WITH TWO opinion pieces in the same July 16 section (Dan Wasserman's Editorial Notebook "Fist-bump fury" and Scot Lehigh's column "What's so shocking about satire"), the Globe assures readers that there is really nothing to worry about in seeing Barack Obama depicted in thrall to Osama bin Laden on the cover of The New Yorker. Our readers, and the wider citizenry of New England, are sophisticated enough to laugh.
But consider the impact of Herblock's cartoons, depicting Senator Joseph McCarthy and President Richard Nixon looking crooked and untrustworthy, and you begin to appreciate the power of an image to persuade. That New Yorker cover will be hung in pool halls and diners from Alabama to South Boston, from Montana to Pennsylvania, and it will have the power to change wavering perceptions.
Who wants to decry a cartoon after dismissing rioting Muslims as overwrought after the Danish cartoons? Who wants to think of America in the same light as postwar Germany, where magazines were forbidden to publish cover photos of Adolf Hitler, for fear they would be hung in store windows?
The New Yorker has the right to publish its cover. It is one of the most sophisticated and intelligent magazines, by which I mean the authors of its articles and cartoons meet that description. Apparently, its editorial staff does not.
NEIL RAVIN
Hampton, N.H.
