New Yorker Magazine – The Audacity Of Smear

The New Yorker said the cover by Barry Blitt called "The Politics of Fear" is meant to satirize "the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama's campaign," according to a press release about the new magazine issue. Image Credit: Barry Blitt via New Yorker Magazine

New Yorker Magazine – The Audacity Of Smear

Today, the New Yorker Magazine, in an effort to support their candidate, Barack Obama, released a magazine with cartoon cover art depicting Michelle and Barack Obama, giving each other a “knuckle bump” (an understated “high-five”) dressed up in symbols of rumor and fear.

This description offered by the Chicago Tribune -

The cover of the new New Yorker magazine depicts a caricature of Sen. Barack Obama as Muslim, standing in the Oval Office with a flag burning in the fireplace and a painting of Osama bin Laden hanging on the wall. He gives a fist bump to his wife, Michelle Obama, who is pictured wearing military fatigues and an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder.
Reference Here>>

What is most insulting about this example of the left’s print production is the magazines excuse for choosing a cartoon art cover such as this.

They believe that this depicts the view of the Obama’s held by people they termed as “Right-Wing”.

It makes no difference that Barack and Michelle Obama met, were married, placed their two children in religious training classes, and spent 20 years in the pews of a church that openly preaches racial bigotry and anti-American Marxist doctrine.

Let’s not mention that Barack Obama has a record rating of being the most liberal voting Senator of the 100 members in the U.S. Senate.

That Michelle Obama, in speech after speech, depicts her home country as hateful and a place with little opportunity. Yet, she has been blessed with support and privilege throughout her life starting with a free ride to attend Ivy League colleges and attain a degree to now, where she has a job in a Hospital that has benefited from “earmarks” (directed funding inserted into appropriations bills) Barack Obama has inserted into the process that has lead to major increases in her pay at the institution.

The rest of the excerpted story in the Chicago Tribune -

Obama campaign slams New Yorker cover
The art satirizes right-wing portrayals of the candidate, magazine says.
by Katie Fretland - Posted July 14, 2008 6:05 AM

The New Yorker said the cover by Barry Blitt called "The Politics of Fear" is meant to satirize "the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama's campaign," according to a press release about the new magazine issue.

The Obama campaign, as well as the campaign of Republican rival John McCain, slammed the cover as offensive:

"The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement, reported by Politico. "But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

"We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it's tasteless and offensive," McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement.
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Other covers by artist Blitt have included Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad on a toilet reading a newspaper and Bush with a feather duster and an apron, while Cheney relaxes in a chair with beer and a cigar.
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The cover accompanies an article by Ryan Lizza, which explores "the period that formed [Obama] as a politician"--his life in Chicago and his election to the U.S. Senate.

Lizza interviewed Toni Preckwinkle, a Chicago alderman, who spoke of political maneuvering by Obama.

"On issue after issue, Preckwinkle presented Obama as someone who thrived in the world of Chicago politics. She suggested that Obama joined Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ for political reasons. 'It's a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners,' she said. 'It's a good place for a politician to be a member.' Preckwinkle was unsparing on the subject of the Chicago real-estate developer Antoin (Tony) Rezko, a friend of Obama's and one of his top fund-raisers, who was recently convicted of fraud, bribery, and money laundering: 'Who you take money from is a reflection of your knowledge at the time and your principles.'

"I asked her if what she considered slights or betrayals were simply the necessary accommodations and maneuvering of a politician making a lightning transition from Hyde Park legislator to Presidential nominee. 'Can you get where he is and maintain your personal integrity?' she said. 'Is that the question?' She stared at me and grimaced. 'I'm going to pass on that.'
Reference Here>>

Imagine if you will a magazine cover where … actually we, at MAXINE, can’t imagine any magazine cover (cartoon or otherwise) that would be used to indemnify a negative perception of a Conservative presidential candidate and his family that would create a controversy storm … any complaint would be muffled by the very MSM that is aiding an abetting the New York Magazine in its effort to blunt some of the facts about the Obama’s that would make them unsuitable as “First Couple”.

This whole process is designed to smear people who have a self-reliant, small government, individual rights, assimilation, non hyphenated, "We The People", American ideal view of politics which the Fourth Estate wishes to end in this country. Socialism is their desire and the Left-Wing (and those who support it) are not above promoting a SMEAR upon which to trash the opposition.

Additional Thoughts & Comments:

From Shades Of Grey To B&W – Obama Comes Into Focus

Comparison of warm and cool shades of grey. Image Credit: Knulclunk, vectorized by Fvasconcellos

From Shades Of Grey To B&W – Obama Comes Into Focus

This rocket ship ground swell of support for Barack Obama is pretty amazing when one just stands and watches what is actually going on. The press is in the tank for Obama, he never gets questioned on any subject that requires meat to be on the bone to answer … and when he gives only a bare bones response to a difficult question, no follow-up question that would flesh out a real answer is forthcoming.

“Yes We Can”, “Change You Can Believe In”, “Moving Forward Into The Future”, “The Audacity Of Hope”, is all we are fed on the way to the Democrat Party political convention to be held this summer. No real pushback on the issues of Gay Marriage, Abortion, the tensions developing in South America, Israel and the rocket attacks of 2008, the reality of a stronger, more Communist Russia, and the changing world economic landscape.

But now, we do not have to wait on the Mainstream Media (MSM) to do this work of definition for us anymore. Barack Obama, in an unguarded yet genuine moment, captured and reported on by a “citizen journalist” posting in the Huffington Post, Barack Obama has provided us with a glimpse of the core values embedded in his belief system.

By stating to a group of Democrat Party faithful at a fundraiser in San Francisco April 6, 2008, that the way to understand a large group of voters in small town America is to first explain why they “cling” on to religious faith and principles, personal freedom and gun ownership, the dislike toward open-borders immigration, and caution in the acceptance of people different than themselves is a bitterness built as a result of a 25 year shifting economic landscape.

This opinion by Jonah Goldberg excerpted from The Los Angeles Times -

Barack Obama, the yuppie candidate
By Jonah Goldberg - April 15, 2008

Barack Obama is finally coming into focus.

For a while now, the Obamaphiles have insisted that their candidate represents a profound break with the past. No more culture wars. No more "re-litigating the 1960s," in Obama's own words.

But what about re-litigating the 1980s?

There's always been a certain cultural lag time to Barack and Michelle Obama, a kitschiness that's been hard to pinpoint. But I think I've got it: They're self-hating yuppies straight out of the 1980s, which was to the Obamas what the 1960s were to the Clintons.

For those too young to remember, "yuppie" was shorthand for young urban professionals
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Ironically, the biggest complaints about yuppie materialism came from self-loathing liberal yuppies -- like the Obamas.

The Obamas still seem stuck in that time warp, clinging to '80s-style resentments and political assumptions. Michelle Obama is never so eloquent as when she's complaining about the burden of student loans for her two Ivy League law degrees and covering the high cost of summer camp and piano lessons for her kids on her family's half-million-dollars-a-year income.
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It's Ronald Reagan -- the president of the 1980s -- who seems to loom so large in Obama's world. (Recall how last year, Obama caught some flak suggesting he might be a new Ronald Reagan.) Reagan famously restored confidence in the nation while reducing confidence in government as the solution to our problems.
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The Reagan Revolution moved the country durably to the right -- so much so that even Democrats saw the writing on the wall.
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Bill Clinton's 1992 victory stemmed from the fact that he was a "different kind of Democrat" -- that is, one who understood the lessons of Reaganism, or at least claimed to, and rejected the "brain dead policies" of the old Democratic Party. He was a pro-death-penalty free-trader who oversaw the triumph of the Reaganite critique of welfare.

It's as if Barack Obama spent the 1990s in some kind of Democratic Brigadoon -- and I guess Cambridge, Mass., and the South Side of Chicago might qualify -- and didn't keep up with his party, let alone the nation. Barack Obama, the man of the future, in fact stands athwart that history yelling "Stop."

This is the best way to understand his recent comments at a San Francisco fundraiser as he explained his challenge of connecting with rural and small town voters.

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania," he said, "and ... the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. ... It's not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Later, when his comments sparked a controversy, he dismissed it as a "little typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true."

But everybody doesn't know anything of the sort. Not in this decade anyway. Obama's merely recycling the liberal cliches of the 1980s, namely that Pennsylvania's "bitter" voters have been duped by "wedge issues" like guns, religion and racial resentment. New Democrats recognized that wedge issues are legitimate concerns. Old Democrats remain in denial.
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Slate columnist Mickey Kaus has been waiting for Obama to "pivot" to the center as Clinton did in 1992. But it may be that America's most reliably liberal senator doesn't think he has to. He isn't a unifier. He's a counter-revolutionary. And waiting for him to pivot is like waiting for Godot.
Reference Here>>

These observations by Jonah Goldberg, we at MAXINE believe, are the best gauge on the what, why, where, when, and how a Senator Barack Obama’s presidency would look like and the shape it would take.

A counter-revolutionary Marxist willing to place socialism over personal freedom in order to bring proper definition to a group of people HE doesn’t understand or relate to ... Americans!