What's Wrong with This Tom Toles' Cartoon?

I've figured out the "problem" with the Tom Toles cartoon in the Washington Post, spoofing the July 21^st cover of the New Yorker. The caption is "But one's ironic." The pictures on the covers of the two magazines are indeed identical. However, one must also consider the context, that is, the names of the magazines. It would also have helped if the New Yorker had included the title of the picture, "The Politics of Fear", on their cover. However, they never do this, and one must page through the magazine if one wants to find the title. I think that their "laid-back" style has backfired in this case, and that they may have outsmarted themselves with possibly disastrous consequences.

I sent an email letter to the New Yorker about the cover, which I reproduce here. The contents are the same as the first paragraph in my previous AC article .

"As a longtime New Yorker subscriber, I'm used to the occasional cover which some readers consider to be in bad taste. This one is so slapstick, it looks like it belongs in Mad Magazine. As for being offensive, I'm sure Cheney supporters were more offended to see him depicted as the Halloween pumpkin. The people in this country have different grasps on reality, but surely they can all take, if not appreciate, a joke."

Given the subject of my email, I was not surprised to get an automated reply, which included the following.

"Thank you for writing. We appreciate your comments and, if you have a question, we'll do our best to respond. ... .
About this week's issue: Our cover, "The Politics of Fear," combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are. 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. In this same issue you will also see that there are two very serious articles on Barack Obama inside - Hendrik Hertzberg's Comment and Ryan Lizza's 15,000-word reporting piece on the candidate's political education and rise in Chicago."

So let's try to sort through this. Initially I took the cover to be slapstick, which I still think it is on its face. However slapstick is over-the-top and meant only to amuse and not to make serious points. According to the New Yorker, it was intended as satire, and their title "The Politics of Fear" is consistent with this view. (A slapstick title would have been something like "Free at Last!") They act as though the title was an integral part of the cover, when in fact it was nowhere to be seen. So how were their readers to reach the right conclusion about their intent? Apparently many readers had a lot of problems doing this. Going from left to right, people found it insulting, tasteless, amusing, or a verification of existing prejudices. I shouldn't really use the word "readers", since people who actually read the New Yorker on a regular basis, like me, probably comprise a small percentage of those reacting to the cover. It remains to be seen how many actual readers either found it to be funny or at least took it in stride.