http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/greatest-story-ever-told.html

May Gorilla Jesus bless Fafblog forever and ever. Amen

As for comparing it to McCain …. there is no comparable mass belief in dumbass untruths about McCain. If there was a serious email campaign alledging that McCain had been brainwashed as a Manchurian Candidate by the NVA then I’d laugh at something which mocked that as well.

However, I don’t think the cartoonist wanted _that_ much ambiguity.

The trouble, I think, is improper framing. If he’d put the whole thing in a thought balloon rising out of a clown’s head, then it would have worked fine.

As an example of proper framing:
seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?isp=17
Horsey comparing the cartoon to a hypothetical National Review cartoon cover, about McCain. (Itself also hysterically funny and offensive.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/toles_main.html?nid=roll_toonsvid

Webster’s Dictionary defines satire correctly:

A literary work holding up human vices or follies to ridicule or scorn.

Of course, believing the “stealth terrorists who hate America” lie about the Obamas is the folly in question, and the vice of bigotry inspires that folly. Unfortunately– as movie credits sometimes say– no bigots (or their unholy fools) were harmed in the drawing of Barry Blitt’s cartoon. He merely presented their false images without context; that is, without framing the images in any way that would refer to the folly or vice in question.

Blitt’s error caused him to fail at satire completely, and inadvertently do the bigots’ work for them. David Remnick’s subsequent excuse-making only made the New Yorker staff sound incompetent and whiny. The entire affair has been a damnfool thing indeed.

I, personally, find it pretty offensive. I certainly don’t think it’s funny. But I see why it’s supposed to be funny, and I certainly recognize that it’s an objectively good thing that major cultural institutions are supporting comedy that I find to be offensive.

That’s a point I think too few people grasp – even YOU are offended by some things that are nonetheless benign. It’s part of being… a person.

APS

Would any magazine ever dare to do a satire, using the left as the target of the joke, with a cover where a insanely senile-looking John McCane laughs while he is shooting a brown child in her oil-spilling head (like in the infamous Vietnam photo mixed with the screaming girl) and holding a leash on a ape (perhaps also as a vague reference to the Abu Ghraib photo) that’s raping a woman-nature on the floor, while he shouts “PAY MY ALLOWANCE OR I’LL DIE LIKE THOSE POOR SPICS, YOU RICH CUNT!” to his wife, while the entire press aplauds while saying “He can rape my privacy any time he wants — and I sure as hell won’t use the morning pill afterwards!” with a big smile as Blackwater points guns at them?

Surely not, right?

But if someone were to do that cartoon, please… not something tasteless. And soon, please.