Is This Effective Communication?
My feeling is that this would make a fine satirical cartoon inside the New Yorker. But to give it the cover? Not so sure about that.
Understandably, the Obamas ain’t pleased, finding it tasteless and degrading. The fear is that this image, widely distributed, may give credence to the misinformation going around about the couple. As someone put it to me, “this plays into the suspicions of the morons who ‘don’t do nuance.’” To which I replied: “Since when has the New Yorker cared about those folks?”
People will be talking about this cover, and though it may not reach the level attained by Saul Steinberg’s “New Yorker’s View of the World” or Maira Kalman’s “New Yorkistan,” it will be getting the magazine some attention. So, perhaps as far as the magazine is concerned, it’s effective communication… but it’s also requiring the reader/listener to bring a lot of context to the table.
* Late update: in the interest of “Equal Time,” Edge of the American West offers this:
