An attempt at selling untruths or magazines

(NNPA) - The cover of the July 21 edition of the The New Yorker, which features a caricature rendering of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama dressed as an Islamic fundamentalist and his wife Michelle as an armed militant, has stirred a fierce new debate over the line between legitimate satire and racially insensitive imagery.Judging by the opinions expressed in interviews, on blogs, television broadcasts, in print and online publications and around water coolers across the United States, many observers have decided that the drawing - which shows the would-be First Couple bumping fists in the White House, under a portrait of Osama bin Laden - falls under the latter.

While Barack Obama himself said Tuesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live" that he had seen and heard worse than the drawing, his surrogates have employed much stronger language.

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

Activist Najee Ali of Project Islamic HOPE, who issued a call for a boycott of the magazine on the day it arrived on newsstands, believes it was offensive and in poor taste to project Obama as an Islamic terrorist and his wife, Michelle Obama, as a gun-toting Black militant. It plays into false stereotypes about Muslims being terrorists and Michelle being an angry Black woman.

Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks, who has also pushed for a boycott of the magazine, told CNN, "I think it's outrageous that we'd have a cover that would depict racism, sexism, anti-religion, also anti-patriotism.

In an effort to defend the caricature, produced by designer Barry Blitt, New Yorker editor David Remnick said in a statement that the cover's "The Politics of Fear" 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.

The attacks Remnick speaks of are probably familiar to most who have closely, or even casually, followed the 2008 presidential campaign.

After the Obamas publicly shared a fist-bump on the night he secured his party's nomination, one broadcaster referred to the common greeting as a terrorist fist jab; months before, Barack Obama came under fire for comments his family's former pastor made in the aftermath of Sept. 11, seen as suggesting that the terrorist attacks may have been spiritual retribution for America's own international wrongdoing.

Summing up his interpretation of the drawing's meaning, Remnick wrote that t is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful and the absurd. And that's the spirit of the cover.

Art Torres, chairman of the California Democratic Party, disagreed. "One would think the esteemed editors of The New Yorker would be learned enough not to attempt to pass off an insulting caricature as satire," he said, "but that is clearly not the case."

He added: "The New Yorker's editors claim the distasteful cover rendition of Senator Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, is so clearly over the top it is absurd, but what is absurd is their attempt to distract the public from the fact that the cover was clearly designed to stir up controversy and boost sales."

Despite his distaste for the image, Paul Porter, co-founder of Industry Ears, a nonpartisan forum of entertainment and broadcast professionals who analyze disparities in media and the impact they have on communities, believes the cover was genius as a marketing tool.

"More people saw [that] cover of The New Yorker than they did in the history of the magazine, so I applaud them for selling magazines and getting coverage, he said. "I think it did what it was supposed to do, but I don't think many people will read the [two articles on Obama inside the magazine] and that's what my problem is. Unfortunately today perception turns into reality and what people see and hear, they believe and that's the problem with mainstream news. It has too much of a personal opinion.