McCain's funny; but is The New Yorker or Obama?

It has been a long time between posts, I must say - near on two years if anyone's actually counting. In those two years, a couple of unexpected things happened in the race for the US Presidency: Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton to the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination; and John McCain won the Republican Party nomination after a cluttered field of candidates faltered or simply failed to inspire.

Aside from the obvious policy divisions and the party faultlines (it doesn't take a genius to tell the difference between an elephant and a donkey), there is one huge, unmistakable difference between the two presumptive nominees: one is funny, and one is not. Ok, maybe that's not technically correct. John McCain, at 71, is the clown of this year's Presidential race - wrinkly fodder for Letterman, Leno, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert. All the jokes have, or assume, the same punchline, which is, of course, that John McCain is old, really old. (If the Ghost watched more television he would probably make an entertaining sport of picking the McCain punchlines before David Letterman had the chance to reel them off - they're that predictable.) Barack Obama is black, and is not funny, in the same way that McCain is old and is funny. The first black Democratic or Republican nominee to run for President of the United States of America is a big enough achievement in itself, right, without having to deal with smarmy undergraduate satire about his background and whether he's truly commitment to the country he wants to lead, right? (He was born in Hawaii, has lived in Kenya and Indonesia, and don't forget was also editor of the Harvard Law Review, but I digress.)

Obama's candidacy has forced the United States to deal with some of the swept-under-the-rug prejudices that still exist across much of the country. And so the country's intelligentsia and progressives felt confused and betrayed when one of their own - The New Yorker - slapped some of these fears and prejudices on its front cover. Almost everyone agreed The New Yorker's cover (above left), which depicted Obama and wife Michelle dressed as Islamic extremists inside what looks like the Oval Office, a US flag burning in the fireplace, went too far.

The New Yorker's editor responded on The Huffington Post: "What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama's — both Obamas' — past, and their politics." Perceptions and prejudices, that's what's being satirised here.

Last weekend Guy Rundle, who writes regular dispatches from Washington for The Sunday Age and Crikey.com.au, penned this article about the issue. Rundle concluded that, following the funny-if-it-wasn't-so-sad-and-dire Bush Presidency, many in the liberal US media may be affraid to take a humourous swipe at Obama if there's a chance it might lead to another four years of Republican rule.

"The country is in love with him, and any attack that went too deep would be a self-inflicted wound - as the staff of The New Yorker found out."

Last year the same magazine published a cover that featured Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sitting in a toilet cubicle reading the paper. A sandled foot pokes underneath the cubicle wall and touches his own outstretched foot. The President looks curious, and a little confused (above right).

"In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country," President Ahmadinejad said during a public speech at Columbia University last year. The cover was a response to the President's ridiculous assertion that Iran is 100% straight (because the Koran says so), but the magazine didn't receive anywhere near the flak it received for its Obama cover.

Ahmadinejad's statement deserved to be sent up, but so does the public perception (if it exists, and The New Yorker is in a better position to judge this more than some Aussie blogger) that Obama is soft on terrorism, and, because of his past and the colour of his skin, that he may somehow be less committed to protecting his country than some wrinkly 71-year-old Vietnam veteran.