The New Yorker Cover

So today, I get this big, outraged email from NOW asking me to send a note of outrage to the New Yorker over their dumb Obamas cover. Uh, no. I don't think so. So I wrote this instead sort of to NOW, sort of to the Obama campaign and sort of to David Remmick..I wonder if it will get there through NOW....

Dear David Remmick,

The biggest problem with the cover was that it was only kinda funny instead of really funny. It was only kinda funny because there actually are lots of people in America who are stupid enough to believe that Michelle Obama is Angela Davis redux and her husband, Barack HUSSEIN Obama, is a stealth agent of Osama and together, they're going to "destroy America" (insert fistbump here).

Anyone who has been paying attention and has even half a brain can comprehend the irony in the New Yorker cover. I'm not buying the notion that the leadership of NOW misses the point anymore than I believe that two people with the Obama's education and intellect miss it.

So given the brou-ha-ha-ha, the only conclusion I can come to is that my liberal brethren are just exercising the compassion we are known for by speaking for the folks who have had half their brains removed - or were born missing half.

Which means we now have yet another empty, meaningless, expulsion of hot air in which my side overreacts to a cartoon, and abuses thousands of innocent words demanding that an apology be issued along with the promise that there will be no more racist, sexist or homophobic editorial or ads in the New Yorker. (Note to ed staff: Kill the Naomi Klein/Susan Faludi/Barbara Ehrenreich "Hot Ladies of the Leftwing Intelligentsia" lingerie spread - D.R.) (note to ad staff: Kill the "Girls Gone Wild Goes to Yaddo" full-bleed vid ad on the back cover - D.R.) (note to ed staff: Hold "The Bell Curve, Re-examined" til further notice).

Yep, nothing makes for an exciting intellectual climate like dispensing with wit, humor, sarcasm and of course, irony.

Well, there is one bright spot in that evil David Remmick has given the Obama campaign a sterling opportunity to not only demonstrate its capacity for feigned outrage but also to rid itself of any charges of elitism. What could be more anti-elitist than beating up on the New Yorker?

Perhaps this isn't the juncture at which to make the stand for intellectual integrity, but the opportunities are getting further and further apart - we're not getting much to work with here. We've just suffered through eight years of political/social/economic discussions for imbeciles and before that, we had twenty years of political/social/economic discussions for the "challenged".

And from that we got Reagan, and we got Bush, Sr. and we got Clinton, and in the intellectual coup de grace, we got Smirky the Chimp.

I'm tired of stupid. I'm tired of willful obtuseness. I don't want it from my President, and I certainly don't want it from organizations purporting to stand against sexism and racism. If the leadership of NOW is as obtuse as it appears in this mailing, I'm sure we can count on battling sexism for a very, very long time.