Is Wonder-Showzen still goin?

Do i look like a mind-reader sir, i don't know ...

As you can see, the cover of the New Yorker depicts Senator Obama as a flag-burnin', funny clothes wearin' Muslim exchanging terrorist fist bumps with his wife, dressed as some crazy Black Panther militant chick with an Uzi.  You will note that neither one of them wears a flag pin.

I get it.  Here, in this cartoon, is every ridiculous rumor, stereotype, and half-truth ever spread about the Obamas rolled into one.  It's everything your grandmother has tried to warn you about via email over the past year, and the only thing it's missing is a jpeg of a cow with the Virgin Mary on its back.  Next week's cartoon: someone using their cell phone to pop popcorn.  Oh ho ho.

I get it, because I know that the New Yorker isn't written by culturally-ignorant reactionary right-wing bigots who haven't seen a minority since they last rented a Wesley Snipes flick.  Indeed, it's written by tonally-ignorant vaguely left-wing idiots, who haven't seen anyone below their tax bracket since they last bought lobsters right off the boat last weekend in Nantucket.  If that sounds like an attack on the "elites" in the media, by the way, then you should probably know that, to me, "elitism" doesn't mean "buying expensive cheese" so much as it means "not treating fairly those less fortunate than you."  Folks who'll pay their local lobsterman directly for their shellfish are okay in my book - they're supporting local business, and, heck, they probably give plenty of money to "causes."

It's just that upper-crusty media types, like those who publish the New Yorker, have a habit of disappearing up their own collective sphincter, as it were.  It's not elitism, it's tone-deafness.  In other word, the New Yorker thought they were dishing out a subtle yet poignant slice of satire.  Editor David Remnick actually said that he thought it was akin to The Colbert Report.  It's all context, though.  Colbert, and Jon Stewart, can get away with doing what they do because it's obvious that their milleu is satire - they're on a channel called Comedy Central, for instance.  People see what they do and understand that it is meant to be funny.

Unfortunately, New Yorker cartoons are almost never funny.  As a matter of fact, the vagueness and unfunny-ness of their cartoons has become a joke in and of itself, to the point that the magazine has been able to publish not one but two collections of rejected 'toons, which are, by some accounts, a billion times funnier than anything actually published in their smug little magazine.  The cartoons they actually publish monthly have always struck me as things that might be funny to someone - perhaps someone who doesn't own a television on principle and whose only exposure to popular culture is the Sunday New York Times and the occasional Liechtenstein exhibition at MoMA - but not to so-called "normal" people.

The problem is, therefore, that the New Yorker has published an inflammatory inside joke intended only for their readers, their demographic, which has suddenly blown up into a good ol' American media-driven clusterbang.  The same thing, I would argue, happened to Don Imus during "Ho-Gate."  Inappropriate, sexist, racist, or not, the rantings of a cranky old coot like Imus only became truly offensive when divorced of their context.  In other words, the Rutgers women's basketball team would never have heard about his remarks if the media (and people like Al Sharpton) hadn't bleated on about them.  It's not like they ever tuned into his show before the game. It's not like most people ever listened to his show, or even cared about what he had to say.  In fact, even his audience knew that whatever he said, it was probably going to come across as crotchety and mean.  Besides, Imus was obviously trying (and failing) to sound cool.  "Gangsta", if you will.  A similar fate befell Mitt Romney, who, during his campaign, was captured on video awkwardly saying "Who let the dogs out?" in front of a group of black teenagers.  Now, I'm no fan of Mitt, but I can't help but thinking that this had less to do with overt racism on his part, and more to do with comedic tone-deafness.  Any comedian will tell you that you need to know how to "read the room," something that Mitt, Don, and the New Yorker were too wrapped up in themselves to do properly.

Obama and his staff are pretty upset about the cartoon, which I guess is understandable.  I'd be pretty upset if a somewhat-major publication posted a cartoon of me on their front cover depicting all the nasty stuff people have said about me, satirically or not.  The question is, though, would anyone's opinions about Barack Obama have been changed by that cover if it had not become a major story?  Would some swing voter in Ohio have happened upon it and thought "my God, this cartoon has opened my eyes! I'm votin' for McCain, by gum!"  Does this same hypothetical swing voter also believe that beagles can be World War I flying aces?  Would they have even heard of the damn cartoon in the first place? In other words, is this a news story because it's a news story because it's a news story?

See what I mean about the media disappearing up their own asses?

So, what have we learned from this?  We've learned that liberals can't take a joke and that conservatives will believe anything you tell them, so long as it's proceeded by "FWD:".  We've learned that comedic tone-deafness knows no political bounds. We've learned that, every now and then, those in the news media like to have themselves a big old circle jerk.  And we've learned that New Yorker cartoons still suck.

In short, we have learned nothing we didn't know before.  Can we move on, please?

Also, the fact that he is supplying this material proves that it is critically important to go out drinking with friends - for without that, we would have never randomly met Travis Jones when we were out one night drinking with friends. 

We plan to update this feature weekly. 

Eat It, and Eat It well,

Randolph J. Strummer Jr., Publisher

from: http://xkcd.com

Before Wall-E came out, I thought the robot was a ripoff of Johnny 5 for kids too young to remember Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2. After seeing the movie though, I can admit that I was wrong... the good thing is that I am not usually this glad to be wrong about something. There were also some great nods to classic science fiction and technology fans, with callbacks to 2001: A Space Oddyssey and the classic Mac startup chime, to just name a couple.

I consider myself a jaded New Yorker and that's why I was so surprised to be emotionally knocked on my ass for many scenes in this film. I even teared up during some of the scenes between Wall·E and Eve (the slick white robot that resembles ASIMO), which was the most surprising thing for me. I was NOT expecting to be hit so hard by the love story and the ability of Pixar's animators to imbue that much emotion into robots that say less than 5 words to one another.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film though was the first 40 or so minutes of the film on Earth, first with WALL·E alone and then with Eve. This was some of the best pantomime since Charlie Chaplain and what really moved me was the interaction between WALL·E and Eve reminded me of Chaplain's City Lights. I liked the juxtaposition between Fred Willard's live action scenes from the past and the animated humans who are now blubberous blobs of laziness and a shell of their ancestors, played to a tee with voicework from Jeff Garlin John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy.

This movie is a definate must see, even the silent animated short with a hungry bunny and an obnoxious magician was entertaining to watch and I know I'm going to be looking for this movie when it is finally released on dvd. Thanks to MoviePatron for the above pic.

Dany

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