The Humor Of Fear

This is a little lesson on what it will be like: The cartoon drawn by Barry Blitt shows Barack Obama and his wife Michelle standing in the White House's Oval Office with an American flag burning in the fireplace under a portrait of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. It's on the cover of this week's "New Yorker" magazine. Now we're paddling out into the waters of satire. What is funny, and what will be funny, over the next four years?
Maybe we've gotten a little too sensitive, since we have spent the past eight years with a President who somehow seemed impervious to satire. Not that he wasn't easy to lampoon, but he just never seemed to take any of it personally. He just kept doing what Pinheads do. For that matter, I know that this blog has walked a fine line for the past three years, running the risk of offending pinheads everywhere with the association.
Over the past few weeks, I have been reminded by watching the first season of "Saturday Night Live" about the nature of political comedy. There are hours of screen time devoted to Chevy Chase, as "Gerald Ford", bumping into and falling over things. While he will never be remembered as the most effective leader, it's interesting to see his presidency distilled into pratfalls. Near the end of that season, a new face emerged: Dan Aykroyd as "Jimmy Carter." The most memorable skit featuring "Jimmy wouldn't appear until the next season, with Bill Murray as "Walter Cronkite, in which Aykroyd/Carter takes calls on a phone-in show and eventually talks a kid down from a bad trip. Aykroyd was also a very scary "Dick Nixon" in his Final Days. Respectful? Hardly. Funny? You bet.
Now back to Barack: The "New Yorker" cover is certainly over the top. It is obviously intended to "Make Us Think." On that level, it succeeds. But is it funny? I just got my Obama shirt in the mail, so I am probably not best qualified to make this judgment. New Yorker editor David Remnick says, "Our cover 'The Politics of Fear' combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are." Distortions yes. Obvious? Only time will tell. When somebody starts shouting "tasteless and offensive," I confess my first reaction is to take a second look.
A couple of weeks ago, Jon Stewart was in the middle of a bit about Obama, and he reacted to the hushed response he was getting: "You're allowed to laugh at him, you know," he reminded us. Even though I may flinch, I hope he's right.