SlowpokeBlog

I'm going to disagree with some of my fellow cartoonists and say the New Yorker depiction of Barack Obama as a Muslim terrorist and Michelle as an armed revolutionary is, while expertly drawn, dumb. Lefties can be incredibly unpragmatic this way. You can get away with this stuff in a cartoon, where there's enough context going on. But the sad fact is, many Americans are not informed enough to get the irony of the New Yorker cover -- and not because they're stupid; it's just the state of our democracy. The mainstream media has largely bailed on its duty to educate the public, and there are large numbers of people who believe the right-wing myths about Obama.

[UPDATE: My colleague Ruben Bolling has written a thoughtful examination of this, which states better what I was trying to express here. While the New Yorker cover made me groan, Bolling's "How America Was Destroyed" cartoon cracks me up.]