This raises interesting questions about the place of intent.

When those on the right use a suspect phrase or image (Tory peer recently used ‘nigger in the wood pile’) the liberal / left often downplay the importance of intent – the line is the language or image is inherently unnacceptable and benign intent doesn’t justify its use. I have some sympathy with that view.

In this case the intent is assumed to have more weight – “hey, it’s a liberal mag, of course there’s no agenda here” – and that worries me. Had the American Spectator used a similar image to criticise it’s ideological friends approach to Obama I suspect there would have been allegations of hidden agendas etc.

There needs to be some sort of standard around intent & motive that operates independent of the political affiliation of those concerned.

@Liam

Interesting. With regards intent, I’d agree that partisan creatures often assume the worst of their political opponents and assume the best of their ideological kin. This is an inevitable consequence of the combative nature of politics and can be seen on both left & right. Sometimes this is very unfair, but I don’t ever see there being a day when it doesn’t happen. If nothing else, we can at least be honest about it.

I should point out that my own impassive shrug at this cover is a minority view when set against the anger in the wider liberal blogosphere, many of whom have made your point that this image will be appropriated by conservatives who wish to cast doubt on his patriotism – just as they did with the picture of Obama in traditional African garb, not putting his hand on his heart during the national anthem and not wearing a flag pin. They’re right, of course, but I still don’t think this is particularly damaging or corrosive.

The reason I think this is because I reckon the framing of Barack Obama in American discourse (both positively & negatively) is pretty fixed and won’t change too much between now and November. Something like 13% of all Americans still think he’s a Muslim (though thankfully, this is less than half the number of those dead-enders who still approve of George W. Bush) and I can’t see that number changing dramatically. Thanks to the New Yorker, the mad right now has yet another image to raise questions about his religion and patriotism to include in their blog posts about the ‘Madrassa’ he attended and the ‘terrorist fist jab’ he performs with his wife. But there’s a key difference between this image and all those others – it’s just a cartoon.

I’m equally relaxed about it Neil – I’m just striving (perhaps in vain) for some consistency and balance here.

The fact that the image can (and probably will) be appropriated by the hard right doesn’t in my view sully the New Yorkers intentions – they’re perfectly entitled to publish and shouldn’t really be censured for doing so. Likewise if some politician on the right uses an unfortunate phrase with clearly no intent to offend or provoke I’d expect the liberal / left reaction to be a similarly indifferent shrug.

When we let partisan interests drive our reaction we sully our case against genuine, deep-rooted bigotry….

>>”if you can’t mock the mad right’s lunatic & racist portrayals of Obama ”

Sure, if everyone can immediately see it’s mocking that. And would not, for example, be taken entirely seriously by large portions of the conservative base. It’s exactly the kind of thing they’d present with a straight face on some of the US conservative blogs. Enough of them already sincerely believe he’s a Muslim.

I’d have more time for it if it was funny, or clever, but with the possible drawbacks it’s just not worth it as it stands.

As for ‘only a cartoon’, don’t be ridiculous.

Ha! What a supreme irony. The Left is reaping what it sows. Having spent decades carefully cultivating and fanning the flames of various “communities” perceived grievances and encouraging the emergence of an enormous “offence” industry where we are all encouraged to feel “offended” at the drop of a hat, this happens.

The reason you all struggle to work up any enthusiasm for this particular “outrage” is that you support the mocking of right-wing smears of Obama. Its just a matter of standpoint not principle.

If you were real Liberals rather than authoritarian leftists looking for a fig-leaf name, you would call for an end to all of this offence-taking, insult-perceiving, grievance-seeking and campaign for real freedom of speech. The kind where all ideas (however loathsome) are subjected to the stress-test and ridicule of public opinion. But you don’t because you aren’t liberals in any meaningful sense of the word. You want freedom to promulgate your perspective and want to “deny a platform” for a wide range of views you disagree with.

The knots the Left is tying itself in with this New Yorker cover are a direct result of its illiberalism.

I swear the admiral just has a form that he copy and pastes issues of the day in to to attack “the left”, it’s uncanny. I don’t know if you’re reading properly Admiral, but those here don’t seem too fussed by the issue.

@Steve B

“As for ‘only a cartoon’, don’t be ridiculous”

I actually wrote ‘just a cartoon’, and the reason I’m being a pedantic little shit about it (apologies, btw) is to differentiate this from all the real world images the hard-right uses to cast aspersions on Obama’s American citizenship and patriotism. These are more damaging to his campaign than some frivolous cartoon that sits uneasily near to the amateur cartoons & photoshop disasters you see around the place.

Honestly, how many people are going to find this image on a Conservative blog and think “ohmigosh, I was going to vote for Obama until I happened-upon this fair & balanced website. Now, I’ll never vote for that terrorist”? In my view, not many. According to which poll you read, the ‘Obama is a Muslim’ meme is believed by anywhere between 10 & 20%. Of that number, I doubt many voted for Kerry in 04.

I’m meandering now, so I’ll just end by saying that yes, this cartoon is an inartful satire which will be appropriated by Bad People & is indicative of a problem the Obama campaign is facing, but I honestly don’t think this loses him any votes that weren’t already lost in the first place.

Like the Admiral, I’m finding this outrage outbreak very amusing. Go New Yorker!

@Lee: Only Steve B is illustrating the kind of thing I’m talking about on this thread, but the US blogs (e.g. the Daily Kos) are full of similar.

And I’m not even that outraged, I just found the cover to be pretty offensive with no wit or compelling satire to back it up.

For those that ‘get’ irony
http://gl0rify.blogspot.com/2008/07/vote-conservative.html

This is clearly the place for The Admiral’s anti-Lefty rants
http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/

Perhaps the blog post should have been more condemning of unfunny cartoons, the latest scourge to hit the world threatening our children.

@Lee:

“Perhaps the blog post should have been more condemning of unfunny cartoons, the latest scourge to hit the world threatening our children.”

I think everyone can sign on to that. We’ve got to give the Americans a bit of leeway though – I’m pretty sure they don’t get the Beano over there, so they won’t know how it’s done…

@Question That:

“Like the Admiral, I’m finding this outrage outbreak very amusing. Go New Yorker!”

Likewise, there’s great fun to be had in conservatives finally finding virtues in the most liberal magazine in the country. What took them all so long?!!

The reason you all struggle to work up any enthusiasm for this particular “outrage” is that you support the mocking of right-wing smears of Obama. Its just a matter of standpoint not principle.

I think The Admiral really is a robot who inserts in the word ‘the left’ and copies it from post to post changing it slightly with the words in the original article to make it sound relevant.

Of course I support the mocking of right-wing smears. Such smears should not only be mocked endlessly, but the people who do them should be put in boiling hot water for a laugh.

I went of the Huffington Post yesterday afternoon, saw the cover and thought oh thats quite funny and chuckled to myself. I then clicked on the accompanying article and though it sounded a bit critical, but it was when I scrolled to the bottom of the page and found 1,200 extremely angry comments that I was truly shocked.

To be quite honest I couldn’t understand it at all, to me its taking the piss out of Fox New and right wingers, especially with the ‘terrorist fist bump’ in the middle of the picture.

“Thanks to the New Yorker, the mad right now has yet another image to raise questions about his religion and patriotism”

The editor of the New Yorker was on ABC News last night and he made the point that they were discussing Obama not being a muslim on prime time television.

That said, when you put it in the context that 13% of Americans still think that Obama is a muslim, I do sort of understand some of the reaction. But to me, its just a funny cover that takes the piss out of the idiocy of Fox News and friends.

Just to add – I do think that given the incredible smears and rubbish that has been floating around about him (incl doctoring articles by the New York Times), this will soon enough surface as “Oh look, even liberal magazines are saying Obama is a terrorist”.

Eventually, I think it will backfire. I wouldn’t have run it.

That troubles me Sunny. I completely understand why a campaign insider or someone interested in Obama’s strategy between now & November would caution against running it – for the very reasons offer up.

But from a strictly liberal point of view, with an eye to freedom of expression etc. can the left really justify this level of self-censorship? – particularly since this was supposed to be satire or humour? It’s ethically dubious being too literal with your opponents words & images to score partisan points – when you start doing it with your own satire & humour (at the rights expense as well!) you really are into some sort of Orwellian double-speak nightmare!

Yes it’s dangerous but if the left and Obama’s team had offered up a relaxed shrug the story today would be how ridiculous the American right looks. Instead it’s how confused the American left is….

Liam,

It depends what the grounds for not running the cartoon are. If I was the editor of the New Yorker, I might want to reject it on the grounds that it has absolutely nothing to do with the rather mammoth cover story, which is ostensibly about Obama’s background in Chicago politics and how it shaped him as a politician. Rejecting it on those grounds – and requesting something more representative of the article they’re trying to promote – isn’t problematic at all.

As for rejecting something on the grounds that the candidate might find it offensive, then I’d find that troubling, too. However, this amorphous thing called ‘the left’ doesn’t have the power to censor anything here. The New Yorker is owned by Conde Nast, and had they said “the possibility of offense is simply too great to our profits, so we’re not running it”, then that’s just the cost of doing business. Alas, a magazine editor’s right to free speech is supervised & constrained by the people who pay his wages.

As for the Obama campaign’s outraged response, well it’s a little self-serving. For one, candidates raise money off these things and I’d like to bet they’ve received a spike in donations since Sunday night. Also, they’re using it to underscore the point that he’s a Christian, not a Muslim, in an attempt to educate the knuckle-draggers. As I’ve written about before, the ‘outrage’ over the Muslim smear gets a bit unsettling at times.

As I often say at the start of these posts, I know next to nothing about American politics and am generally happy to leep it that way.

So here is a question.

Who is offended?

Is there any chance that the people complaining are just right wingers taking the opportunity to attack a left wing paper?

I ask because that is pretty much how it works in the UK, but I have no idea if it is different in the USA.

Sadly, the USA is bizarre enough that someone passing by and seeing this on the shelf might seriously think it was an exposé. If 13% (or whatever the figure is) can actually think he’s Muslim at this point, anything’s possible.

That’s why I think there’s an element of care due here from the Liberal editor of the mag, not in the name of not causing offence to Obama but simply because the electorate is too clueless to be influenced only in the way he’s intending here.

But from a strictly liberal point of view, with an eye to freedom of expression etc. can the left really justify this level of self-censorship? – particularly since this was supposed to be satire or humour?

This question shouldn’t even arise in this context. The American constitution guarantees free speech and America is far more crazy in terms of people saying wild things than is tolerated here.

Since the legal element is not under question, the point is about what is acceptable expression in maintream discourse. If publishing cartoons depicting Jews as a power-hungry group trying to take over the world is not acceptable (as it shouldn’t be) then depictions of black people with funny sounding names as Muslim terrorists shouldn’t be acceptable either.

If the level of crap chucked at Obama wasn’t at hysterical levels, with Fox commentators calling that action a ‘terrorist fist bumb’, then I’d have no problem with it.

As for the context – of course its important. Your mate calls you an idiot, you’re going to shrug it off, especially if he/she says it with a smile. Some person you hate calls you that – you don’t think your blood is going to boil? I don’t know how you can separate context from speech.

Legally of course context is rather irrelevant. But in everyday discussions its always there.

Is that supposed to be Obama? Looks more like Gadaffi to me.

@Sunny: “The American constitution guarantees free speech and America is far more crazy in terms of people saying wild things than is tolerated here.”

I’m not so sure about this. Some pretty close-to-the-bone cartoons have been published in the British press, and at the same time the US has an army of offenderati ready to jump down the throat of anyone they perceive as acting ‘unacceptably’ just like we do.

I’m not so sure about this.

Ever watched broadcast television there or listened to talk-radio?

The point about an ‘offenderati’ isn’t what is legal/not legal (which is the point I’m making) but what is acceptable. Americans are more religious, so I don’t see Piss Christ getting much traction there. I’m not supporting it – just saying that’s how it is.

Btw, if you read anything about the recent Dunkin Donuts kerfuffle, you’d note that the offendarati is almost all right-wing.

I never said the “offenderati” were all left-wing – you read that into my post.

Thanks Steve – in that case this may be a bad move by the editor in that it misleads – rather than a bad move because it is offensive.

Don’t get me wrong – offensiveness is often essential to good satire. But since I find the cartoon really quite offensive on its own merits, I was disappointed it didn’t follow through and (to my mind) was easily misconstrued.

Whereas I always think Dave Brown is hilarious, and today’s copy of the cartoon didn’t offend me at all:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/the-daily-cartoon-760940.html

Sunny – it’s probably important to distinguish between TV and press when comparing the UK and US media.

Fox and talk radio say things that would be regulated out of existence here, but the US has no print media like either the Sun or the Mail on the one hand, or Steve Bell and Martin Rowson on the other (well, except Ted Rall, but he’s a far more cult figure than either Bell or Rowson. You wouldn’t see his cartoons in the New York Times…)