Letters to the Editor
Dmagnificent
Published Letters: 124 Editor's Choice: 6
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Firm Basis for the Assumption
[Read the article: Quote of the day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Everyone brags about their own ability to resist subliminal messages -- although this is quite liminal, but we assume the worst about our fellow citizens, and we assume that they can't handle the same complex images we can handle.")
Those of us who assume that our fellow Americans are too fucking stupid, to be blunt, to think for themselves are doing so as the result of concrete interaction with these braindead troglodytes, not some fabricated, ego-driven motivation. Anyone actually remember the 2004 election? Ask the average American about John Kerry today and you will still hear that he is a "flip-flopper" who wanted to surrrender to the terrorists.
Many of us have been attacked and ostracized for making the outrageous claim that Saddam had no WMDs or involvement in 9/11 by these same inbred idiots that we are now being asked to give the benefit of the doubt. Anyone remember "security moms"? Yes, take a minute to think about those women who were so concerned about their children's safety that they voted for the guy who let 9/11 happen and sat on his uncaring ass for 9 minutes when he told that it had happened. But we are supposed to accept that these people will get satire?
Idiots do not get satire. I spent my first year of college at a community college (having sex was more fun than filling out applications my senior year). In English 101, we read A Modest Proposal. The day after the reading assignment was made, I arrive for class to hear these Einsteins talking about how awful it was, how terrible Swift must have been to have considered such an idea a good thing. The teacher walked in the door and the first words out of her mouth were something to the effect of recognizing satire being the true test of intelligence. I barely contained my laugh.
These are the smarter of the people that we are supposed to give the benefit of the doubt. They at least tried college and some of them probably actually graduated. Assuming that unintelligent and uneducated people will understand satire is a fallacy.
The problem with the New Yorker image is that it is on the cover, where it will be seen by people who couldn't understand half of what they read in there if they did open the cover. The idiots will see it and what they will see is exactly what FOX"News" has been telling them is the truth. Check the cable news ratings. People are still watching FOX"News".
But don't you dare talk down to me for not trusting my fellow Americans to know their asses from holes in the ground. I have spent the last 12 years trying to point out the difference to no avail.
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Satire
[Read the article: Rush Limbaugh was right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Put simply, the New Yorker cover wasn't very good satire. That is part of the reason for the uproar.
Go watch Airplane or even Scary Movie 3, then watch Date Movie or Meet the Spartans. All four movies are spoofs and filled with pop culture references, but two succeed and two fail. Why? The first two actually satirize the pop culture references they insert, while the 2 guys who made the latter and several other joke free endeavors, think that the very act of MAKING a pop culure reference is satire in and of itself.
That is the major problem with the New Yorker image. There is very little there that actually qualifies as real satire. The individual pieces of the picture were not really exaggerations of the things that the far right (and let's be honest, Clinton backers) have said or implied. The Tennessee Republican Party DID circulate a picture of Obama in full Muslim garb. The flag in the fireplace isn't any worse than the cardinal sin of not wearing a flag pin. Etc...
It does look more like the image that FOX and the right have painted of Obama, not a satire of that image. It also should not have been on the cover. We may be red and blue, but there is a lot of purple in America. There ARE copies of the New Yorker sitting in plain view in bookstores in Des Moines, I would wager. It is important to bear in mind that even in the idiot states that Bush carried with 75% of the vote, 25% were smart enough to oppose him. You can't write off entire geographic regions as having NO ONE who would buy the New Yorker just because circumstances placed some decent people in the epicenter of idiocy. If the image worked better as satire or wasn't on the cover, the controversy would not exist.
Satire is not dead, but GOOD satire is still rare. If you want to see Obama properly satirized, hit The Onion ("Black Man Asks America For Change" is my personal favorite). The New Yorker failed.