Protesting Too Much?

While, I've been pretty vocal about how much I think that the cartoons in The New Yorker suck, the Obama crew is getting a little overwrought over the July 21 cover.

Even not having read the article, it was was immediately obvious to me that the cartoon was meant as satire and NOT how the magazine really feels about the Obamas.

Or as shell shocked New Yorker editor, David Remnick, said "Our cover combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are...the burning flag, the nationalist-radical and Islamic outfits, the fist-bump, the portrait on the wall - all of them echo one attack or another. Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to the absurd."

Actually, Lee Marvin's movie jab at a crybaby Colonel in "The Dirty Dozen" best characterizes the people who are outraged over this:

"you're really... quite emotional. Aren't you?"

From July 14th's New York Daily News:

Barack Obama's campaign lashed out Sunday at the editors of The New Yorker magazine for a cartoon cover that depicts the Democratic candidate and his wife as fist-bumping terrorists.

The magazine's editor described the cartoon, called "The Politics of Fear," as satire. The Obama campaign called it "tasteless and offensive."

The Illinois senator is depicted in traditional Muslim garb in the Barry Blitt illustration set in the Oval Office.

His wife, Michelle, is in fatigues, sporting an Angela Davis-style sky-high Afro, an AK-47 slung over her shoulder.

A portrait of terror kingpin Osama Bin Laden hangs above the fireplace, in which an American flag is set ablaze.

"The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said.