If you take into account the New Yorker's well-known, liberal status, you may be able to derive some humor from the image's ridiculousness. The greater question is, at a time this precarious in the campaign, do we need this?

Jonathon, you are so kind. You say that the cover is "perverse and irresponsible". I feel that we have arrived at that point in history, when what I term that 'polite social speech', that we have corraled our tongues to offer in order to be included in the conversation, just 'ain't gonna get it' anymore. Now is the time to frankly and clearly speak our truth.

As a woman of African descent, I see the cover as a clear tool of propaganda. I see the New Yorker Editors choosing to create an image that absolutley leaves a first impression of horror and fear within the minds of the masses of white Americans, as well as those non-white Americans that live from the dominant culture's way of viewing the world.

Now the fact that the editors and staff thought they could disguise their covert racism and bigotry by labeling "....their cover (as)is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create" is an attempt to hide behind something so onerous that if we persist in speaking politely, and calling it 'simply irresponsible', then they've been successful.

However, if we call a spade a spade, then we need to declare that we intelligent conscious human beings, working to harmoniously exist in our communities, in this nation and in the world, see their devious intention to divide and promote fear and revulsion. If we tell them we refuse to laugh with them, at this evidence of the ugly putrid cesspool from which their thinking and creativity emerge, we can help them to see themselves.

They are not contributing anything positive to the dialogue. They are purposely muddying the waters, to make sure good hearted people will not be able to make a clear minded decision.

I appreciate one of their writers, Mr. Seymour Hersh. But other than his articles, with it's subtle arrogant and pretentious editorial line, The New Yorker fosters and contributes significantly to the prisons of delusion that hold the American people from experiencing the presence of wholeness and the joy of simply Being. For New Yorkerphiles,-'postgraduate degreed liberals and post-political hipsters' these are foreign concepts.

Is it just me, or have we who fancy ourselves “progressive” lost our capacity for outrage?

No question about it, I am gettin on in years, but in my day racial justice activists did not let mainstream media slap us in the face and call it “satire” and get away with it. It’s not only masochistic to pretend today’s Obama cover is anything other than the product of warped white liberal minds—whether they created or authorized the image—it’s lousy strategy. If we don’t take this opportunity to say “got your post-race society right here” and call a honky a honky, our young ‘uns may as well go back to their sex-it-text-it focus, cause we sure as hell don’t have anything better to offer.

Actually Jonathan beat me to the punch on this one (and much more diplomatically, I may add), because my blog on this picture was simply going to read: "This is one of those moments in time when you throw your hands in the air and say, 'Oh Jesus Christ!'"

This isn't necessary, productive or even evocative. What's next for the New Yorker, a minstrel show? Obama as Curious George, like that guy in the midwest was making T-Shirts of? There's a fine line between satire and offense, and the New Yorker just went way beyond it. If the New Yorker was a right-wing rag, I might understand the decision to run this cover better, but all they've done is prove that the American Left is its own worst enemy.

I think we need to be very clear that defenses of this cover based on motive ("our aim was to make fun of the people who believe Barack and Michelle Obama are terrorists") or parallelism ("we make fun of the other side too") aren't acceptable. Images have a history; caricatures of Black people (especially, in fact, Black people in politics, as a library-full of Reconstruction-era cartoons will show) are historically embedded in the disenfranchisement of people of color. Blameless motives--if we accept that the liberal New Yorker's motives were blameless, which is of course questionable--are beside the point; the one who insults has no business objecting if his target resents being insulted. And claims of even-handedness are dishonest because they depend on lifting these images out of their historical context to consider them in isolation. John McCain's ancestors weren't lynched for trying to cast a vote, or raped for being insufficiently deferential. The cover is disgusting.

The cover is a fine example the arrogance of those who live comfortably above the fray. I've got a small discussion of it going on here.

If the claim is that this cover is a lampoon of what the right wing thinks of Obama and his wife the reality is it has failed miserably. Even satire must be perfectly
clear. Yes, I do see the potential humor in the cover but, more, I see the overarching divisiveness it lends itself to.

Shortly before I read about the cover I was reading about one of the Charles Manson killers who was turned down in her bid for release from prison because of terminal illness. In the comments section someone -- absurdly connecting to the subject of the Manson killer -- said we are all "doomed" if we elect Obama president because he is a Muslim.

And then I read about the cover and can only think the New Yorker with all its intellectualism is, like so many of the mainstream media, merely a cog in the wheel of the "dumbing down of America."

I think the cover helps the right wing and the enormous amount of media surrounding it adds to the utility for those who already believe the issues presented. People, for the most part, will not be evaluating the cover on the basis of absurdity but more on the basis of establishing the email onslaught asserting the absurd as true. I truly wonder how the magazine could think such a cover was appropriate. Very confusing.

It is wrong for sure, and tasteless and almost disgusting. But if they had McCain instead of Obama, then we'd be all laughing instead of condemning. Wouldn't we?

Around the very public " Fistbump " of Michele and Barack Obama was wrapped the " Blacks Are Devils " myth that bigots use all
of the time to excuse their hatred. Bigots will never face the Reality that " They Are The True Devils " of Humanity upon this Earth.

" The Devils " haven't any remorse for Slavery or any remorse for killing millions of people through many " Wars of Plunder ".
People of Color need to stop expecting a Soul to appear in these people; or for them to ever repent their past abominations.

The " New Yorker " magazine cover is just a typical Caucasian spectacle indicative of the belief that there will never be any consequences to anything that you do to the " Colored People "!!

The New Yorker cover is a case in point of whites taking pleasure in white dominance and being both ignorant and arrogant about their own participation in a racist society structured to benefit whites. The assumptions of the editors at the New Yorker makes it clear that they do not understand how the image reinforces racial and religious stereotypes as they take comfort in their assumed wisdom of all things racial and religious in the USA. This is pompous racism and religious intolerance in all its ugliness.
Alex Mikulich

It really is offensive. Most people don't really think it's funny but more stupid.