I know satire. I’ve committed satire. I wish this were an example.
The by now, notorious New Yorker magazine with its Barry Blitt cartoon cover depicting Barack and Michelle Obama in an outlandish jihadi-like context works well in the abstract. To wit: Come on, this is satire, a venerated literary device and a mirror to society’s foibles. Why shouldn’t those preposterous, conservative caricatures of Obama as the Muslim Manchurian candidate be fair game?
The lampoonery is spot on. If it raises hackles and provokes an uproar over insensitivity, so what? Effective satire is hardly incompatible with risk-taking and controversy. Indeed, that’s its raison d’etre.
It also works well for the New Yorker’s sophisticated (subscriber) readership, not to be confused with the right-wing fright squad.
But there’s much more at play here, including New Yorker editor David Remnick’s smug defense of a “piece of art.”
As in anything – including art, journalism and politics – context counts. In fact, it trumps.
Two points:
However quaint to some, societal responsibility remains an operative concept. It has to.
In an historic presidential race featuring an African-American candidate with a foreign name, including Hussein in the middle, it is not art-for-art’s-sake business as usual. Not with an ongoing, civilizational war with radical Islam. Not with hate-mongers masquerading as opposition who don’t do nuance the way New Yorker readers do. Not with anxious voters starting to utter the “A” word for the first time since Robert F. Kennedy was a candidate.
Second, this is less about “art” than it is about surviving in times when those who make their living by the printed word are an increasingly endangered species. Despite the self-serving and arrogant rationales about envelope-pushing art and who’s not sophisticated enough to “get it,” this is about creating a firestorm for a rapacious 24/7 media — and all the attendant New Yorker publicity that would predictably ensue.