Another bone-headed decision by the limping Presidential campaign of mercurial Republican Senator John McCain: why distance yourself from Phil Gramm when the man is so obviously right? We are immersed in a "mental recession," and I should know. Ever since Obama clinched and darted immediately toward the center of the fish tank, crowding those colorful clown fishes next to the bubbly deep-sea diver - pretty damned near the purpley Lieberman coral - I've felt a deep political malaise settling in. The tank grows cloudy on me.
Yes, I know that's Jimmy Carter's moment of depressed descriptive for a bit of a national slump, but damned if the GOP Doctor Phil (good one, Barack!) didn't top it. "Mental recession," indeed...it paints a vivid word picture of retreating American brains, like a Ramones song. The mental economists define a mental recession as two straight quarters in which the GMP (gross mental product) declines. [As an aside, I just love the word "mental" if you can't tell; it's just so darned "old guy."]
Then there are the mental culture critics. No, not the late-80s L.A. speed metal band. No, I mean the twisted sisters of taste, the wild-eyed decriers of New Yorker magazine covers. Every paragon of old media righteousness and his blogging brotha is flogging the magazine's bit of rather clever satire (drawn by cartoonist Barry Blitt). And the Obama campaign is upset; its designated spokesman-for-outrage Bill Burton called the cover “tasteless and offensive.” Even McCain agreed.
Silly me. I thought that well-executed absurdity in literature or art helped to illuminate the foolishness of its subject; by portraying the Obamas as a fist-bumping duo of terrorists, one Islamic and the other 70s era Black Panther, in the Oval Office, the New Yorker image renders the actual calumnies laughable. Foolish. The wispy products of goofballs and lunatics. Totally mental.
Here's another thought: George Carlin's been dead just two weeks and suddenly a piece of mainstream political satire that wouldn't have turned a single lefty head in outrage 25 years ago is suddenly branded obscene, beyond the pale.
Now, we're visited with the specter of feuding cartoonists and critics. "Not particularly well-drawn or interesting," sniffed Stephen Hess at Brookings. Rrrrrrrr! Cartoonist fight!
Nick Anderson, president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, lambasted the cover. “There is a constant and natural tension in the creation of satire,” Anderson told Politico. “The delicate art of satire is suffocated by heavy-handed elucidation. But, if the satirist fails to make the point clearly enough, the whole enterprise backfires in unintended misinterpretation.”
"Heavy-handed elucidation?" Well, the point is pretty clear to me. The cover is worth a laugh or two, a moment of thought perhaps, and is perfectly laudable in the context of an artist examining our current national political context. It would have passed largely unnoticed by anyone but the magazine's stuffy readership (like me!) if Obama and his chorus of supporters hadn't cried foul. Besides, as editor David Remnick said: "What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama's — both Obamas' — past, and their politics...The idea that we would publish a cover saying these things literally, I think, is just not in the vocabulary of what we do and who we are... We've run many many satirical political covers. Ask the Bush administration how many."
Well, exactly. Or as Gawker so delicately put it: "Remnick Defends Obama Cover, Idea That Readers Aren't Retards."
Or mental. As the case may be.
UPDATE: Jon Swift: "There is not much the members of the liberal blogosphere and I agree on but I salute them on their efforts to stamp out humor and especially satire and bring more earnestness to our political discourse." Hee hee. Also, Hitchens and Gary Kamiya.
