They keep pulling me back in...

Alright, two more things on the Obama New Yorker cover:

1.  I've read the sentiment (sometimes directed at me): "Shouldn't art be ambiguous?  Why should the 'point' of art be 'clear' to anyone?"  And my response is that of course art can be ambiguous.  But not this art in this case.  Maybe this would have been that type of art if the image had been drawn in crayon on a urinal, and when people asked the artist what he meant by it, he only gave them an inscrutable smile.

But when asked whether this art had a certain meaning, i.e., that Obama's a nutty leftist and possible Muslim, the artist and editor didn't for a moment allow for ambiguity:  they screamed to the rooftops, "NO!  This cartoon absolutely means X Y and Z!  That's what we intended, and nothing else!"

This art was explicitly intended to have a specific point.  The fact that it didn't successfully make that point -- and, in fact, led many to believe it was making an opposite point -- makes it failed satire.  Not an offense punishable by tar-and-feathering, not anything that will have any effect on an election, not a threat to the Republic.  But failed satire.

2.  I found Tom Tomorrow's post on this interesting, in which he shows a small example of satire, and then ironically adds more and more explicit cues as to his intent, wondering when enough cues have been added to satisfy the Satire Police.

But he stacks the deck when he makes his first example of satire an actual, successful bit.  Not only is the dialog discernibly sarcastic, but Osama says that he is Saddam's buddy even though Saddam is "an infidel dog."  See, he cleverly UNDERMINED the notion that the two could ever be friends by using WIT to signal his true stance. 

The cartoon actually analogous to the New Yorker cover would have simply shown Saddam and Obama with their arms around their shoulders, maybe with a "Best Friends Forever" framed needlepoint behind them -- totally unclear as to whether he thinks they're obviously friends or obviously not.  But Tom couldn't even bring himself to draw that -- he instinctively HAD to drop in some telling, ironic twist.  And that's not because he's a superlative cartoonist (although he is).  It's because he's at base level a competent satirist.