BrianGarst.com

I’ve previously pointed out Obama’s cynical quest to wrap himself in a blanket of victimhood. The recent episode over a New Yorker cover, one which uses satire to make fun of the right, is yet another example.

The cover features Obama adorned in Muslim garb giving a fist-pound to his militant dressed wife. A flag can be seen burning in the fire place beneath a poster of Osama bin Laden.

The Obama camp quickly disparaged the rendition as tasteless and out of line, and is now out trumpeting the same line about attacks which are supposedly coming from the right, but which this and other episodes illustrate are far more likely to sprout from the left.

Jeff at ProteinWisdom tackles it from another angle and makes some even better observations:

Clearly, this magazine cover was an attack on a cartoonish version of rightwing critics of the Obamas who the artist recognizes aren’t happy with the couples’ past associations or some of their publicized rhetoric and published writings. Hell, it could have been drawn by our old buddy thor, if you think about it — given that it attempts to ironize away any and all suspicions people have about the Obamas’ worldview and their social and professional coteries by over-exaggerating those suspicions to the point where they will (the artist hopes) appear downright silly. And in so doing, the intent is to shame those who would in the future raise such questions about the Obamas and their associations — or at the very least, to have a readily available iconic referent that indexes such knowing mockery.

…The irony here — and it is choice, believe me — is that this satire was intended as an attack on the right. But now, because the artist tried to attack the right in a way he believed clever and ironic, he is being attacked by the left — his own tribe! — for launching an attack on the right that those on the right, the left is coming to fear, could use against the Obamas, either out of idiocy or malice.

This position, of course, assumes that those on the right are so stupid or unworldly that they aren’t able to suss out satire directed their way — and this is (deliciously!) the fear of some on the left, one born of their own prejudices. These leftwingers, of course, “get it” themselves, so it is really not the cover itself that angers them. Rather, these would-be pragmatists worry that the illiterate righties who people their fevered dreams might not. And then what?

Sadly, this is a bit like taking Swift to the woodshed over “A Modest Proposal,” or Christopher Guest to the woodshed over This is Spinal Tap.

What the progressive handwringers should be doing is gleefully and full-throatedly noting the satire, then preparing to laugh at anyone who sees this as an accurate depiction of Obama. What they should be doing is enjoying a wry smile at their next cocktail party over the (presumed) idiocy of the rightwingers who might take this cover at face value, so shallow is their understanding of the literary arts.

But the real irony here is they can’t do that — and that’s precisely because their worldview is predicated on being able to control “meaning” by consensus. And one of the problems with such an incoherent method for determining meaning (by way of reliance on a given interpretive community’s ability to shout down competing interpretations), is that, at least in theory, another interpretive community can come along and claim another, diametrically opposed meaning, and — if their will to power is stronger — control the narrative by way of severing any ties to original intent.

In short, the left fears being hoist by its own incoherent linguistic petard.

…And so we have the wonderful spectacle of (some — not all, naturally; hi, Scott!) leftwingers falling all over themselves to denounce a satire that they themselves understand and can readily recognize (and would probably enjoy) because they fear that it can be “used” against them by rightwing caricatures who they fear either are too daft to understand the satire, or else might adopt the same incoherent interpretive method that certain worldviews rely upon to destabilize meaning and turn it into what is essentially a battle of interpretive will.

Barack Obama Election '08