The New Yorker Cover

It sure has buzz. But if my email in-tray is any indicator of anything, it isn't good. I still see it as satire, and the notion that most Americans are incapable of seeing that strikes me as excessively paranoid and a little condescending. But here's one reader's response:

The New Yorker might just as well put in a drawing of Obama planting watermelons in the rose garden. Yes satire.  But also an image we don't want out of a careful context.  Spike Lee even in his piece of genius "Bamboozled", felt compelled to preface the film with Webster's definition for the word "satire", and with film, it's much easier to keep the context and tone of its content clear.  The people who read the New Yorker understand what it is.  But we all know these things escape their audience and context and take on a life of their own too.

Here's what's going to happen.  Fox News is going to have a whole day where they talk about nothing but this and repeatedly show the image just like they did with Wright. Then Limbaugh will be saying "Well look, these liberals can make drawing like this and we call it harmless satire, so why did they give me so much grief when I played the song Obama the Magic Negro on my show.  It's liberal hypocrisy I tell you!".