Seeing is Believing

The damage done to Barack Obama by the New Yorker cover won't be fully known until November 4. I will predict this: on November 3 and 4, that image will reappear in thousands if not millions of email in-boxes and mail boxes, so that a large number of voters will go to the polls with that image in their heads.
Because in this culture, seeing is believing.

There have been a lot of arguments made defending this cover on the basis of freedom of speech, press, expression, which to my mind completely miss the point. No government or corporation either suppressed that image, or forced anyone to print it. That cover was printed because of an editorial decision, which in my view was a very bad and irresponsible decision. Bad enough that the editors in question should resign, because they don't have the judgment to justify their jobs.

Let's go through the arguments that excuse the publication of that cover, and then why I believe it was irresponsible to print it.

Free Press, Expression, etc.

I know something about censorship, because I was censored. I was a columnist for a weekly youth-oriented newspaper in the late 80s, suddenly forbidden to write anything more about a subject I'd been covering, smoking and health, cigarette advertising, especially aimed at young people. I was forbidden to write about it because the paper started taking cigarette advertising from two big companies, and one of them specifically forbade any anti-smoking copy. Because I wrote such a column, and it was suppressed, I resigned, at considerable personal cost.

I got no political support for my action. At the time, being censored by a corporation was apparently too complicated a concept. Most people thought it was my own fault. It made perfect sense to them that the company paying for ads could control editorial content. And most of the time, they can. That's realistic. But it's also a real threat to a free press.

So I am aware of how elusive the concept can be. But I don't see it as the issue here. The New Yorker editors choose their covers. Nobody forced them to choose this one, and nobody said that they couldn't choose it. But to say they shouldn't choose it, and should pay the price for a serious misjudgment, is another matter.

They had many potential covers to choose from, I'm sure. Not everybody's idea or drawing gets to be expressed on the cover. And those whose covers aren't chosen, are not being censored. There's no free expression issue here.

I've been an editor. The job is to make judgments. In suggesting that New Yorker editors should have exercised better judgment, that their decision was seriously wrong in many ways, is a perfectly legitimate position.

Satire

The cover is justified as satire. I'm sure Don Imus justified his "nappy headed" comment as humor. That's not good enough. Especially when racial imagery and other inflammatory images are used.

I don't doubt it was meant as satire. But part of the reason it is so offensive is that it is so clumsy and ill-conceived that it functions less as satire than as incendiary imagery.

Political caricature is usually about the people depicted. The only interpretation of this drawing as satire is that it is not about the Obamas but about what some people say or believe about the Obamas. That's already a step removed. The usual way to view this is as something about the Obamas themselves. That's how such images are "read." That's how they work.

There are other complications. For example, everyone is familiar with the imagery of the fist-bump between the Obamas. The fact that it happened seems to justify what else is pictured. The fist-bump was true. The rest must be true. (I'm told someone on TV made this point Monday.) That may not be a reasoned interpretation. But seeing is believing.

It's Art

Is the artist responsible for how everyone will interpret an image? I've heard that argument made. The answer is that the artist is not. But the New Yorker cover is not a venue for art in the same way as a gallery or museum. It is the cover of a prestigious magazine that contains high level journalism within it. The New Yorker articles used to be called "fact pieces." The person who decides what goes on the cover is not an art curator, but the editor of the magazine.

Is the artist responsible for how everyone will interpret an image? No--but in this case, it is the duty of the editor to consider how everyone could interpret that image. This is an image depicting one of two major candidates for President of the United States, in arguably the most important election since at least 1932. It is imagery that evokes racial if not racist stereotypes.

It puts in visual imagery a number of false charges made against the Obamas, which apparently a significant percentage of American voters believe. These lies no longer have to be explained to them. They can now see them--as Rachel Madow said, in one handy 8x10.

It doesn't take a contemporary brain scientist or psychologist to know that imagery can be incendiary. Though one such scientist has already criticized even the Obama campaign's web site refuting these lies as keeping them alive just by repeating them. If words are that powerful, how about making a picture out of them?

This also comes into play when viewing this as satire. Those who read the New Yorker regularly may know that in recent years it has published covers of political satire. But on the other hand, this is not Mad Magazine. It is a serious magazine, and this cover is serious political comment. Therefore, the political interpretation of the cover should be a serious concern for the editors.

Of course some people will look at the picture and see how ridiculous these lies are. Perhaps some proportion of those people will have believed or half-believed those lies before, although I suspect that most people who get the joke already know they are lies. Otherwise, why would it be funny?

But I suspect that some people are going to look at this picture and be scared out of their wits. It may reflect back their own racial bias, or simply their fear of people who aren't exactly like them. But they no longer have to make a picture in their mind based on lies they would have to take time to read or listen to. Now they can just see it. And seeing is believing.

Political Correctness

Some make the argument that this cover is just like the Daily Show or Steven Colbert, and that to condemn this cover is just political correctness gone wild. Personally I believe this imagery is more in the Imus realm than the Colbert. The context comes into play here as well. Colbert has created a character in a TV show. This image is on the cover of a prestigious magazine with serious--and presumably sincere--political content. Colbert is on television, and his show is available only if you seek it out. This cover will be available as a virtual handbill before this campaign is out. The editors should have understood this.

Judgment

The defense given by David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, suggests to me a remarkable tunnel vision--you know, like the Lincoln Tunnel. He must know he is editing a magazine for more than New York intellectuals. He must know, or should have known, that this image would be seen by millions around the country and around the world on the Internet and TV, and he should have realized that it would be used by Obama opponents to depict the Obamas precisely as they are pictured.

This alone--considering the inflammatory racial and political imagery--should have told the New Yorker editors that publishing this on the cover was a very, very bad idea.

They should have known that the cover image is especially powerful, and therefore this was an especially important decision. Many thousands more people, perhaps millions more, will see this image than will read the articles on Obama inside. They can't be blind to the power of images in this country, this society--especially simple, emotional images, such as those using racial images--Muslims (the stereotyped enemy, the Other), Black Muslims (to be feared, like those black prisoners on TV), 60s revolutionaries (Black Power, Communists)and beneath it all, the first black candidate for President.

They should have known that this cover could become a powerful partisan weapon to defeat a particular candidate, and that it would become a powerful if not totally predictable factor in this presidential election, and that fact alone should have told them what an important decision they were making. But their statements tell me otherwise. They either didn't think it through, or they didn't care.

An important task and responsibility of the editor is to judge whether the editorial content communicates what it intends to communicate to the publication's audience. In my view, the editors have failed in this task. The most basic failure is that they apparently believed this image is so ridiculous that it exposes how unbelievable the lies about the Obama are. Some people will respond in that way. But many will not. To assume that this image communicates that message is a serious misjudgment.

There should have been enough doubts, enough red flags to call printing this into question, and then the stakes they are playing with--the presidency of the United States, and no less than the fate of the planet--should have weighed heavily in their decision. That it did not demonstrates arrogance as well as misjudgment.

I believe it is a serious enough failure that they should resign. I believe it is a serious enough act that I will boycott the magazine, and urge others to do the same.

I call on New Yorker writers and others in the New York and national press to protest this cover. But I don't expect this will happen. Even those who believe it is a serious and perhaps even a morally serious error, are unlikely to say so. The New Yorker and its parent corporation, Conde Naste, are too powerful. They have friends involved. They have paychecks to worry about.

Besides they can always shout about freedom of expression, and art and satire and political correctness, and people will snap to attention, afraid to be charged with supporting a fascist America, as I already have been at Daily Kos. Anything to divert from what they've actually done.

This controversy will probably die down in a day or two, if it hasn't already. We will have fresh disasters to consider. But that doesn't mean this cover will go away, not really.

I think you'll see it again, much closer to the election. You can believe me or not... but seeing is believing.

That's my take. Here's what Obama said about it to Larry King.

Update: Of the commentaries I read, this one makes the most sense to me, especially his ideas for a satirical cover that would have made the same point but with clarity--and it would have been funny: a couple watching the Obamas on TV, she sees them as JFK and Jackie, while he sees them as...