Bed sheets, bazookas: New Yorker, the hen

Eustace Tilley blew this one.
If you know that name, you probably “got” the Barack-o-drama cover of The New Yorker.
Satire is a double meaning the reader is in on. Or else it’s a scam.
If the shock of the image allows a viewer to take it seriously, the artistic or literary trick becomes a mere antic, a ruse, a hustle.
The questioned cover shows Mr. and Mrs. Obama as flag burning terrorists in the Oval Office. “Politics of fear,” is the satiric target by cartoonist Barry Blitt.
Trouble is, polls show some Americans believe – wrongly, but believe anyway – the lies connecting Islam, Osama bin Laden and the possible First Couple.
Those of us who don’t believe are nervous that we live in a society where some do harbor or even foster those untruths. So we’re not too keen for the cover either.
We prefer an information campaign.
The New Yorker tried the humor of disinformation and laid an egg.
Hey, Eustace is a buddy of mine, fictional though he is. I delight in seeing the signature dandy on the front of the magazine. He’s the logo. He’s the sophistication. He’s a pretty good clothes horse, often depicted by TNY satirically with props.
Editor David Remnick can sly up the magazine’s symbol, can satirize public figures, can make fun of our social foibles.
Surely he can do a take-off on the Democrat with a funny name and a funny past and a serious chance of becoming president.
Well, yes. If he can answer one question: Does the cover communicate?
Not to Eustace’s standard is the answer.
Remnick knows how hard irony is to wield as a means of conversation. And he must know he goofed. Because he’s trying to explain the joke. That’s proof positive the joke fell as flat as a magazine cover.
It’s as lame as New York Times editor Bill Keller trying to explain the paper meant to say Republican presidential candidate John McCain showed poor judgment about ethics, not that he had an affair necessarily.
Manhattan is an island. Those editors need to swim to shore more often.
For The Times to link sex and a politician was to run a public DNA test on his bed sheets.
For The New Yorker to attack ignorance with sophistication was to bring a pen knife to a bazooka fight.