No Satire Needed

I loved Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts' recent column about the Barry Blitt New Yorker cover. You know the cover I mean -- Barack Obama as a jihadist, Michelle Obama as an Angela Davis parody. I read it in today's Buffalo News.

In it, Pitts pointed out the unintended consequences of satire: how a number people thought Archie Bunker was a hero, rather than a fool, for instance. (I remember learning in graduate school about the media research that proved that. I seem to recall that the percentage of people who thought the show actually "sided" with Archie was quite high.)

Here's the main point of what Pitts had to say:

Me, I like the cover. It strikes me as an incisive comment on the fear mongering that has attended Obama’s run for the presidency. Still, I understand why it is incendiary: some of us will take it seriously.

To be effective, satire needs a situation it can inflate into ridiculousness. But the hysteria surrounding Obama has nowhere to go; it is already ridiculous. In just the last few days, we’ve had Jesse Jackson threatening to castrate him and John McLaughlin calling him an “Oreo.”

Add to that the whispers about Obama’s supposed Muslim heritage (not that there’s anything wrong with that), the “terrorist” implications of bumping fists, and Michelle Obama’s purported use of the term “whitey” (a word no black person has uttered since “The Jeffersons” went off the air in 1985) and it’s clear that “ridiculous” has become our default status. What once were punchlines now are headlines.

So, as absurd, as over the top, as utterly outlandish as the New Yorker image strikes the more sophisticated among us, there is a large fringe out there for whom it will represent nothing more or less than the sum of their fears.

Indeed, as I sat down to write these words, there beeped into my mailbox an e-mail with this subject line: “WOW, The New Yorker got it exactly right, for once.” Said without a trace of irony.

But increasingly, that’s who we are in this country: ignorant, irony-impaired and petrified. So maybe we should just cancel the campaign and ask that the last intelligent person turn off the lights when he or she leaves. And bring the last book with you. Nobody here will need it.

For more on Barry Blitt, check out this slide show of his past New Yorker covers to get a sense of perspective on his style and approach to satire. He's one of the most talented illustrators working today. It's unfortunate that his name will forever be associated with this absurdist turn of events.