A FRESH ROUND of campaign offend-o-rama has been triggered by a New Yorker magazine cover that mocks right-wing slanders of Barack and Michelle Obama. The couple, he in Muslim garb, she in camo with automatic weapon, stand in the Oval Office knuckle-bumping under a portrait of Osama bin Laden and in front of a flag-burning fireplace. A host of commentators has decried Barry Blitt's cartoon as offensive, and Obama and John McCain have denounced it.
The flap stands out because the decriers (mostly liberals) aren't decrying on their own behalf but on behalf of the less insightful. They get the joke, they say, but worry that others won't and that the cartoon will reinforce the lies it seeks to mock. The subtext of their objections seems to be: "What if this piece of arch Manhattan irony were to find its way into the rough hands of red state rubes?"
The drawing collects a lot of unease in one small room - race, religion, and terror. It's a law of cartooning that the more radioactive the subject, the more literal the reader reaction. Out of their comfort zone, people suddenly lose their irony receptors.
In this case, Democratic partisans already fret that the dark forces of reaction will find a way to make their sinister smears stick.
Perhaps they, candidate included, should relax and allow themselves a laugh at their enemies' expense. They could also show a little more faith in the public's sophistication. People seem to understand, for instance, that Stephen Colbert is not really a right-wing talk-show host. Those who miss that distinction, or who read Blitt's cartoon as a blast at Barack, are unlikely Obama voters in the first place.
DAN WASSERMAN
