I had a footprint in my sketchbook left over from the previous cartoon…So being frugal (as one must be these days) I felt I should put it to good use!!

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.

Frankly, I am painfully averse to using labeled mountaintops as metaphors. Yep. As hackneyed images, they’re right up there with a sinking Titanic, etc. But I kept coming back to this twist on the image and the term “summit,” as I felt it best expressed what I needed to say. And well, heap scorn upon me if you wish, but here it is….