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New Yorker Defends Obama Cover; "It Failed," Says Pulitzer Cartoonist


While New Yorker magazine editor and cartoonist of the Obama mag cover defend the satire, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jack Higgins says it failed.

In the latest political controversy, The New Yorker magazine has released a magazine cover which displays Democratic Presidential nominee, Barack Obama, wearing a traditional Muslim turban, sandals and other garments while showing his wife, Michelle Obama, dressed in military-like wear with combat boots and an assault rifle with a 1960’s styled Afro and look. The cover which was drawn by Barry Blitt of The New Yorker also shows the two standing in the Oval Office bumping fists or given each other ‘dap’, as we say, with a portrait of Osama bin Laden hanging on the wall and a United States flag burning in the fireplace. Obama’s campaign has brushed the controversial magazine cover off as quote “tasteless and offensive.”

Republican John McCain’s campaign has agreed with Obama’s campaign saying also that the cover is “tasteless and offensive.”

“The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree,” said Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton in a statement.

“I just saw a picture of it on television,” John McCain stated. “I think it’s totally inappropriate and frankly, I understand if Senator Obama and his supporters would find it offensive.”

The particular New Yorker issue with the illustration cartoon of Obama and his wife which hits stands Monday and is titled “The Politics of Fear” has drawn a multitude of criticism over the internet and abroad, however, the New Yorker magazine seems confident in the illustration in which they call it “political satire” and have stated that it is meant to mock right-wing depictions of US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama.

“The burning flag, the nationalist-radical and Islamic outfits, the fist-bump, the portrait on the wall? All of them echo one attack or another. Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that’s the spirit of this cover,” the New Yorker said in a statement.

New Yorker editor David Remnick stated to The Huffington Post that The New Yorker Magazine cover was meant to “hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama’s

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