More reason for B.O. to lighten up over New Yorker

Timothy Egan shows Montanans get satire, even snooty elitist satire from the cover of The New Yorker.

In fact, rather than arguing that The New Yorker is elitist, I can wrong-foot Obamiacs, especially of the “Stuff White People Like” crowd, and argue that they’re the ones being condescending to people in the heartland.

“Poor, poor Montanans. I’m sorry that you wouldn’t understand the intellectual satire level of The New Yorker.”

Kamiya says get over the New Yorker cover

I agree with Gary Kamiya’s assessment of the brouhaha behind The New Yorker’s Obama cover. His lede says it perfectly:

It’s official: The Bush era has made liberals so terrified of right-wing smears it has caused them to completely lose their sense of humor.

Another way to phrase it might be that this is political correctness at Warp 2.

And, if the lede isn’t good enough, add graf 3:

I don't know what lugubrious planet these people are on, but I definitely don't want any of them writing material for Jon Stewart.

Kamiya says there’s a bigger problem behind this:

Since the essence of satire is exaggerating negative stereotypes, this means that satire itself is off limits.

Kamiya then takes “liberal” bloggers to the woodshed, starting with the well-deserving Atrios, who has probably used the mag cover as a chance to throw an f-bomb or two and call people wankers. Beyond that, he calls the general reaction to the cover as “Manichean.”