What’s So Funny ‘Bout Flag Burning, Guns and Fist Bumps?

While the cover of The New Yorker made news on Monday, since we are late with THIS WEEK’S blog, we are going to address it along with last week’s stories. Amongst the immediate flurry of commentary, we will limit our response to what we think might be unique (though this thing has been analyzed from nearly every angle in the past 24 hours).

We have addressed the implications of satire in a number of contexts in this space, perhaps most notably in our review of Black People Love Us and in our recent discussion of African American names. With respect to racial humor (or attempts at humor) more generally, we’ve discussed Don Imus, Boston Legal, and t-shirts with racist images. So as not to be repetitive, we will highlight what we see as the crucial issue with the most recent controversy.
It is clear to us (and to many) that the editors at The New Yorker were commenting on the inaccuracies, paranoia and mischaracterization of the Obamas throughout the course of the campaign. The image is not a caricature of them, but rather a caricature of their detractors. The joke is not on the Obamas, but on the mainstream media, which has served as a vessel for such accusations.

But, as always, the problem with satire is that everyone doesn’t “get it.” As one of our colleagues pointed out at a party last night, the issue is not with readers of The New Yorker – those folks are progressive-minded intellectuals who would not be predisposed to believing such attacks. (It should be noted that Stephen cannot make it through an entire article in The New Yorker because the average length is 3,456 pages. Highlights, on the other hand, has those cool “what’s different between these two pictures” things, which he finds quite stimulating.)

Like The Colbert Report or Talladega Nights, there is a danger of those upon whom the joke is intended to instead take the cover as further evidence to support their predispositions. Unlike those examples, however, the cover of this issue of The New Yorker is more problematic because it is a joke within a joke. The first level is the form of artwork itself: caricatures are designed to exaggerate features or characteristics for effect – usually of a light-hearted nature (think about the artists at fairs and carnivals that make that little mole on your cheek the size of your eyeballs). So to understand what’s happening with a caricature, one has to understand that it is not literal. The second layer of the joke here is the attempt to criticize the “artist” of the caricature. That is, the commentary at work is aimed at discrediting the lens through which the mainstream media is allowing the Obamas to be viewed (“the artist’s eyes”).

As we have pointed out repeatedly here when we have criticized folks who claim that their intent is not racist, we focus primarily on effect rather than intent. It’s clear to us that the intent of the cover was to be critical of the Obamas’ critics. But if the effect is the reverse, it is worthy of attention. We might say that folks should be “smart” enough to get it, but that’s too dismissive. It is important to consider what effect the cover might have (which is not to argue for censorship – the magazine should be free to print the image, but it would be irresponsible for others not to discuss it).

And herein lies the final irony. If our colleague is correct that readers of The New Yorker will understand what is happening (and we believe he is), the trouble with the image, then, is not its existence, but its repeated use and discussion in more mainstream media forums. Uncle Sal and Aunt Joanie may not have ever seen the cover if it were not for CNN, The New York Times, the local papers and television news, etc. So what was originally designed for a specific audience is now enjoying wider distribution, potentially with the result of perpetuating precisely what the editors had intended to criticize.

Charlton has a video commentary on today's New York Post website. You can watch it below.


In other news. . .

Jesse Jackson is apparently matriculated into a degree program at the Geraldine Ferraro School of What the Hell Were You Thinking. Caught on a microphone before an interview, Jackson was openly (and vulgarly) critical of Obama’s occasional focus on personal responsibility in the black community. And Ralph Nader wonders aloud if Obama is trying to not look like Jesse Jackson? We wonder why! But the most interesting part of the story, we think, was the public airing of what we assume is a simmering family feud. Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. blasted his father for the comments. After a substantive defense of Obama’s candidacy, the younger Jackson said the following:

Revered Jackson is my dad and I'll always love him. He should know how hard that I've worked for the last year and a half as a national co-chair of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. So, I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric. He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself.

Ouch! We just want to go on the record and say that we love our dads.

In other higher education news, New York Congressman Charlie Rangel has been attending the University of I Got Caught Being a Hypocrite. Rangel, a long time proponent of the poor and marginalized, was featured in a front page, above-the-fold story in The New York Times that revealed his possession of four apartments in a luxury building in Harlem for which he is paying rent that is significantly below market value. While we find no problem with wealthy people speaking on behalf of those who are disadvantaged (they’re the folks who are best positioned to help in the long run), the occupancy of multiple rent-stabilized apartments is questionable at best for anyone (though legal – as some have suggested, the law is the real issue), but uniquely troubling for someone who speaks for those who have little.

Rangel vociferously defended himself, but his explanations (while valid) serve more to complicate the matter than to exonerate his actions. Rangel is paying the maximum rent allowed by law for those units. Of the three adjacent units that are his primary residence with his wife (the fourth unit is a number of floors down and used for a campaign office, which is another wrinkle in the story), two were apparently adjoined before they moved in. They added the third for more space later. The issue for us is 1) someone with Rangel’s wealth and fundraising ability does not need to have a rent-stabilized office, and 2) the addition of the third unit for extra space is a luxury that most of his constituents could not afford, so for symbolic reasons, we would have hoped that he would have refrained. Wealth is merely a secondary element; the real question is about modeling the type of fundamental lack of greed that Rangel has advocated his entire career. Adding an efficiency to an existing unit is certainly not an egregious example of financial sloth, but symbolically, it is troubling.