Shouldn't it be listed as "New Yorker, The" ?

And I love you all, too, Law, but I don't joke on crow--I don't even joke about crow. If your local library doesn't drop the initial article in a title--'the,' 'a,' or 'an'--they don't follow the rules our libranians were taught when they got their Master's Degrees.

However, amusing as this lateral arabesque might be to some, it doesn't answer the question I posed several posts ago that's never been answered. 'Is the NewYorker cover an example of Swiftian satire?'

CG, I don't necessarity agree that 'satire and sarcasm ONLY works on the un-biased mind.' Satire and sarcasm are examples of wit--or cleverness with words and/or pictures. Very few people have true wit. Dax, although he doen't always show it here, has wit. He works with words and their various meanings. Does understanding wit take an unbiased mind? I don't think so. Some minds can be very biased either one way or another, but still understand and appreciate wit.

I don't know Liz...I am calling the art consultant tomorrow and inquiring about the original. I wonder if it has already sold??

Sorry...I could not resist...

The New Yorker cover is far from Swiftian satire. For one thing, Jonathan Swift was a genius.

The New Yorker cover satirized the criticism Obama has been receiving that he is a Muslim, hates America, his wife is militant, he likes bin Laden, and so on. All the cliches in one package. In other words "look how stupid this criticism is when you put it all together--this is how you have been told to perceive this man". That counts as Satire, but far from the vicious, outrageous humor that was Swift.

What Swift did was take the worst aspects of a society to their logical conclusions. He suggested that because there were so many beggars in Dublin, and so many of them had out of wedlock children, the problems of both hunger and overpopulation could be solved by the baggars eating their children.

While true, it's a rather repugnant solution, but Swift presents it as though it were high philosophy, carefully reasoned, and although written in that old timey English style, still very funny 280 years later. It's called "A Modest Proposal"

So--Is the New Yorker cover satire? Yes. Swiftian satire, no.

Of course Barry Blitt is an visual artist, not a writer. He uses a different medium to express his satire. My question again, 20 years from now, when passing this piece in a museum, will the hoi poloi understand the true satire? ...or will they in Obama's words, "In attempting to satirize something, they probably fueled some misconceptions about me instead. But, you know, that was their editorial judgment," Obama said but adding that it is the New Yorker's right under the first amendment. believe those misconceptions?

I suppose the title says it all "The Politics of Fear"

Look at Thomas Nast, the original political cartoonist, or look at any political cartoons from fifty years ago, and you will not "get" most of them, as they refer to topical issues now long vanished.

Exactly....but we will always "get" Jonathan Swift....