WingColors

They're doing it to get attention, to get people to buy it, to sell more ads. The article has little to do with the current misconceptions of Barack Obama so the cover and the article just aren't in sync at all. I was expecting a thorough breakdown of all the things people think Obama is and then a history of why people think that, but instead I got a history of his civil service work in Chicago. Gotta be a ploy just to get people riled up.

Or you can just say they have lost their damn minds.

I think it's pretty silly to be playing up crap like this when there are about a billion other REAL issues they could have depicted on Obama.

My first thought when I saw this was "WTF! He set up the deck and prepared his supporters for attacks like this and now you go and play into his hand.... STOOOOOOPID!"

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, almost builds up sympathy for the guy which is something his opponents didn't want him to have.

I think it's hype like Mike said. I also think it's cool that such a tame magazine took such bold liberty and posted such a picture. Imo Obama has had it way too easy for being such a noob to the presidential race. If he can't take this them he'll never make it anyway.

It's satire, didn't come off well at all, got everyone all up in arms because "omg people will be too stupid and take it literally",( which historically shouldn't have been their intention but who knows), and it is felt to be racist. I won't give my opinion on that it's too long.

It was missing a byline which most New Yorker satires have - part of the problem and it has sparked a debate all over the place ad nauseataum as to the rules of true satire, and whether this follow those rules.

I have heard that to understand true adult satire one must have an IQ of at least 115, I have no idea if this is true, but with the average IQ in this country being in the 90's ( I don't know if this is true it's a wiki fact and seems incredibly low), so the fear among liberals is that America's IQ is too low for them to understand it as satire.

I'm tired about all references to things which really have nothing to do with politics, so I'm trying not to read any more on this.

I think this is actually consistent with the humor or satire The New Yorker has come up with in the past, at least in political cartoons. I mean, if we can practically burn Bush at the stake for what he's done with the Iraq war in a political cartoon that comes out every day, then I don't think this is a big deal. If we can't, then the "fever" that people believe Obama supporters have, treating his nomination as second coming of Christ, or the Messiah or whatever, is true.

Of course, this is where I come clean that I'm an Obama supporter. I think that the cartoon does what it meant to do - spark a debate. Whether it's incendiary is hugely reliant on the political climate today. It's our first black major political party nominee; and everything that's depicted in that cartoon is all stuff that's flown off the cuff by his opponents. It's all stuff that doesn't have anything to do with the issues, but his background, paranoid interpretations and other stuff taken out of context, etc.

I'm with Cooper as far as the fear amongst liberals, but what I would go so far as to say is, Obama shouldn't be treated with kid gloves either. It's an unfortunate thing but this stuff that just ends up exposing the criticism that has more to do with fear than with the issues needs to be outed rather than floated beneath the surface. It's the only way the bigotry has any way of being exposed and it separates the legitimate concerns about Obama from the petty ones coming from closet-racists. If we accuse The New Yorker, a liberal magazine, for working for the Republicans then we have clearly missed it. As far as execution, it's always going to be arguable how they could've been more "tasteful" about it. But you know, elitists think they have enough taste to go around.

I see it for what it is, a riff on the desperate absurdity of the attacks that have been launched thus far, since it's become clear to some prominent Republicans (coughcough Karl Rove) that discussing the issues will only shed more light on the fact that Obama's positions are more consistent with voters' than McCain's. ie: Let's draw attention to the fact that Obama's dad was a Muslim (as is 35% of the Kenyan population) so nobody notices that John McCain keeps talking about Russia recently reducing oil supplies in a country that ceased to exist 15 years ago.

I actually kind of enjoyed counting the various smears in the photo especially having heard them ad nauseum for the past year or so. I thought it was clever how Michelle was portrayed as a member of the Black Panther Party. I think if anyone sees this cover and thinks "So it's true! The New Yorker confirms!" he/she either a) is too stupid to comprehend satire or b) has never actually read the magazine (or, for that matter, a book with no pictures).

Like estarla I am convinced that the people who refuse to vote for Obama based on these demerits — despite the scads of evidence to the contrary — present these reasons because they sound so much less racist than "I don't like black people" or "He has a foreigner's name." Because it seems to me that while people are ashamed to be called racist, they're not yet ashamed to act racist or make racist judgments

There will be millions who won't vote for Obama based on ignorance... and there will be millions who won't vote for McCain based on ignorance.

It's all the same and election after election they file in to cast their "vote" and feel good about themselves.