The New Yorker magazine has a cover that everyone is talking about.
Kevin Drum thinks it is tacky. Okay, he actually said gutless.
If artist Barry Blitt had some real cojones, he would have drawn the same cover but shown it as a gigantic word bubble coming out of John McCain’s mouth — implying, you see, that this is how McCain wants the world to view Obama. But he didn’t. Because that would have been unfair. And McCain would have complained about it. And for some reason, the risk that a failed satire would unfairly defame McCain is somehow seen as worse than the risk that a failed satire would unfairly defame Obama.
So: gutless. And whatever else you can say about it, good satire is never gutless.
John Cole is okay with it, I think.
Isn’t that exactly the point of the New Yorker cover in the first place? With this cover, the Neow Yorker is saying “This is the nonsense these jackass smear artists are spreading virally all the time- look how stupid and absurd it is.â€
Steve Benen doesn’t like it.
Instead, we see a clumsy cover that tells the joke without delivering the punch-line. I can appreciate what the New Yorker was going for, but I don’t think the editors thought this one through.
Let’s face it. This is a case of “Can we crap in the punch bowl and get away with it?”
Of what the hell value is satire in a society that can’t correctly differentiate between satire, parody and paradox?
Spencer Ackerman gets down to the article inside.
SPENCER: honestly, this doesn’t seem like a manufactured controversy, since the New Yorker doesn’t have to gin up gimmicks to sell magazines
plus they probably see themselves as above that
did you read the story? Written by Ryan “Snitch Bitch” Lizza?
MEGAN: They’d have to gin up a controversy to get me to buy it, but I’m the world’s worst person at buying magazines.
I keep trying to read it, but the narcolepsy kicks in.
SPENCER: yeah, i didn’t either
because NO ONE should trust a single thing Lizza writes
not his editors
not his factcheckers
not his readers
not his friends
not his family
MEGAN: Well, Ryan Lizza’s trustworthiness aside, Ryan Lizza doesn’t seem interesting enough as a person to be the secondary focus of the piece.
It’s like, do I really need to read about Ryan Lizza talking about Ryan Lizza researching the story.?
SPENCER: fun fact: in Shattered Glass, the movie about Steve Glass & TNR, there’s a hyper-obnoxious intern who keeps trying to butter Glass up
that dude is based on Ryan
wait, does Lizza talk about how he researched his own piece in the middle of the piece itself?
because if so, i wish there was a loud cackle function in HTML.
If Spencer says it, it must be true. Ouch.