Controversial New Yorker article on Barack Obama

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The latest issue of the New Yorker magazine has proved somewhat controversial in certain circles in the USA, according to this Huffington Post piece. Partly Adam thinks, because the New Yorker is traditionally seen as a bastion of liberal, mainly Democratic, political stances.

From the cover, reproduced below:-

Controversial New Yorker Cover by Barry Blitt 21 July 2008

This cover is seen by some as an attack on Obama and:-

The illustration, by Barry Blitt,is called “The Politics of Fear” and, according to the NYer press release, “satirizes the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama’s campaign.” Uh-huh. What’s that they say about repeating a rumor

The HuffPost then notes:-

Presumably the New Yorker readership is sophisticated enough to get the joke, but still: this is going to upset a lot of people, probably for the same reason it’s going to delight a lot of other people, namely those on the right: Because it’s got all the scare tactics and misinformation that has so far been used to derail Barack Obama’s campaign — all in one handy illustration. Anyone who’s tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who’s tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism— well, here’s your image.

For those who have bought into the Obama mythology, the article in the New Yorker is not going to please them much either:-

The companion article by Ryan Lizza, who has written extensively about the campaign, traces Obama’s early career and rise through Chicago politics. It’s very long (18 pages!) and probably won’t thrill a lot of Democratic party faithful, either, since it advances the image of Obama as a skilled and calculating politician who rose by becoming a master of the game.

Emphasis by Adam. Adam has thought for a considerable time, that anyone who made their way to the Senate from Chicago and Illinois had to be a very cool and calculating politician. Chicago has for a long time been synonymous ‘machine’ politics. After all it has long been thought by some that Mayor Richard Daley and his famous, nay notorious, ‘ machine’ delivered the presidency to JFK, when the Cook County, Illinois results came in and tipped the result in Kennedy’s favour. Chicago being in Cook County.

The HuffPost does point out that it is not the role of the New Yorker to pander to candidates and their image makers, nor to public perceptions.

To Adam it is gratifying to see a major magazine, especially one such as the New Yorker run such an article. The New Yorker has been one of Adam’s favourite publications for many years.

The HuffPost piece has this quote from the article in the New Yorker, which is rather telling:-

“[P]erhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them….he has always played politics by the rules as they exist, not as he would like them to exist. He runs as an outsider, but he has succeeded by mastering the inside game.”

Obama is now the Democratic candidate, it is time he received strong scrutiny from the press. Much of the media coverage to date, especially in parts of the US media has seemed to be uncritical almost sycophantic at times.

The full article, runs to some 15 pages in PDF format. It is worth reading.

For those not familiar with the New Yorker, Adam has included two brief extracts from the Wikipedia entry, in passing Adam would note, that the New Yorker covers and cartoons are an excellent commentary on many issues over the years.

The New Yorker is an American magazine that publishes reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Starting as a weekly in the mid-1920s, the magazine is now published 47 times per year, with five (usually more expansive) issues for the remaining two-week spans.

Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the cultural life of New York City, The New Yorker has a wide audience outside of New York. It is well known for its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric Americana; its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of short stories and literary reviews; its rigorous fact checking and copyediting; its journalism on world politics and social issues; and its famous, single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue.

The political stance of the magazine is described in this extract.

Traditionally, the magazine’s politics have been what could be called liberal and non-partisan. An example of this can be seen in the magazine’s coverage of the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, led by editorial writer Hendrik Hertzberg and then-political correspondent Philip Gourevitch, when Democrat John Kerry was strongly favored. In its November 1, 2004 issue, the magazine broke with 80 years of precedent and issued a formal endorsement of Kerry in a long editorial, signed “The Editors”, which specifically criticized the policies of the Bush administration.^[9]

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, cartoonist and cover artist Art Spiegelman (who is married to the magazine’s art editor, Françoise Mouly) created with Mouly, for the September 24, 2001 issue, a memorable black-on-black cover with the dark silhouette of the buildings visible only when held in a certain light or angle. He later resigned in protest at what he saw as the magazine’s self-censorship in its political coverage. The magazine hired investigative journalist Seymour Hersh to report on military and security issues, and he has produced a number of widely-reported articles on the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and the ongoing military conflict there. His revelations in The New Yorker about abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison and the Pentagon’s contingency plans for invading Iran and creating local guerrilla forces in Iran (e.g., PJAK) were reported around the world.

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