Friday Flotsam - Genius Edition

Wherein we take a stroll down the metaphorical beach of the DWSUWF blog and observe the detritus that has washed ashore and cluttered this little island of rationality in the great big blogospheric ocean.

Since I am currently consumed with watching Geg Norman, an old fart like myself (albeit, unlike myself, one with actual golf skills), leading the British Open today, please accept this display of a few shiny, sparkly items that caught my eye on the beach...

ITEM - Jib Jab Genius
Between Bill's cigar, Hillary's ambition, McCain's tank, Cheney's legacy, and Obama riding a Unicorn farting rainbows*, this latest Jib Jab offering is a gem. You've got to hand it to those Jib-Jab boys. The ability to embed an image of yourself in the video is a stroke of simple marketing genius. Unless you've been under a rock, you have probably already seen this, as it was displayed on every blog and TV channel this week. But you have not seen... The DWSUWF embedded version!

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

*Hat Tip to Tully for the useful descriptive phrase.

ITEM - Goose and Gander Department.
Like everyone else, I had a lot to say about the New Yorker cover this week. More specifically, I had a lot to say about the humorless, condescending over-reaction of some on the left to a brilliant smackdown by the New Yorker of the inanities spewed about Obama from the rabid right. Hand wringing liberals filled the blogosphere with warnings of dire consequences should "low-information" voters accidentally see the offending magazine cover. "What if the shoe were on the other foot?" They asked, "What if it was McCain portrayed as a doddering old fool on a National Review cover?" David Horsey of the Seattle Post accommodates:

Genius. A pitch-perfect portrayal of how the loony left views McCain, just as the New Yorker cover is a pitch-perfect portrayal of how the rabid right view Obama. All that is needed to complete the circle is for The National Review to actually publish this cover. It would be a two fingered poke in the eye for Obama supporters: First holding up a mirror to the more inane views of the left, as the New Yorker did to the right; Second, it would be saying - unlike the left, our readers are smart enough to figure this out. We'll see if NR has the cojones.

ITEM - The Daily show knows something about humor ...
...and weighs in with this penetrating analysis of the consequences when "low-information" voters are confronted with the New Yorker cartoon. The Daily Show team of crack investigative journalists explain satire and humor to passer-bys on the streets of New York:



More genius? Or is DWSUWF just easily impressed?

ITEM - The ACLU New York Times "Listening" ad.
The genius of of the founding fathers can be found in the recognition that three co-equal branches of government, each checking and balancing the excesses of the other, are needed to protect the liberties of the governed. The executive and legislative branch have failed to respect and sustain the protections against unreasonable search and seizure that the founders intended in the fourth amendment. The judicial branch is our next best hope to reverse the FISA capitulation. The ACLU is leading the fight to challenge this law in the courts and in the court of public opinion with this print Ad [PDF]. I have signed on to the ad, will be contributing to the ACLU, and encourage every one else to do so also.

One complaint - the ad discriminates against those of us with last names at the end of alphabet, since very few of the 65,000 signers whose last name starts with N-Z made into the Ad itself. Very disappointing, but for one who has lived with this end-of-alphabet discrimination since grade school, not surprising.

ITEM - Carnivalingus
Some recent genius collections of high quality blogging punditry:

• Lisa Renee presents The Carnival of Ohio Politics Rule #126 hosted at Ohio Politics Carnival.
  
• Pat Santy presents Carnival of the Insanities hosted at Dr. Sanity.
  
• Montag presents the Carnival of the Liberals LXIX hosted at Stump Lane.
• BillSpaced presents Rants! - July 14 hosted at Rants and Reviews.
• Counting Cats presents Karnival Time - Carnival of the Libertarians hosted at Counting Cats in Zanzibar.
• Angelo is recruiting new members for the 08 Bloggers Network hosted at 2008 Central.
  

ITEM - Carnival Reminder
The next edition will be the Carnival of Divided Government Quattuor et Vîcênsimus (XXIV) - Special "Lost At Sea" Edition, which we will be floating on or about the 3rd of August, shortly before embarking on a Pacific passage sailing adventure from Hawaii to San Francisco. Submit your blog article at carnival of divided government using our carnival submission form.

Divided and Balanced.™
Now that is fair.

Technorati tags: New Yorker, blog carnival, 2008 election , John McCain, Barack Obama, ACLU, FISA.

Maddow & Alter: "The New Yorker cover is irresponsible because Americans are too stupid to understand it."

UPDATED: 19-July-2008
In my last post I said that the New Yorker magazine "cover is not the real story. The real story is the reaction to the cover by Obama, his campaign and his supporters." Rachel Maddow goes one better, saying "the details in the New Yorker cover drawing are not the story, the outrage over the cover are not the story, the potential consequences of the cover are the story." Hmmm.

Keith Olbermann is still on vacation, so Rachel Maddow is filling in on MSNBC's Countdown. In general I think this has been a trade-up. I like Maddow. Don't agree with her most of the time, but I like the way she thinks. However, when a journalist television personality decides to crawl right in the bag with a political candidate, it is apparently written in stone that said personality must twist themselves into an intellectual knot and make utter asses of themselves on the air in defense of their object of affection. It does not matter if it is Rush Limbaugh carrying water for big spending, big deficit, big government Republicans under GWB, or the regularly scheduled Keith Olbermann and Jonathon Alter Obama Infomercial on MSNBC or Maddow substituting for Olbermann last night. An interesting oddity is that Jonathon Alter reprises his role as sidekick sycophant with Rachel. He should worry about being typecast:



I wanted to include the transcript here, but MSNBC has linked the wrong transcript to the July 14 show. I'll update later with actual quotes when they get it fixed, but paraphrasing:

MADDOW: Jonathon, Isn't the real problem here that way too many Americans are too stupid to get the joke?
ALTER: Yes, Rachel, 13% of Americans are so stupid that they tell pollsters that they believe these lies, so there are consequences from an image like this and the New Yorker should have considered the consequences of stupid Americans seeing this image.
MADDOW: In that context do responsible journalists and commentators like us have a responsibility to explain to stupid Americans that Obama is not a Muslim every time this comes up?
ALTER: Yes Rachel, this is part of our responsibility - to take the time to refute these lies for all those low information (stupid) voters out there who are not paying attention. But it is still a problem because these voters are so stupid that they will just look at the picture, not get the joke, and not listen to us.

True to his word, Jonathon Alter dedicated his column today to once again explaining to the stupid American voters that Barack Obama is not a Muslim and the New Yorker cover is a joke.

"... the New Yorker cover, now being displayed endlessly on cable TV, speaks louder than any efforts by Obama supporters to stop the smears... negative images burn their way into the consciousness of voters in ways that cannot be erased by facts. With one visual move, the magazine undid months of pro-Obama coverage in its pages."

Look, I have no problem with Alter's thesis - the "Obama is a Muslim" lie must be challenged, confronted and corrected in the strongest possible terms. I have done so myself here and at Donklephant and will continue to do so.

But perhaps Maddow and Alter, and other Obama supporters wringing their hands about the 12-13% of "low-information" voters in the poll should consider the possibility that they are not all ignorant and stupid. Consider what Craig Crawford said on MSNBC a few hours later - David Shuster, substituting for Dan Abrams on "Verdict!" joined those on the left who are hand-wringing about the same poll, when Craig Crawford floated the right answer:

SHUSTER: "...there is some new polling from “Newsweek” that underscores Obama‘s potential problem. Twelve percent think he‘s a Muslim and 12 percent say he used the Koran for a Senate swearing in ceremony, 39 percent believe he attended an Islamic school in Indonesia, while 26 percent think he was raised a Muslim. None of those are true. Craig Crawford, how, in your view, should Obama address this?"
CRAIG CRAWFORD, MSNBC ANALYST: "...But, as far as the percentages of people believing he‘s a Muslim, he‘s got time, he‘s just got to keep making the case, putting those speeches out there, and talking about his faith, and trying to deal with it. I‘m not sure a lot of this people actually believe this. I think they just don‘t like him and don‘t like to say it."

Bingo. Here is the real "joke". While there are indeed wingnuts on the right who really believe that Obama was a Muslim, or that he is the Anti-Christ, or he is an Islamic "Manchurian Candidate", or whatever stupid thing they want to worry about today, it is entirely possible that most of that 12% do not really believe it. They just like messing with the pollsters and left wing pundits who get their panties in a bunch whenever they read polls like this. And if that is the case, the real joke is on condescending pundits like Alter and Maddow who are so concerned about these "low-information" voters.

Jonathon, Rachel - Relax.

They're just messing with you.

UPDATE: 19-July-2008

This is too cool. In the Countdown video clip, you hear Jonathon Alter say this:

"In 1925 when the New Yorker was founded, the founder Harld Ross specifically said to investors, that the magazine was not for the little old lady in Duquque."

In the linked column, Alter repeats the theme saying:

"When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he told potential investors that it was not edited for "the little old lady from Dubuque." This is still true, as the flap over the latest cover suggests."

Alter then proceeds to explain why the New Yorker cover is "indisputably harmful" with those unsophisticated "low information" voters, like that little old lady from Dubuque.
The only problem with Jonathon Alter's thesis, is that when the New York Times went to Dubuque, they learned that "The Old Lady in Dubuqe is smarter than you think.":

"When The New Yorker came into being in the 1920s, its founder, Harold Ross, held up Dubuque as the sort of backwater he wanted nothing to do with. Ross, with Eustace Tilley nose in the air, said the magazine would not be “edited for the old lady in Dubuque.” Not surprisingly, Dubuquers thought it terribly snooty of him, not to mention unfair. But they know enough to recognize satire.

“Yeah, we get it in Dubuque,” Mr. Rusk said by phone. “Anybody with a reasonable sense of humor” does. “The New Yorker, which touts itself, accurately, to be a highly intellectualized and savvy sort of a publication, ought to be able to get away with that,” he said. “If they can’t, who can?”

Score one for Dubuque, which is more than you can say about some people in this city. Let’s not even go into the reflexive condemnations of the drawing from Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain. Both know that you can hardly go wrong in national politics attacking a publication like The New Yorker and those smart-alecky fops who read it and think they’re better than everyone else. The thing is, though, that some who have accused the magazine of elitism are themselves elitists. They include outraged writers of letters to the editor who talk about Mr. Obama in near-Messianic terms. Some of them strongly suggest that too many Americans lack the brains to recognize the illustration for what it is, and will think it to be literally true."

Exactly right. Jonathon Alter = Elitist. Rachel Maddow = Elitist. Those who criticize the New Yorker cover on the basis of not unduly influencing those poor "low-information" voters? Elitists one and all.

I love the New York Times.

Divided and Balanced.™ Now that is fair.

Technorati tags: Keith Olbermann, 2008 election, Democrats, Barack Obama, New Yorker, Rachel Maddow

Its up to you New Yorker! New Yorker!

"These little town blues, are melting away
Ill make a brand new start of it - in old New York
If I can make it there, Ill make it anywhere
Its up to you - New York, New York."

As Amba at Ambivablog and Ann Althouse said about the New Yorker cover "everyone is talking about it. " So I have no choice but to declare a "Yossarian", as I have periodically done before and paraphrase Joseph Heller's famous protagonist from Catch 22 - "What if everyone was blogging about the New Yorker cover?" I can only respond as did Bomber Pilot John Yossarian: "Then I'd be a damn fool not to".

Since, as usual I am a day late and and a dollar short, I don't have a lot to add to the volumes written about the the cover itself. The cover is exactly what illustrator Barry Blitt intended, a humorous and brilliant slap down of the more inane attacks on Obama by the rabid right. No matter, the cover is not the real story. The real story is the reaction to the cover by Obama, his campaign and his supporters. As always, the tone is set at the top, with staff and supporters taking their cues from the leadership. Obama's reaction:

"ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports that when he was asked about the controversial cover during a press avail today, Obama shrugged and then said, "I have no response to that."

So, Barack Obama is pouting. Think how differently this story evolves if Obama instead looks at cover, laughs out loud, says "That's great. They missed a few points, where is Reverend Wright?"

But he did not say that. Instead we get an official Obama spokesman taking offense:

"The New Yorker may think... that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. "But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

And so the Obama acolytes who understand only too well that electing Barack Obama is much, MUCH too important to laugh about, go into high dudgeon and pile on.

But what do I know. Perhaps the Obama campaign is right. Perhaps it is important for every President and political candidate to immediately respond with righteous indignation on every political magazine cover. Perhaps Hillary Clinton and George W Bush should have responded to previous New Yorker covers in kind. Consider:

Hillary certainly could have sniffed about this New Yorker cover when the Monica Lewinsky scandal was breaking in ...

May 1994

"The New Yorker may think that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the First Lady's presidential ambitions..." said a Clinton spokesman "But during this time of personal family crisis and pain most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. "

Or when she decided to run for New York Senator in...

July, 1999

"The New Yorker may think that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature that Hillary Clinton's political opponents have tried to create of her Senate campaign." said a Clinton spokesman "But most readers will see thie portrayal of her as a dilettante tourist about to get mugged by tough New York politics it as tasteless, sexist and offensive. "

And if Presidential candidates need to respond to cartoon covers, shouldn't Presidents also respond in kind?

December 2006

"The New Yorker may think that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature President Bush's left-wing critics have tried to create." said a Bush spokesman "But most readers will see the cover's portrayal of President Bush as a meek housewife subservient to a slovenly Dick Cheney head of the household as tasteless and offensive. "

January, 2007

"The New Yorker may think that their cover is a satirical lampoon portraying an out of touch imperial President who is fiddling while the country burns." said a Bush spokesman "But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. "

Yeah. That's the ticket.

By the way, the article itself - you know - inside the magazine - is great. I suggest everyone try to get past the cover and read it for real insight into the making of Barack Obama.

And for any who worry that satire is just too sophisticated for your average American, who fear that the great unwashed need to be protected from sophisticated humor, noted conservative blogger Jon Swift has the answer:

"The next time the New Yorker tries to run a satiric cover, they should include a label that says "Satire" in very big letters just as they label all of their advertisements. Although I am not generally in favor of solving problems with legislation, the time may have come when the government needs to mandate warning labels for satire like they do for cigarettes."

Divided and Balanced.™ Now that is fair.

Technorati tags: Yossarian, 2008 election, Democrats, Barack Obama, New Yorker