The New Yorker Finally Delights the Republican Hate Machine

The New Yorker prides itself on being the journalistic voice of the most literate and liberal population in the United States. Long time readers and admirers appreciate that “New Yorker” in the title does not refer to the state, not even to the entirety of New York City for that matter, but to Manhattan and particularly the Upper West Side thereof, where any pigeon poop dropped from on high is likely to hit the tonsure of a self-certified super sophisticate lately arrived from Pocatello with manuscripts of childhood novels clutched under each armpit.

So it surprises when The New Yorker’s editors join hands to take simultaneous pratfalls in public, as they do with the cover of their most recent issue–the cover notoriously showing Barrack Obama in the White House dressed in an Al Queda outfit, his wife lugging an assault gun and dressed as a terrorist, all while Bin Laden gazes down from a picture near a fireplace where the American flag burns.

Satire, says David Remnick, the eminent editor of The New Yorker, satire of commonplace beliefs about the Obamas. Strange all you pressies working for The New York Times and other crudities misunderstand it and think it’s a caricature instead of the Obamas.

But of course Remnick, who gave final approval of the cover and made the decision to run it, is one of the few who see the drawing as satire on the mistaken beliefs of the Great American Unwashed (i.e., those who don’t live in Manhattan).

The mob, alas, sees the cover as, for The New Yorker, a surprising attack on the new liberal savior and his beloved. The Republican Hate Machine is grinding out copies on the net and elsewhere as fast as it can, figuring journalism from the left can’t get any better than this. National Review and Wall Street Journal boys and girls are snorting with joy: Obama and Missus pegged, and by the haughtiest of the haught!

As for the rest of us disheveled in the hinterlands, we can laugh too, but with tears in our eyes, at a joke, a satire that doesn’t work. It was flat in the first place and only worked in The New Yorker’s digs where fresh air is in short supply. What was supposed to be a piece of savage wit, turned out to only half that: Savage. No wit.

At least Remnick should say: Shot the poor booger by mistake. Sorry. Deep regrets, and all that.