American Cartoon Riots.
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- July
- 16
Possibly the strangest thing a cartoonist can do is try to draw a cartoon about another cartoon that didn’t quite work as intended. And to top it off, while I was driving in this AM, I thought of a much better idea (posted below – With apologies to the late Saul Steinberg) than the one above (dammit.)
While The New Yorker is famous for carrying cartoons that many people don’t “get,” I personally think The Barry Blitt cartoon worked fairly well. It wasn’t much of an idea, but part of the joke was its context – the fact it was printed on the cover of The New Yorker was an integral part of the cartoon’s message. I’m sure that tiny group of elite regular New Yorker readers got that the barb was aimed at the apparently not-so-small group of people who believe the hysterical notion that Obama and his wife (while being country club elitists,) are also Muslim terrorists. By definition, that is not a group of people who subsist on the mute tones of irony and the subtle grays of satire. I’m not sure if the Obama campaign’s railing against the high-brow New Yorker will give him some street credibility with the Obamaphobes, but I suppose it can’t hurt.
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on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 11:08 am by Matt Davies.
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“I’m sure that tiny group of elite regular New Yorker readers got that the barb was aimed at the apparently not-so-small group of people who believe the hysterical notion that Obama and his wife are (while being country club elitists,) are also Muslim terrorists.”
There are two instances of the word “are” in the description of this cartoon. I absolutely LOVE the mortgage banking cartoon above. Great work!
Thanks for pointing that out, Jake…I fixed it.
I loved the New Yorker cover, was appalled at the media’s high dungeon over it, especially when 2 days later they fell all over themselves in praise of the new jibjab parody (yes, I know there was a difference, but still, it was about the irony). I’m not a big fan of The Daily Show, but their take on the media response was brilliant! But hold on, your second cartoon idea is the second time someone has suggested that only dwellers of Manhatten could “get it.” Not so! There are plenty of us elite, effete snobs who appreciate New Yorker cartoons, even out here in the reddest of red states. As a matter of fact, I’ve had a harder time understanding editorial cartoons on the topic than the New Yorker’s original, which bothers me no end.
OK, so I have to ask, is the coverup in your published cartoon just “embarrassment”, or meant to convey the KKK? At first glance I read it as an Abu Ghraib parody (perhaps because I look at cartoons constantly, and that one is so common). I’m afraid this is what I mean about finding the editorial cartoons on this topic harder to decode than the original cover. Sorry…but I hope you’ll explain. Maybe I’m just too close to it.
Janis,
Like all cartoonists, I don’t like to waste anyone’s time explaining my cartoons.
BUT because I think I did such a lousy job with this particular cartoon, I’ll suffer penitence and answer your question…
In an act of what its editors assumed everyone would understand as parody, The New Yorker cloaked itself as paranoid, uninformed and anti-muslim. And, as we all learned, the wit and irony was completely unseen by most. That’s pretty much it.