Thursday, July 31, 2008
Making fun of Presidential candidates
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Now that the furor over The New Yorker’soutrageous Obama family cartoon has died down, let’s look at the issue of sarcasm in the media’s coverages of presidential candidates. All three major players carry the status of belonging to minorities – race, gender, age. In the case of Sen. Clinton, the press has had no hesitations of making fun or worse of her on the usual Billary topics – memories of renting out the Lincoln bedroom to commercially interested contributors, donations to the Presidential library, collecting large sums from major corporate interests, Whitewater and directed investments that gained hundredfold. Such liberal source as Maureen Dowd of the NYTimes has whacked her practically weekly, at will.
Sen. McCain has no dearth of sarcastic detractors either. His age, mistakes in speeches such as occasionally mixing up Shias and Sunnis, and allegations of adopting his natural child, pandering to the religious Right, and waffling , waffling on issues and war and taxes on a major scale, draw quips as well as direct attacks. But both Clinton and McCain have had no hesitations to appear on the David Letterman and Jay Leno shows as well as their counterparts on cable, taking digs and trading quips in good spirit, establishing their good sportsmanship and thus trying to take the edge of the accusations. This is in substantial contrast to the current occupant of the White House, whose skin must have acquired elephantine thickness over the years, and who ignores most attacks, occasionally fighting back with heavy salvos.
Sen. Obama has no history and therefore very little baggage to make fun of. The NYTimes made an effort to see whether and why the usual suspect in the media who use barbed humor in celebrity interviews shy away from making fun of and with Barak Hussein Obama, whose very name has startled opponents, mostly of the Right, into camouflaged allegations of religious, terrorist and racist allegations. Letterman, Leno, Conan O’Brien and cable’s Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher and other, lesser lights and their spokespeople claim inadequate funny material. Quite obviously, though behind all excuses is the fear of opening themselves to accusations of racism, if not by the candidate, who stands above all that (except when defending is wife), then from any number of surrogates.
In this atmosphere now steps the fearless New Yorker, a journal of established humor as well as well-researched political opinions. Their July 21 cover shows Barak in dashiki and Muslim gear and Michelle in a huge Afro, toting a machine gun, both slapping knuckles, every stereotype of the underground accusations. Newscasts and Drudge-type blogs had revealed the story, and every kind of racist accusations against the magazine started flying almost instantly. To us, the East Midtown admirers of the magazine, the revelation was that some 80-plus percent of Americans had no idea of wht the New Yorker is and does, a piece of information that no longer applies, after the brouhaha.. Even Ira Fusfeld, the sophisticated publisher of the nearby Kingston Freeman, admitted on the NPR Media Show that he took the story seriously. Both campaigns, Obama and McCain, found the cover tasteless and offensive.In response, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, attackedis detractors vigorously, proclaiming that the cover exposes to public light the distortions, lies and misconceptions about the Obamas, claiming that the picture exaggerates and mocks, showing the absurdity of the images, in the spirit of Stephen Colbert.
This is not the first ime the magazine has shocked us with its cover. There was, a few years ago, the stark drawing of a Hassidic man passionately kissing a black woman, drawn by Art Spiegelman who also produced a cartoon history of the Holocaust. Founded in 1925, the New Yorker has always featured pointed social comment, e.g. Peter Arno’s socialites entering a cab : "We are going to the Sutton to jeer Roosevelt," and Saul Steinberg’s New Yyorker’s view of America, with skyscrapers, the Hudson, then deserted space and Hollywood on the horizon, The magazine’s humor has become a bit more arch and jaded, sometimes as hard to interpret as those seemingly senseless TV commercials understood only by hip people under 25, and not always.
Which puts the US in precarious position vis-à-vis printed humor. The precious weekly Onion presenrs spurious parody news articles in a mewspaper format, nowhere near the quality of Stephen Colbert, the established yardstick for with-it satire. The edge is hard to keep sharp, and consequently the Onion can soon become boring and tedious.
That leaves the ordinary household humor field to, would you believe, the Reader’s Digest, another 1920s creation that has lasted. Produced to give the reader reprints of the day’s best magazine and journal articles, it eventually shifted to pieces actually commissioned by the Digest, sometimes having them printed elsewhere first. Human interest stories of miraculous escaoes from nature’s disasters and human accidents became a feature, also health hints and revelations about food dangers, crooks in office and in everyday life. Four or five pages of jokes suitable for telling around the water cooler, alsoa vanished phenomenon, still carry the day, no Colbert there. One could almost believe that we are growing into a nation of 24/7 audiovisually fed dumbed-down sceptics and cynics.
Now that the furor over The New Yorker’soutrageous Obama family cartoon has died down, let’s look at the issue of sarcasm in the media’s coverages of presidential candidates. All three major players carry the status of belonging to minorities – race, gender, age. In the case of Sen. Clinton, the press has had no hesitations of making fun or worse of her on the usual Billary topics – memories of renting out the Lincoln bedroom to commercially interested contributors, donations to the Presidential library, collecting large sums from major corporate interests, Whitewater and directed investments that gained hundredfold. Such liberal source as Maureen Dowd of the NYTimes has whacked her practically weekly, at will.
Sen. McCain has no dearth of sarcastic detractors either. His age, mistakes in speeches such as occasionally mixing up Shias and Sunnis, and allegations of adopting his natural child, pandering to the religious Right, and waffling , waffling on issues and war and taxes on a major scale, draw quips as well as direct attacks. But both Clinton and McCain have had no hesitations to appear on the David Letterman and Jay Leno shows as well as their counterparts on cable, taking digs and trading quips in good spirit, establishing their good sportsmanship and thus trying to take the edge of the accusations. This is in substantial contrast to the current occupant of the White House, whose skin must have acquired elephantine thickness over the years, and who ignores most attacks, occasionally fighting back with heavy salvos.
Sen. Obama has no history and therefore very little baggage to make fun of. The NYTimes made an effort to see whether and why the usual suspect in the media who use barbed humor in celebrity interviews shy away from making fun of and with Barak Hussein Obama, whose very name has startled opponents, mostly of the Right, into camouflaged allegations of religious, terrorist and racist allegations. Letterman, Leno, Conan O’Brien and cable’s Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher and other, lesser lights and their spokespeople claim inadequate funny material. Quite obviously, though behind all excuses is the fear of opening themselves to accusations of racism, if not by the candidate, who stands above all that (except when defending is wife), then from any number of surrogates.
In this atmosphere now steps the fearless New Yorker, a journal of established humor as well as well-researched political opinions. Their July 21 cover shows Barak in dashiki and Muslim gear and Michelle in a huge Afro, toting a machine gun, both slapping knuckles, every stereotype of the underground accusations. Newscasts and Drudge-type blogs had revealed the story, and every kind of racist accusations against the magazine started flying almost instantly. To us, the East Midtown admirers of the magazine, the revelation was that some 80-plus percent of Americans had no idea of wht the New Yorker is and does, a piece of information that no longer applies, after the brouhaha.. Even Ira Fusfeld, the sophisticated publisher of the nearby Kingston Freeman, admitted on the NPR Media Show that he took the story seriously. Both campaigns, Obama and McCain, found the cover tasteless and offensive.In response, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, attackedis detractors vigorously, proclaiming that the cover exposes to public light the distortions, lies and misconceptions about the Obamas, claiming that the picture exaggerates and mocks, showing the absurdity of the images, in the spirit of Stephen Colbert.
This is not the first ime the magazine has shocked us with its cover. There was, a few years ago, the stark drawing of a Hassidic man passionately kissing a black woman, drawn by Art Spiegelman who also produced a cartoon history of the Holocaust. Founded in 1925, the New Yorker has always featured pointed social comment, e.g. Peter Arno’s socialites entering a cab : "We are going to the Sutton to jeer Roosevelt," and Saul Steinberg’s New Yyorker’s view of America, with skyscrapers, the Hudson, then deserted space and Hollywood on the horizon, The magazine’s humor has become a bit more arch and jaded, sometimes as hard to interpret as those seemingly senseless TV commercials understood only by hip people under 25, and not always.
Which puts the US in precarious position vis-à-vis printed humor. The precious weekly Onion presenrs spurious parody news articles in a mewspaper format, nowhere near the quality of Stephen Colbert, the established yardstick for with-it satire. The edge is hard to keep sharp, and consequently the Onion can soon become boring and tedious.
That leaves the ordinary household humor field to, would you believe, the Reader’s Digest, another 1920s creation that has lasted. Produced to give the reader reprints of the day’s best magazine and journal articles, it eventually shifted to pieces actually commissioned by the Digest, sometimes having them printed elsewhere first. Human interest stories of miraculous escaoes from nature’s disasters and human accidents became a feature, also health hints and revelations about food dangers, crooks in office and in everyday life. Four or five pages of jokes suitable for telling around the water cooler, alsoa vanished phenomenon, still carry the day, no Colbert there. One could almost believe that we are growing into a nation of 24/7 audiovisually fed dumbed-down sceptics and cynics.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 3:04 PM 
