They did it. With the stroke of a pen, The New Yorker did what the Republicans have been trying to do ever since Obama proved a force to be reckoned with in the 2008 election: they created the perfect GOP Smear Campaign poster.
On its July 21, 2008, cover, The New Yorker is portraying Barack and Michelle Obama in the Oval Office as fist-bumping, ‘fro donning (Michelle), US flag burning, bin-Laden-outfit wearing (Obama) and bin-Laden praising (crowning the mantlepiece) connivers.
The Obama Campaign is incensed, and HuffPost is not about to quench the fire. But let’s be honest: this cartoon barely has enough spark to ignite the bomb in the Prophet Muhammad’s turban (if you still don’t know how it got there, ask Jyllands-Posten), let alone a firecracker. To be sure, I’m not even certain if this qualifies as a stroke for freedom of speech.
As a matter of fact, one could have hoped that Barry Blitt (the artiste) had come up with the cover sooner, and sold it to the GOPs while Clinton was still in the game, because that would probably have shaved off a couple of days of the Democratic nomination circus, since it is so blatantly sarcastic that not even David Plouffe could have come up with a more effective chain mail to demonstrate the audacity of ignorance of some Republican voters, even if he’d wanted to (heck, he could have had the entire Pixar Studios, and he still wouldn’t come up with anything as effective).
I mean, if the Bush Administration had summoned the press corps for a PowerPoint presentation, we might have had something to fear, but we’re talking about The New Yorker here – Cloud 9 on print for liberal, U.S. intellectuals (any liberal intellectual worldwide who can get his or her hands on one of those subscription coupons, for that matter).
To be honest, that the Obama campaign can’t laugh at this is disturbing, and casts a shadow over their purported freshness, not even a YouTube featuring Obama doing the “Soulja Boy” could drive away. Plouffe should raise the donation requests to $27.99, so they could start printing t-shirts with the cover rather than the mythical “O” – that’d be sure to out-fundraise McCain.
Just to be sure: is Obama wearing flip-flops?
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