So what is fair game in the satire business? Cartoonist Blitt hasn't been shy about mocking the Bush Administration on New Yorker covers. A Dec. 5, 2005 cover depicted President Bush in an apron holding a duster while tending, housewife-like, to a cigar-smoking Vice President Dick Cheney, his tie loosened, his feet perched on a coffee table. And weeks after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, the New Yorker's Sept. 19, 2005 cover showed a Blitt cartoon of the Bush cabinet in the Oval Office up to their necks in water.
And last October, after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country," a Blitt cover depicted him in a restroom stall touching feet under the partition with another man, as Idaho Sen. Larry Craig is alleged to have done in a Minneapolis airport men's room.
Clearly the above is satire. They invoke humor, irony and anger....human and irony by non partisans or by opponents, and probably anger by the subjects and their supporters. However, the Obama cover brings in a 4th element or emotion....which is fear. People who don't know the Obamas well but have heard the rumors may now believe they are true, making the Obamas potentially dangerous. Therefore there is no chance in hell that those people will ever vote for B. Obama for president.
I don't know how many of these people exist in this country but I have seen them interviewed on tv or in articles. Obama doesn't need to lose potential votes thanks to the doings of arrogant, self absorbed, liberal intellectuals. |
