are fascinated by hope’s Shadow. The cover of the magazine appears to be a tasteless ploy to feed us our ignorance, mistrust and implicit violence while apparently condemning them.
Kia ora Joe,
Your point about Goldwater is well made, the concept of political slagging is certainly not new. Though I must point out the Daisy Girl advert was fronted by the Democrats not by the media, though that line was perhaps blurred even then. LBJ was perhaps the master of innuendo politics and I am always reminded of his early political campaign for governor of Texas. In a close run campaign he instructed his staff to spread rumours his opponent “slept with pigs”, to state lightly. His staff were flabbergasted, saying they couldn’t do that as they all new it was not true. LBJ replied, “of course I know its not true, but we’ll just make the son of a bitch deny it”. Have a great day Joe.
Rangimarie,
Robb
Dan: thanks for illuminating the shadow side of hope – and thereby adding another dimension to my fondness for the title of Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope (though I have not read the book).
Robb: your comment about LBJ’s [staff’s] use of innuendo politics brings to mind the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign. John McCain, to his credit, called the TV advertisements this group put out “dishonest and dishonorable”. Given that we appear to have another close presidential race shaping up, it will be interesting to see how low the candidates – and/or their supporters – will stoop this time around.
Barack Obama cartoons and obama jokes have been a primary source for people in expressing their pleasure or displeasure with the 44th president of the United States. Obama has gripped the nation with his charismatic demeanor and has the people believing in government again.