Barack Osama
July 15th, 2008
As satire goes, the Chappelle Show was a hilarious mockery of stupid things white people think and black people think, that may have reinforced certain stereotypes to viewers who didn’t get it, and saw it merely as black people acting outrageous like they do on those blacksploitation UPN WB CW sitcoms. However, that doesn’t mean Chappelle’s overall influence is a net minus for society. In fact, if I had to give out a person of the year award, I wouldn’t give it to Chappelle anymore, because I’d have named it after him long ago, so someone else could have a chance.
But in many cases, there are scarier ethical ramifications for a joke or a sketch — or a magazine cover.
Maybe in some perverse way, it is funny that a not-so-small number of Americans think Barack Obama is a Muslim because they read it in the same email that said send this to ten friends or you will have bad luck for the next seven years. Or perhaps it’s hilarious that Obie’s failure to adhere to the time-honored rituals of flag lapel-wearing and professing a dislike for all things foreign might make him just a little too different and terroristy to be president.
But really, these strike me as things that will be funny after he’s been in office for a few years and decided we’ll be spending our money at home — on healthcare and alternative energy — instead of paying Blackwater to Rambo Iraq into a Middle Eastern pulp. Of course, as someone I should probably source put it, “the New Yorker has spent years running cartoons that no one can understand. Why should this cover be any different?â€
Entry Filed under: Politics
1 Comment Add your own
1. Barry Bussewitz | July 21st, 2008 at 5:50 pm
i’m not saying i know how to figure this all out, and i will say i always want to focus on the positive side as much as possible in general and about barack osamabama in particular. and i know the fine readers of the comment section of f2p are very discriminating and will not make up their minds based on what i say anyhow. so here are a few ideas about the possible longterm impact of the new yorker cartoon.
1. it’s a magazine cover, frevvin’s sakes.
2. it’s also pretty evocative and it may work out to have been an effective inoculation to the dirty attacks that will come as the repubs get more desperate. and as the outright racists and hatemongers get more desperate.
3. the cover got a lot more play and views in media coverage than in the eyes of magazine readers; and as Michael Smerconish notes in philly.com, probably every time it got shown n the network news, cable news and newspapers, they reported that all the stuff was not true, thereby fulfilling the role of obama’s anti-smear website being more widely publicized — and for free.
4. and as Michael Smerconish also noted, the cover storm covered over not only the critical 14,619-word story on sen. obama inside the magazine, but it also took attention from some other negative news that came out at the same time.
5. there is minimally 20% of voters who will never ever support obama; we can just not worry about them. there’s what, 40% dem supporters who will not be influenced by the cover. there are about 20% in the middle who are not pre-committed dem or repub. does the cover mad=ke them dash to johnny mccain? i think not: it’s one magazine cover, frevvin’s sakes. (but now i’m starting to repeat myself. goodbye.)
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