This is the cover for the upcoming issue of The New Yorker, drawn by Barry Blitt, ostensibly in response to a FOX News teaser that described this moment as a “terrorist fist jab,” and the hoopla that followed.  I gotta say, this cartoon seems to have fallen well short of “biting cultural satire” and landed in “just as offensive as the thing it’s making fun of” territory.  Which is to say that it doesn’t go far enough.

Confused?

A good analogue would be a joke from a recent episode of Family Guy, a show which thrives in the aforementioned territory like lawn jockeys at Jessie Helms’ house.  Stewie complains that “this party is worse than a Mexican funeral,” and the scene cuts to a coffin stuffed with about a dozen bodies while the priests reads a long list of Spanish names.  Now, if this were a comment on the terrible conditions poor people are forced to live (and die) in, that would be satire, and it might have been intended as such.  The problem is that the joke serves just as well as a racist one, and nothing in the joke seems to be poking fun at people who hate Mexicans. It’s just a joke about Mexicans.

For comparison’s sake, it would be extremely difficult for the targets of Stephen Colbert’s satire to embrace anything he says (unless you’re Tom Delay). Even George W. Bush understands Colbert as an attack on conservative bullshit, and he’s twice as dumb as he is evil (which is to say, “very dumb”). Colbert understands that satire works by exaggeration, not just mimicry.

Nothing on this New Yorker cover is unbelievable.  It’s the exact sort of thing I’d expect to see on the front page of Drudge Report.   You’ll notice that Blitt tried very hard to push the joke, throwing a burning flag in the fireplace and a picture of Osama bin Laden on the wall in a desperate attempt to say, “Hey guys, look, it’s gotta be a joke.”  But again, these represent real attacks being launched at the Obamas’ patriotism, and simply reproducing them without modification, without some kind of comic exaggeration, is not satire. It’s doing the other side’s job for them.

UPDATE: I’ve been waiting for Michael Shaw’s analysis, and as usual he does not disappoint.