What’s So Funny ’Bout Fist Bumps and Barack Obama?
Thursday, July 17th, 2008 by Jon Cummings
For four days now, the left side of the electorate has been scratching its collective head and asking itself, “Why don’t I think this is funny?” Of course, “this” is the cover of the current issue of the New Yorker; it has inspired all manner of hand-wringing and tsk-tsking – as well as a series of progressively more desperate attempts by the man who green-lit the gag, New Yorker editor David Remnick, to scream to the masses, “Would you people just lighten up?”
One general theme of the criticism is the fear that while the cartoon clearly was intended as satire, it might be “read” as true by a certain unsavory slice of the populace. This view is summed up in a cartoon by the Washington Post’s Tom Toles:
Another suggestion, particularly among lefties, is that the New Yorker has offended its target audience because it published an image that eventually might have been dreamed up anyway – by a magazine that caters to Obama haters rather than his likely constituents. Some have noted that they wouldn’t have been surprised to see such a cartoon, stripped of any ironic context, on the cover of National Review. Cartoonist David Horsey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has lampooned such literalism, imagining a liberal’s fantasy of how National Review could offend its own audience:
Speaking for myself, my soul-searching over the New Yorker cartoon is directed in part toward my own insecurities. To wit: If New Yorker readers are supposed to find this cartoon wryly witty, yet I don’t find it all that funny, then what’s wrong with me? Am I not erudite enough, not sophisticated enough? Shouldn’t I just, you know, lighten up?
Admittedly, such a sentiment could easily be applied to Obama supporters in general, who have proven extraordinarily touchy about jokes made at his expense. (It’s not for nothin’ that Jon Stewart recently felt the need to admonish his audience, after one gag had fallen flat, “You know, you’re allowed to laugh at him.”) Indeed, it seems the only acceptable witticisms are ones that make fun of his perceived purity and repetitive message, as in the latest JibJab animation released yesterday.
l will posit, however, that there are plenty of reasons to find the New Yorker cover more distasteful than side-splitting – and they aren’t all as simple as those noted above.
Let’s face it, liberals have had it up to here with the caricatures perpetrated by the right – particularly the ruse that we and our leaders are somehow “anti-American,” which the New Yorker cover is satirizing. Of course, we have our own unfortunate ideas that feed into our response: namely, that too many Americans are gullible enough to believe any ridiculous notion the right wing feeds them (such as “Obama’s secretly a Muslim”), and that conservative opinion leaders are a nasty bunch of fuckers who rely on lies, fear, and name-calling (i.e., labeling John Edwards a “faggot,” or using the phrase “terrorist fist jab” during a supposed newscast) to perpetuate an agenda that couldn’t win an election otherwise.
Sadly, recent surveys suggest that the gullibility concern, at least, has some merit: According to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, one in eight Americans still believes Obama is a Muslim. Is it possible that 13 percent of the public are such “low information seekers,” to use a currently popular phrase, that their “knowledge” on this matter is limited to one of those disgusting e-mail chain letters? I’d argue that that’s not possible, and that a vast majority of those 13 percent are folks who have simply chosen to believe a falsehood despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The wise-ass liberal response to that last sentence is, “Of course! They’re Republicans.” While this, too, is a caricature, it is difficult to ignore the extent to which the concept of “truth” has become more malleable over the last eight years — from “There is, in fact, an operational relationship” to “We do not torture” to “The science is still unclear” and beyond. One day, I promise, our descendants will marvel that there was an era in which such a phrase as “reality-based” came into widespread usage – and that members of one political party would use that phrase without irony to dismiss the arguments of the other.
Sure, the number of Americans who subscribe to the Bush administration’s “alternate reality” seems to have shrunk precipitously over the last two years. But who’s to say that some significant portion of the electorate won’t get fooled again, and allow themselves to be persuaded that the Obamas are, if not secret terrorists, then at least fifth-columnists who don’t have the nation’s interests at heart? (If Obama is elected, can Fox News rise above its temptation to continue trumpeting such innuendo about a sitting president?) The New Yorker cartoon, despite its stated intentions, doesn’t help deflate that possibility.
To say that the cartoon is not funny because it bears “the ring of truth” is patently absurd. Yet to say it falls flat because it bears “the ring of truthiness” is not only absurd, it’s accurate.
Of course, humor often is a temporal phenomenon; as Carol Burnett (and, later, Alan Alda in Crimes and Misdemeanors) famously said, “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” Depending on how things work out, there’s a pretty strong chance that on November 5, a lot of people who currently are not amused will suddenly find that New Yorker cover downright hilarious. And that, too, may be part of the problem.
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If anybody are "motherfuckers", it is Fox News, especially Shaun Hannity!!!
I think it's a low-blow, but am a staunch free speech defender so they have every right to do it. That said, anyone who thinks Obama will win in Nov. is dreaming. Wake up folks, America is still far too racist to elect a black man (or even a half black man). Remember, 21% of DEMOCRATS who voted in the Kentucky primary said race was a factor - 80% of whom of course voted for Hillary. And oh yeah, Hillary killed Obama in KY long after she had no mathematical chance of winning. These were Democrats folks, and they already knew Hillary could not win. And remember, these are only the ones who are admitting it and have no problem admitting that they won't vote for a black man. There are many others who are no doubt lying by saying they'll vote for Obama but won't in Nov. so they won't be seen as racist. As I'm sure the informed readers of this blog will know this phenomenon is called the Bradley effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect and I guarantee it'll be a big factor in November. In West Virginia it was similar - 59 percent of Clinton voters in West Virginia said that if Obama won (which was a mathematical certainty on the day of the primary, May 13th) they would either vote for McCain or not vote in November. You'd be awfully naive to think race wasn't a factor in a large percentage of those 59%.
Racism is still far too prevalent in America for Obama to win. And if you think it's just the Republicans who tend to be racist you're blind. Obama will lose Kentucky and West Virginia and many other states with large working-class rural populations that tend to vote Dem, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why.
Bookmark this post and revisit in November and you'll see that I called it.
Steve, that's only because you're just another Redneck Republican! Anyone who thinks that Senator Comb-over McBush would EVER BECOME PRESIDENT is not dreaming, they are halluinogenic!!!! Obama is an intellectual, where is something that George W. Bush, not to mention his olD crony, MCbush, would know nothing about! Little Dubya was cheerleading at Yale (which he entered only because of political ties, such as they are; LOL!) when Obama was "hitting the books". Bush is nothing more than another Republican Dumb-Ass, just as John McCain is; thus, the current state of the American economy, which shall become Bush's legacy for our grandchildren to read about in their history books! I love it! Both of these imbeciles are of the utmost incompetence, and certainly didn't have, and does not have, the makings of presidential material. McCain will never become President of these United States; that's for certain, and you can take that to the bank!
Five bucks says you're wrong.
... Then again, this is eerily similar to my "America is still far too smart to elect an idiot (or even a half idiot) twice."
If I can laugh at Saturday Night Live's depiction of W, and I do (especially the early days when Will Ferrell was playing the part), there's no reason Democrats can't laugh at this cartoon. I thought it was Muslims who get upset over cartoons -- and that's a very truthy observation.
I don't see any grand scheme behind this, other than publicity for The New Yorker mag, of which I am a regular reader. But it does strike me as a giant distraction. When the press asked McCain about the cartoon, instead of denouncing it, I think he should have said that he'd respond to a real issue if asked, but not cartoon issues.
By the way, the science IS still unclear. Do a column on climate change someday, and I will cite you chapter and verse of the IPCC reports, demonstrating how their evidence and conclusions do not join up seamlessly. Interestingly, the American Physical Society just this week joined the CO2 skeptics camp. The truth will out, the emperor's nakedness will belatedly be recognized. Or is that Al Gore's nakedness? The word "consensus" these days makes me laugh almost as much as the New Yorker cartoon.
This statement tops the American Physical Society's website as of five minutes ago: "The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007: 'Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate.' An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that 'Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum.' This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed."
As for the "chapter and verse" you intend to cite concerning the IPCC report, I invite all readers to take a look at this page from the American Metorological Society's ClimatePolicy website: http://www.climatepolicy.org/?p=20. It discusses the danger of "cherry picking" a few articles among the many thousands that have been written on climate change--particularly a single article that claims to refute every point within a report like the IPCC's, which collects the observations of a huge selection of scientists. (I assume that's the single article you're carrying around in your back pocket.) The money quote: "This type of cherry picking isn’t very effective for arguments within the research community because scientists draw on the larger body of knowledge when assessing the merit of individual papers or the arguments that rest upon them. Cherry picking can be highly effective in misleading non-experts such as politicians, journalists, and the public, however."
By the way, thanks for comparing Democrats to Muslims, this time because we supposedly can't take a cartoon joke. Methinks you just proved my point.
"By the way, thanks for comparing Democrats to Muslims, this time because we supposedly can't take a cartoon joke. Methinks you just proved my point."
No, it was just irony. The sophisticated can spot the difference.
Also to clarify, I have not read the new article on the APS website. That is not the source of my skepticism.
I think the general problem is most easily seen on page four of the 2007 IPCC Summary For Policymakers, in Figure SPM-2. In this chart, we see eight anthropogenic factors which are claimed to affect post-industrial radiative forcing. For five of those eight factors, even the IPCC claims our level of scientific understanding is low to medium. They only claim "high" level of scientific understanding for two factors -- CO2 and other long-lived "greenhouse" gases.
It is not logical to claim certainty about the cause of warming when their understanding of five or six out of eight important factors is, by their own admission, low to medium. That's an easy, rational deduction to make. I don't see any way around it. You can't make predictions with a computer model where 75% of your inputs are not well-understood. Period.
In fact at the bottom of the figure, we find that their estimate of the anthropogenic contribution to warming varies from 0.6 to 2.4 watts/square meter. From the low end to the high end, that's a variance of a factor of four! If they really can't be more certain than that then frankly I wouldn't bet a dime on their predictions. And neither should anyone else in their right minds.
In addition, Nature published on their website an article showing the current models' inability to account for temperature fluctuations like the warm period prior to the 1940s. In addition, they noted that you have to reduce the confidence level to 90% to make the model fit the temperature records of the rest of the last century.
The IPCC and the "consensus" are stumbling around in the dark, claiming to have a candle. They don't. Thinking people, people who will look at the breadth of evidence, are not fooled. I hope you won't be either.
Where to begin? How about with this: Do we heed the overwhelmingly conclusive report of a scientific intergovernmental body set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)--a report based on the work of thousands of professional climatologists around the globe, and a report which, by the way, was so powerful that the IPCC was given the Nobel Peace Prize? Or do we give equal weight to the denials of some guy named Eric (or George, or Dick...) who either failed to cite the sources that led him to such skepticism, or else pulled all of the above out of his ass?
I encourage all readers to examine the IPCC report. The Summary for Policymakers that Eric trashes--available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/sy... high to very high levels of certainty regarding its major conclusions, which are frightening. The degrees of uncertainty that Eric cites are actually to be found in the main report (available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/sy...), in Figure 2.4 on page 39. When you look at that chart you'll see that the "anthropogenic factors" Eric is trumping up, because of the "low scientific understanding" related to them, are having a minuscule impact on global temperatures compared to the greenhouse gases about which these thousands of scientists have a high level of understanding.
In other words, Eric, you're pulling one smidgen of uncertainty out of a report that includes thousands of pieces of data about which 99 percent of the world's climate scientists agree, and trying to undercut the report's entire achievement because of it. THAT IS LUDICROUS. Talk about cherry picking!
What, do you think these scientists were paid by Al Gore or the Democratic Party to make this stuff up so that Detroit would have to make plug-in hybrids, and we could bankrupt the utility companies by forcing them to develop renewable energy sources?
One more quote from the AMS website: "Groups of scientists rarely sit around agreeing with each other. Rather they voice their own views independently. These are individuals who often have different experiences and who come from a wide range of research areas....Professional credibility for scientists rests on being accurate. By presenting a skewed or indefensible picture of what is known, a scientist would lose credibility and potentially suffer serious professional consequences."
So please, stop making me cackle with your phrases about how "thinking people are not fooled" and "anyone in their right minds" is not heeding the IPCC's predictions. You may choose to continue living in your fantasyland, but if you succeed in delaying the implementation of real solutions for global warming much longer, your fantasyland will become more and more uninhabitable along with our "reality-based" world.
As for your bit of "irony": yes, the sophisticated can see the difference, but too many people have proven conclusively that they AREN'T that sophisticated, and your party has made a science out of preying on their worst instincts and fears. So congratulations.
You just can't wrap your mind around the inescapable logic: We cannot be uncertain about many of the important variables in a climate model and then claim virtual iron-clad certainty about the final result. It is impossible. It makes no sense. This is not a "smidgen of uncertainty," it is a big dose of what appears to me as dishonesty, because I am certain the people who put together the report are not idiots. They seem to be deliberately misrepresenting the certainty of their claims.
(Schwartz, Charlson, and Rhode are a bit more charitable in their Nature Reports commentary, "Quantifying Climate Change: Too Rosy A Picture?." www.nature.com/reports/climatechange But they note the same thing I pointed out -- when you add up all the obvious uncertainties, the end result is not certainty! Duh.)
You also apparently misunderstood the magnitude of the other factors. Look at the IPCC chart I referenced again. The combined cooling -- that's right, COOLING -- effects of surface albedo and aerosols is, by the IPCC's own estimate, about as great as the warming effect of CO2. In other words, man is producing cooling effects on the planet that may be near to counteracting the warming effects of CO2. Add them up. It's right there on the chart. You can't miss it. You don't need a degree in climate science to add.
A final point. While the American Physical Society may lack the testicular capacity to man up and actually admit the uncertainty and bad IPCC science to which I have referred, they have clearly opened the floor for debate. One does not open for debate a scientific topic on which there is nothing to debate. Obviously they feel there is room for legitimate disagreement. They stated as much in the editor's comments to the July 2008 Physics & Society newsletter: "There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion."
The editor does not dismiss or ridicule or belittle or question the motives of those who are skeptical. He simply admits a fact: there is a considerable presence -- considerable, not a lunatic fringe -- within the scientific community who disagree with the IPCC's conclusions. This being legitimately debatable, and very important for public policy, the doors are opened for debate.
Al Gore is wrong. The debate is not over. More scientists join the ranks of the skeptics every day. They will not go away quietly. There's too much at stake.
As for me, I will now go quietly. I've presented ample evidence here for anyone interested in open-minded inquiry to look at and decide for themselves, to begin a search for the truth about the global warming camp's phony iron-clad assurances. It is those who believe in conclusions based on half-baked climate models that are living in fantasyland, not those like myself who have taken the trouble to peruse the real historical data on CO2 versus temperature, for example.
Although you disagree, I thank you for listening, and taking the trouble to look at the chart. I am the enemy of bad ideas, not the people who believe in them. :)
Eric, I recognize that no minds are going to change here, but I continue to find the hubris of climate-change deniers absolutely infuriating. Your motivations for saying that thousands of scientists are "deliberately misrepresenting" their confidence in the results of their research completely escapes me.
What are you after here? What are your goals? Who or what are you protecting--the profits of big business? The business models of the oil and power companies? Because you are goddamn sure not looking after the interests of the human race or the rest of the living species on this planet.
There are economic, environmental and political crises brewing in this country and around the world, all of which point to the absolute necessity of getting us off our addiction to fossil fuels. You are obstructing that process through sheer obstinence. At what cost?
You have presented nothing but a Christian-Science, head-in-the-sand--and worst, ideologically motivated denial of millions of hours of professional scientific work, and a buttheaded refusal to act upon the clear-cut results.
Your cockamamie "evidence" is pure nothingness that vanishes upon the slightest examination. Again I ask, to what end? Whose interests are you looking out for? And to how many billions of people (and other living things) will you need to apologize if your foolishness results in action not being taken in time?
I will never "go quietly" on this issue. Far too much is at stake, and--apparently--too much of a fight left to be fought just to get to the work at hand.
Fortunately, this argument just goes to show why some things--particularly the alternate reality created by conservatives over the last decade--just aren't funny anymore.
"Because you are goddamn sure not looking after the interests of the human race or the rest of the living species on this planet."
That is precisely my motivation, for the reasons Michael Crichton presents in his speech "Aliens Cause Global Warming."
Perhaps at a future time I will explain this more thoroughly. I honestly believe the side effects of the actions people like Gore want us to take will be worse for most of humanity than doing nothing. Even if Gore is right about the cause of warming, I do not believe his solutions are the proper ones to take.
I am one of those people who "gets it," and in fact I think it's a pretty powerful satirical statement. I am also a strong Obama backer, and very active in his campaign. I was worried about those "low information seekers" though. But your point about those people choosing to believe a falsehood, as opposed to be swaying by the cartoon, made me re-think it. I no longer have a problem with it, and I think it's a pretty strong statement.
That's the thing with me: I get it as well and I am an Obama supporter too (insofar as I'm not a McCain supporter) but I put my feet in an editor-in-chief's shoes and wonder how, even if the satire is crystal clear, I could let that picture run knowing instantly what will come of it. Guess I'm too much the company man on that front.
Still stand on my original premise: they could have sent that point with a far less heated graphic.
It goes back to the question of taste and judgment versus the press' right to say as they editorially choose. Sometimes, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Ask the Mohammad cartoonist, the papers that ran it and the subsequent insanity.
If it was Remnick trying to cast the New Yorker as a less stodgy magazine and more (God save me for uttering it) in-your-face, mission accomplished. A lot of people got that image in their face and were offended big time. The New Yorker is going to be dogged for this for a long time to come, I think, and the magazine's subscription as an NPR pledge premium is probably off the table at the next drive...
And what is supposedly being satirically skewed here could have been done a myriad of other ways... Too bad they chose this one.