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Obama Needs Thicker Skin To Sit In Oval Office

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By JOHN HERBERT

From Where I Sit

Published: July 23, 2008

Sen. Barack Hussein Obama and his campaign colleagues have to grow a much thicker skin if they intend to weather this year's presidential race, not to mention a possible term in the White House.
Their gut reaction to a recent New Yorker cartoon cover depicting Sen. Obama and his wife as a pair of terrorists was to decry it as "offensive and tasteless."
The controversial cover was, in fact, political satire summing up everything Obama critics have alleged about the young couple in the past few months. I'll bet that if Republican candidate McCain and his wife are similarly depicted in a future issue, the senator will be pushing a walker beside a straggly-haired, pill-popping wife.
The New Yorker editor was correct to run the Obama cover, provocatively depicting him as a towel-headed Taliban, and her as a gun-toting latter-day Angela Davis. However, he somewhat disingenuously rejected speculation that the now-notorious cover was designed to boost newsstand sales.
He wouldn't need to; the New Yorker has over a million annual subscribers. Newsstand sales are just gravy. And the magazine is oriented toward sophisticated East Coast eggheads, not to humorless Deep South Bible-Belters.
Predictably, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the NAACP entered the fray. Said CAIR, "These inflammatory images … will only reinforce the racism and anti-Muslim stereotypes the magazine says it is out to challenge." The NAACP voiced similar objections. After all, Obama stands to become America's first black president.
Clearly, though, neither group fathoms political satire. Picking off and summarizing rumors has always been good satire. They should offend. The New Yorker cover played on fears and uncertainties of the average middle-American voter.
The editor, David Remnick, probably has an unwritten obligation to commission covers that will sell. Every editor does. Even if there's a supposed firewall between editorial and business sides of a magazine's organization. Taste or political persuasions shouldn't enter into the equation.
As a matter of fact, they didn't. The Obama cover bore no reference to inside articles detailing, and sympathizing with, the senator's reputed "flip-flopping" and his schooling in Chicago's rough-and-tumble politics.
The glossy cover obviously did its job; just a couple of days after distribution, the New Yorker was sold out at Tampa Bay newsstands. The Obama issue is headed for "collector" status.
Many years ago, I was editor of an amateurish Ivy League college humor monthly. We decided our April issue should publish a cartoon themed "Killing the first robin of spring." We didn't get a single complaint from either subscribers, PETA or newsstand buyers. And the cover had no relation whatsoever to the content. Our campus readership simply spotted a sick joke and pleaded for more.
Much later, I attended several editorial meetings of a major American news magazine. The editor-in-chief consistently stressed the importance of selecting a cover photo that would grab the potential reader's eye as well as his wallet.
Sen. Obama would have been better advised to ignore the New Yorker. Now, instead, the cover has become part of the campaign, certain to reappear over the coming months. The last thing the Obamas need is (or was) a sober reaction to blatant satire.

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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