The cartoon gracing the cover of The New Yorker’s latest issue is in tremendously bad taste.
Obviously the point here for the politically left-leaning New Yorker is to capitalize on the ridiculous reasons not to support Obama, viz. the perception that he and his wife represent a mondern-day Manchurian-candidate, in order to obfuscate the sensible reasons to do so. If you can paint an unflattering picture of Obama’s opposition as a rabble of moronic, backward alarmists who have nothing but conjecture, rumor and fear mongering to contribute to the national discourse, you no longer have to address any legitimate or substantive arguments they may bring along with them. You no longer have to discuss his failure to support constitutional protection for abortion-surviving children, his stance against nuclear power, the legitimate questions surrounding his eyebrow-raising personal relationships and demonstrable lack of judgment, his recent habit of blatant flip flopping in the name of political convenience, his misleading and holier-than-thou rhetoric surrounding lobbyists, his inexperience- all of those things coming out of the mouths of right wingnuts who think of Obama in terms of the picture above, why bother to listen, eh?
Very shrewd, New Yorker. Very, very shrewd. But unfortunately, also very, very bad taste.
