http://danieldrezner.com/blog/
Understanding the cartoon requires sharing the New Yorker’s prejudices, not its sophistication. Without a prior understanding that the magazine is hostile to the paranoid style in American politics and well-disposed towards the Obamas, the cartoon is unintelligible. This problem would never have come up 20 years ago, when the only people who read the New Yorker were subscribers. But today, billions of people are a mouse-click away from being New Yorker “readers”. Enough clicks and the cartoon begins to convey the opposite of what it meant to. Under the influence of a hyperdemocratic medium like the internet, you can’t say anything to anyone that won’t be heard by everyone….
In a partisan climate, any joke that rises above mere jeering will miss its mark. For half the country, the target is too decent to ridicule; for the other half, he is beneath contempt. On the eve of the primaries, 39 per cent of young Americans told the Pew Research Center they got most of their news through late-night comedy shows. (Emphasis added.) So comedy has never been more important to American politics. Perhaps as a consequence, it has never been less funny.
Hmmm! Is that why Obama reacts so savagely to any kind of humor about him? He appears to be one of those people, the more you know about him, the less you like him.
And I have run across a fair number of people who have given me the impression that their only source of public knowledge is Leno or whomever.
I thought I had mispercieved. Apparently not.
Understanding the cartoon requires sharing the New Yorker’s prejudices, not its sophistication. Without a prior understanding that the magazine is hostile to the paranoid style in American politics and well-disposed towards the Obamas, the cartoon is unintelligible. This problem would never have come up 20 years ago, when the only people who read the New Yorker were subscribers. But today, billions of people are a mouse-click away from being New Yorker “readers”. Enough clicks and the cartoon begins to convey the opposite of what it meant to. Under the influence of a hyperdemocratic medium like the internet, you can’t say anything to anyone that won’t be heard by everyone….
In a partisan climate, any joke that rises above mere jeering will miss its mark. For half the country, the target is too decent to ridicule; for the other half, he is beneath contempt. On the eve of the primaries, 39 per cent of young Americans told the Pew Research Center they got most of their news through late-night comedy shows. (Emphasis added.) So comedy has never been more important to American politics. Perhaps as a consequence, it has never been less funny.
Hmmm! Is that why Obama reacts so savagely to any kind of humor about him? He appears to be one of those people, the more you know about him, the less you like him.
And I have run across a fair number of people who have given me the impression that their only source of public knowledge is Leno or whomever.
I thought I had mispercieved. Apparently not.