Judging a "book" by its cover

I'm taking a break from writing (blogging in particular) for the summer and maybe longer. But there is a controversy afoot, a tiny little tornado in a teacup that, like the ringing of Pavlov's bell, has wrung an inevitable response from me. I'm just as God made me, folks, a simple satirist and ex-magazine person and lover of GOOD magazines, and so must fling out my two cents, asked for or not.

Don't let the glossy intellectualized idiom confuse you: The New Yorker cover of Barack and Michelle Obama is bad satire--blurry in intent, flawed in execution, and...well, the kind of clunking, ill-formed thing that rigid hierarchies of smart-but-unfunny people create when they're determined to crack wise. Illustrator Barry Blitt has depicted the putative First Couple in the Oval Office, she dressed as Angela Davis with 'fro and bandolier, he as an turbaned Islamofascist. There's even a portrait of Osama bin Laden over a roaring fire, stoked by an American flag. The pair share a fist-bump in sly solidarity.

Blitt's objective was, I can only assume, to lampoon June's FOX News fantods over "terrorist fist-jabbing," as well as the right-wing's endless whispery smears of the Obamas as somehow unamerican. There's nothing wrong with this goal--the hysteria and smears ARE ridiculous, and legit targets--but there's nothing particularly right with it, either.

First off, it's old news. Six weeks is an eternity for political humor, and there's nothing lamer than an untimely attempt at timely satire. This would have been a fine cover (nothing extraordinary, but fine) if it had appeared within a week or two of FOX's fluttering (June 7, according to YouTube). Running it now makes readers go "Huh?...Oh, I remember that." It is this moment of confusion, followed by vague recollection--a timely joke delivered in a non-timely fashion--that is causing the negative reaction.

Second, the style doesn't match the satirical intent. The intent is to underscore the absurdity of Obamas-as-fifth-column, to show it to be a fever-dream born of rhetoric and paranoia. You can do this either by creating a grotesque fantasy--amping it one way--or going in the other direction, and anchoring it in reality. Blitt's slight, watery, wan style is exactly the wrong treatment. Maybe Blitt came to them with the idea; fair enough, pair him with somebody who can use Photoshop, have the pair of them create a seamless photocollage that takes the right-wing fantasy to its FARTHEST POINT. Make it graphic, make it punchy. Photorealistic or Felliniesque, it doesn't matter, but the finished product should insist upon the opinion you want the reader to take away: "this is absurd."

Whenever The New Yorker does a reasonably decent cover, the ancient Steinberg cover of Manhattan as the center of the world is referenced; but this comparison shows just why Blitt's cover is so structurally weak. To begin with, the Steinberg cover fit the venue; its satirical point was that many Manhattan-dwellers believe that their island is the center of the world. The presence of that idea on the cover of The New Yorker was completely appropriate, and allowed the reader to absorb that idea without having to decode its relationship to the magazine "behind" it.

The viewpoint of Blitt's cover is one diametrically opposed to the one held by your average New Yorker reader; therefore, it's understandable for readers to see it and think, "Why is The New Yorker saying that the Obamas are militants/Islamofascists?...They would never do that...Oh, I get it." Ideas like this--ones that require a second of mental processing--these are weak vehicles for satire, especially in our hyper-visual, hyper-distracted, information-dense era, when none of us have time to process anything very deeply, given the volume of crud that comes at us every minute of every day.

Furthermore, there was a fitness of idea and style in the Steinberg cover that does not exist here. Steinberg's style was cartoonish, idiosyncratic, exaggerated to the point of absurdity--all completely of a piece with the "NYC as center of world" idea he was trying to put across. Like Steinberg, Blitt's style is personal, artistic--but in this case, it confuses the reader; is this Blitt's fantasy, since it comes from his pen? If we remember the old news story, AND know the political stance of TNY, we realize, no, it's not--it's commentary. The idea Steinberg was putting across was a small, amusing one; a harmless affectation held by New Yorkers everywhere, grist for a witty, stylish cartoon. The whisper campaign against the Obamas is not such light-hearted material, and that the editors could not make this distinction shows exactly why they should be kept far away from the funny cabinet. It could potentially make for a great cover, and maybe even a great cartoon cover, but this ain't it. It ain't anywhere close.

Jokes don't get over when you ask the reader to spend too much time "decoding." This is where idea and execution must work together, sharpening and enhancing each other. Blitt's cover is blurry in all three facets, intent, context, or execution. Intent: "Is this pro-Obama or con-? It seems con-, but because I know that The New Yorker is liberal, I guess it's pro-..." Properly sharpened satire, not to mention top-notch magazine covers, do not rely on the reader's prior knowledge of the magazine. They answer this question automatically, unequivocally, viscerally. Laugh or don't, but we WILL kill this dog. Context: Why now? Timely satire must be timely; this cover is the comeback you imagine six weeks later. Yes, I know the mechanics of producing a magazine require a certain time-lag--so don't do timely satire. Execution: The style employed does nothing to aid or refine the satirical point, and unlike Steinberg's style--or the photorealism of the famous NatLamp cover--actually blunts its impact...Which is, of course, completely intentional on the part of The New Yorker.

See, the problem isn't that the cover is blah. The problem is that the cultural turf staked out by TNY means that it cannot produce satire, and lacks either the good grace or self-awareness to abstain. Good satire is almost by definition excessive, and that runs counter to the "timeless intellectual arbiter" brand TNY strives so mightily to maintain (for commercial reasons). The reason that Tina Brown fizzled is because you cannot simultaneously pull stunts in the belief that all publicity is good publicity, while at the same time relentlessly harkening back to the Good Old Days when men wore suits and Shawn despised adverbs (or was it Ross?). One or the other stance always feels false. When Roseanne guest-edits, it feels like they're slumming; when they print this cover, it feels like they're giving authority to ideas that should be ignored. They can't win, so they shouldn't play.

But strange as it may seem the people at The New Yorker envy the people at The Daily Show; they envy them their relevancy, and their reach, and their hipness. Just like the people at The New Yorker in 1975 envied those things about SNL. The difference is, TNY in 1975 knew what it was, and what it was for, and today's New Yorker does not. That's why this cover doesn't work, and also why the pundits are rallying 'round to say that it does, because if they admit that it's just a ham-handed attempt at what things like The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and (yes, even) South Park do regularly--and effortlessly--they'll be forced to see just how many steps behind they really are.

So laugh, or don't, but know that it isn't a big deal--magazines don't matter in America, and haven't for 30 years--and we wouldn't even be discussing it were it not for the media's preference towards stories about itself. But given the poisonousness of the Obama-as-traitor meme--and the skill and persistence with which the right-wing smears Democrats--I personally wouldn't have run it. Unless, of course, it was really fucking funny.

It isn't. Moving on...

PS: When Kate read this post, she suggested that it either be done in a pure tabloid style (to which I replied, you could do it as a sideways spread inside the mag), or if you had to stick with TNY's house style, have McCain in a grocery store checkout line, reading a Weekly World News-type thing that reprinted all the lurid Obama-smearing. (I particularly liked that idea.) Kate also said she'd cancel her subscription, but felt that people who did that over objectionable covers "are asshats."