Almost everyone except for the people who work at The New Yorker seems to have grasped that, whether intended as satire or not, the effect of the cover image is disastrous for the Obama campaign.  The timing might have been worse, but not by much, since Obama is getting ready to go on his trip out of the country.  The image is the most complete expression of the inexplicable desire of Obama supporters to “help” the candidate by portraying him in what are actually the most unflattering and politically damaging ways possible while simultaneously believing that they are pre-emptively defending and praising the things they are describing.  This cover image is slightly different, in that it is trying to undermine the worst attacks by revealing them to be nonsensical caricatures, but nonetheless the artist seems incapable of imagining that there are many voters, particularly those who don’t know that much about Obama, who will see this image flashed on their television screens or attached to chain e-mails and think, “I knew there was something about that Obama I didn’t like, and now I see what it is!”  No doubt many Obama supporters thinks this gives a lot of voters too little credit, but they have been giving them too much for a long time.  Besides, this isn’t just a question of voter savviness–the power of suggestion can be great, and in a tightly contested race, in which the challenger has not yet won the confidence of a majority of voters, any lingering doubts that prevent people from supporting the challenger could be decisive.  The less informed undecided voters are, the more susceptible they will be to such an image, which will plant seeds of doubt where there might have been none before. 

In an era of instant, mass communication, the image will be, indeed already has been, circulated widely and will gradually lose whatever “ironic” edge it once had.  That the image derived from a New Yorker cover and was intended for an audience of high-information, predominantly left-leaning voters who already support Obama will be irrelevant or will add to the “credibility” of what the image conveys. Then the word will go forth in forwarded emails everywhere: “Even The New Yorker thinks Obama is a secret Muslim, etc…”      

The artist, Barry Blitt, takes for granted that the portrayal of the Obamas he is ridiculing is self-evidently absurd, which is the essential failure of imagination that accompanies every one of these episodes of some starry-eyed friend of Obama “helping” the candidate.  While casually mentioning how many foreign relatives he has, his purported greater understanding of the Islamic world and how very excited many Arabs are that he may be elected, the “helpers” seem to be unable to imagine how these same claims–to say nothing of the more bizarre fantasies built on top of them–would inspire dislike and hostility in many voting constituencies.  They seem to conclude that because they find such a reaction to be wrong and misguided that it will not be significant, which makes no sense.  They also seem to have made the strange judgement that just because a candidate is being attacked in wildly contradictory and irrational ways that the attacks can easily be offset by showing how irrational and contradictory they are, which misses the point that they are irrational.

P.S.  This entire episode reminds me of the art school subplot in Ghost World with The New Yorker in the role of the art teacher promoting an art project that “ironically” uses blatant racial stereotypes.  Had the editors at the magazine been more attentive Steve Buscemi fans, they would have seen the problem with using the image.

Update: Sullivan says that “the notion that most Americans are incapable of seeing that [it is satire] strikes me as excessively paranoid and a little condescending,” but it is not so much a question of capability as it is one of willingness.  Some people will see it as a confirmation of what they already believe or suspect, others will “get” it but still find it outrageous, and still others may understand that the intent was satire but will still come away with the impression that there could be some element of truth to the stereotyping.  The fairly small number who just laugh at it and think that it skewers smear artists will not begin to offset the number of people who will either take offense or take the image all together too seriously.