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Obama calls New Yorker cover tasteless, offensive
Magazine says it was meant to be satire of criticism
AP Photo
This illustration provided by The New Yorker shows Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim and his wife, Michelle, dressed as a terrorist.
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Published: July 15, 2008
WASHINGTON
The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said yesterday that a satirical New Yorker magazine cover showing him dressed as a Muslim and his wife as a terrorist is "tasteless and offensive."
The illustration on the issue that reached newsstands yesterday, titled "The Politics of Fear" and drawn by Barry Blitt, depicts Barack Obama wearing sandals, robe and a turban, and his wife, Michelle, dressed in camouflage, combat boots and an assault rifle strapped over her shoulder -- standing in the Oval Office.
The couple are doing a fist tap in front of a fireplace in which an American flag is burning. Over the mantel hangs a portrait of Osama bin Laden.
"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," said Bill Burton, an Obama campaign spokesman. "But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."
In a statement yesterday, the left-leaning magazine said that the cover "combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are."
"The burning flag, the nationalist-radical and Islamic outfits, the fist bump, the portrait on the wall? All of them echo one attack or another. Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that's the spirit of this cover," The New Yorker statement said.
The statement also referred to the two articles on Obama contained inside the magazine, calling them "very serious."
Republican presidential nominee John McCain said that the cover was "totally inappropriate, and frankly, I understand if Sen. Obama and his supporters would find it offensive."
Already, the cover is generating controversy on the Internet.
The Huffington Post, a left-leaning blog, said: "Anyone who's tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who's tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism -- well, here's your image."
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