New Yorker Increases Readership - Shocking True Story!
July 14th, 2008 — -Yes, the New Yorker, the favored journal of nearly 2,000 gin-sipping upper East Side Manhattanites, shocks the world by printing something that can be understood by the average American.
Yes, we get the joke, but does the New Yorker? Yes, he’s Black! You’re poking the sensitive, unresolved history of Africans in America (and claiming that you’re poking at the Right wing’s take on the issue). We get it, you guys are on the ball! (You’ve got to be patient with these Manhattanites. Their sense of humor is so quick, it’s slow).
In any case, Congratulations to the always slightly-soused editors of the Nation’s least-read institution: it’s the freshest thing you’ve printed since you introduced the world to a young, moody, iconoclastic female movie critic in the late 1950s. (And Bless her soul, by the way. Go read her, if you haven’t).
In other news, Note to New Yorker - Satire is only humor when it’s funny. And, you know, I think it’s funny enough. It’s certainly provocative, gets a conversation going, and that’s good thing, if we can all handle the conversation. That is, if all of America’s ethnically diverse populations are afforded the same opportunities, then we can all take a tweak on the nose. If, however, we’re not all offered the same opportunities, then you’re gonna piss some people off.
But, as a great woman, man or tree frog once said, “All’s fair in capture-the-flag, love, and politics.”
July 17th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I emailed my disgust to TNY and received an autoreply
due to high “volume of correspondence”. They state:
“About this week’s issue: Our cover, “The Politics of Fear,” combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are. The burning flag, the nationalist-radical and Islamic outfits, the fist-bump, the portrait on the wall— all of them echo one attack or another. Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that’s the spirit of this cover. In this same issue you will also see that there are two very serious articles on Barack Obama inside—Hendrik Hertzberg’s Comment, (http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/07/21/080721taco_talk_hertzberg) and Ryan Lizza’s 15,000-word reporting piece on the candidate’s political education and rise in Chicago (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza).”
July 18th, 2008 at 6:09 am
Is there something to get worked up about?
Does the New Yorker need to boost sales with a “controversial” cover?
The cover does work both ways though. For many, it validates their views on the Obamas (accurate or not). For others, it gets their liberal panties in a bunch.