New Yorker cover depicts Barack Obama as Muslim - International Herald Tribune
Can you take a joke?
Apparently not is the word from the Obama campaign:
"The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. "But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."We have worried in our conversations about how Obama would think and react if he is ever president and negotiating with some of the nasty bastards who run powerful countries like Russia and China, or just nuclear-tipped tin pots.
Normally, in history, it would be the wise move of a presidential candidate to show he could keep cool and sharp in face of all the nastiness the media, the opposition, and the world throw at him.
Is it simply a case that there are a few too many grains of truth in the cartoon for Obama to rest easy?
Or is it that his campaign is so deeply indebted to victimary politics that it has just become second nature to play the victim in hope of gaining the rewards that position so often endows in our "post-colonial" culture?
In any case, it may be little tiffs like this that provide the real revelations into what America now is. The candidates aren't actually saying anything yet, are they?
UPDATE:
Meanwhile, bin Laden family consider buying Newcastle United
Just another coal miner's hero!
UPDATE 2:
Maybe Obama's camp is fussing because they don't want us to read the article which is not at all about what this cartoon suggests.
4 comments:
Of course, Obama has been photographed, many times, in full Muslim garb - and these photos are widely available on the internet.
True, he does not dress this way in the US, but when he is visiting with his Muslim relatives in Africa... Still, his images wearing the full Islamig garb are in the public domain.
Yeah,
You know, the thing that really worries me is that I think a large number of Americans, black and white, will look at an image like this and really relate! For them, it will be kind of cool to have a first couple like that; still, those people will feel they have to insist that Michelle and Barack are at the same time being abused by the "right wing".
We have figures on our side like Diana West and Thomas Sowell. They both represent America at its best. The are representations, being pubic figures. They stand in the place of millions and multi-millions of Americans who aren't known to the pubic. But hustlers and tricksters have presented the world and American voters with the two above, cartoonish creatures, as those who should rule the nation. There seems to be a love-affair with phantasies rather than with the good dark Earth. I think we need to do more farming. I think people need to go out and plant crops on their vacations and return on weekends to tend the yield. We could turn to burying our own dead in holes in the ground rather than going to "mortuaries". We could, as X. above would relate, bear children and live with the aftermath of the physical world of Humanness.
We need a nation that returns to trout fishing and hunting and planting and harvesting. Barring that, maybe we need, as Charles an Peers so often point out, a return to church-going, a different sort of grounding in the daily Human.
After I saw the Osama (not to be confused with Obama ;) photo and read the story, it was several long minutes before I got a hold of myself from a severe bout of laughter. Up till then, I was merely tsk-tsking the extreme touchiness of the Obama camp at what is clearly satire.
Of course, I had to "steal" the soccer-dude thing :)
Dag said: (M)aybe we need, as Charles an Peers so often point out, a return to church-going, a different sort of grounding in the daily Human."
This is exactly what I think is leading to such moral decline. People need to become more spiritual, connect to the Universal Creator, and connect with their fellow humans. There is so much disconnect from the loving God and from each other. I am thankful to be able to "connect" with so many people online, as well, however, especially the bunch here.
(Aside to dag: "They stand in the place of millions and multi-millions of Americans who aren't known to the pubic." Is that why the birth rate is falling? Just kidding!)
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