I respect people's reactions -- I'm just trying to as calmly and as clearly as possible talk about what this image means and what it was intended to mean and what I think most people will see -- when they think it through -- that it means. The fact is, it's not a satire about Obama - it's a satire about the distortions and misconceptions and prejudices about Obama.
There seem to be two possibilities. The first: they truly find the idea depicted in the image so ridiculous that they couldn't conceive of anyone taking it seriously. However, if that were the case, there'd be no need for the satire in the first place. Attempting to satirize it acknowledges the idea's prevalence.
The other possibility is that somewhere, deep in the recesses of their upper east and west side white minds, lurks a restive "fear of black." To provide such an image without context is to accept its message to some degree. No similar cartoon would have ever appeared about a white candidate.
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1 Comments:
I don't want to defend the New Yorker, because I thought that was a racist ass image, too. And I was shocked when I got it in the mail.
But you have to acknowledge what the article inside was saying: Obama is a genius at winning over the right wing and playing to conservative values when he wants to navigate political machinery. There's no way somebody with half a brain would read that and think that it would in anyway bolster the "Islamic revolutionary" image of Obama.
Asalam Alaikum,
Serena Kim
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