Race and the New Yorker

Well, if Jesse Jackson didn’t put race front and center in the presidential campaign–again, this week’s New Yorker cover seems to have done it.  You know it’s going to happen from time to time.  You just don’t know what’s going to cause it.  So, here we go–again.

I’ve commented previously on how Obama jokes are infrequent.  Too much danger of being labeled a racist.  (No danger of being labeled an ageist, though, by going after McCain as late night comedians demonstrate every evening–click here and here.)  Even when Saturday Night Live used someone of white and Asian heritage wearing dark makeup to play Obama in a skit, racism was whispered by some.

The New Yorker has, for the time being, given cover (pun intended) to all comedians and comedy shows.  The magazine’s attempt at satire went astray.  It wasn’t funny.  It was offensive, tasteless, explosive–and racist.  Obama and his staff are upset–no, outraged.  The pundits are trying to explain how a magazine so steeped in liberalism could’ve missed the mark so wildly.  Why, maybe the New Yorker doesn’t understand satire.  If there’s one thing the New Yorker understands, it’s satire. 

I don’t pretend to understand every New Yorker cover (just like I don’t understand every cartoon in the magazine), but I understand this cover.  It holds up a mirror to the prejudice that has often been hurled Obama’s way.  Period.

What’s troubling is that Obama understands this.  The man who forgave Jesse Jackson for wanting to “cut off his nuts” isn’t about to forego something he thinks will give him some political mileage.  Despite his better self, Obama is embracing the victimhood Jackson clings to–the victimhood those young black fathers Obama recently chastised for being AWOL will use anew to excuse their irresponsibility.  Why would the New Yorker apply satire to me the way it’s done to George W. Bush except, in the case of Bush, much more savagely and much more often?  Because I’m black.

As he well knows, when the New Yorker’s satire is directed toward Bush, it’s to aid and abet W’s enemies.  On its most recent cover, the New Yorker was trying to shame Obama’s. 

The man who would lead us into post-race America can’t quite seem to muster what it’s going to take.  Most voters are employers and employees who, in their heart of hearts, want to live and work in a world of equal opportunity where they are judged on their performance, where they don’t see racism in every cubicle or on every magazine cover.

One would hope that Senator Obama will look in the mirror and then say what he knows.  The New Yorker cover isn’t racist.  If anything, it’s anti-racist. 

And then maybe he’ll look at the speech he gave on March 18, 2008, about race in America.  It’s still a brilliant speech.  The follow-through has been slow coming, but there’s still time.