The Obamas as Terrorists: Is Irony Compatible with News?
"The New Yorker laboriously justified itself in a statement: the drawing
denounces 'prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd.' Too late.
The damage is done, the cover is being discussed on blogs
and, out of this whole affair, it's the image of Obama
as a terrorist that will leave its mark on people’s minds."
Every week, The New Yorker
publishes a drawing that is quirky, poetic, humorous, or a bit strange on its
cover. Its long-time subscribers probably weren’t too offended by the weekly’s
latest cover that shows the Obamas in the Oval Office
in the guise of terrorists.
Barack Obama is in traditional
Muslim garb (turban and djellaba), while his
wife Michelle, sporting an "Afro" hairdo, is in combat fatigues with
a Kalashnikov slung across her shoulder. The American flag burns in the
fireplace and a portrait of Osama bin Laden adorns the wall.
The image pushed to the point
of absurdity certain remarks that are heard here and there about Barack Obama:
he’s not tough about confronting terrorism; his middle name Hussein betrays his
Muslim roots, and so on.
Even McCain, the Republican
candidate, once described him as the “candidate of Hamas”
According to a poll recently published in Newsweek ,
25 percent of Americans believe Obama was raised a Muslim and 12 percent that
he took the oath of office on the Koran when he became a senator!
2008 ELECTION CAMPAIGN SATIRE FUN FROM JIBJAB
Irony
is a tool that should be used with care. [French newspapers] Libération and Rue89 had best remember that.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
I like this provocative
image. But irony is rarely a good mix with news. Though a majority of readers
of any newspaper understand the subtext, many others are terribly narrow-minded.
I remember a headline that we wrote for Libération
when [former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre] Raffarin
was named prime minister: Finally, Raffarin!!
Such a reaction over such an un-charismatic character made journalists laugh
during the news meeting [when editors decide what to publish]. But readers didn’t
completely understand, and as a result, they mustn't have fully appreciated it.
Derision doesn’t work well in news. Recently, Rue89 paid the price of
publishing a humorous story [French ].
And so, the cover of The
New Yorker, a left-leaning weekly, triggered an outcry on the other side of
the Atlantic. Obama’s campaign team didn't at all share the magazine’s sense of
humor, saying it was in “bad taste and offensive.” The Republican candidate,
John McCain, even said the cover was “totally inappropriate.”
The New Yorker laboriously justified itself in a statement: the
drawing denounces “prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd.” Too
late. The damage is done, the cover is being discussed on blogs and, out
of this whole affair, it's the image of Obama as a
terrorist that will leave its mark on people’s minds.
