It is outrageous and I write that without reservation, the editor of the New Yorker should be publicly reprimanded for allowing such a distasteful depiction to grace the cover of the magazine. However my outrage is muted by the belief that if this cover were satirizing John and Cindy McCain, well there would be a lot less criticism and certainly not on the front page of U.S. daily newspapers.
Satire is the thinnest of tightropes, especially in a 24-hour news cycle where every political utterance or image is parsed, gnawed and spit out. That explains why New Yorker editor David Remnick has spent the past day trying to explain that the latest cover of his magazine – depicting Sen. Barack Obama in Muslim garb and his wife, Michelle, as an Afro-sporting gun packer – is intended as a satire.
