Today’s Daily Heller, the blog/e-blast by PRINT contributing editor and lead greyhound Steven Heller, addresses this week’s New Yorker cover (by Barry Blitt), which has been stirring up a little controversy. Why take things to such extremes? There’s a reason, as Steve writes:

This week’s New Yorker cover [pictured] by Barry Blitt is just that: A satirical commentary on all the slanderous rumors being dumped on Sen. Barack Obama.

Titled “The Politics of Fear,” the cover trenchantly attacks “the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama’s campaign,” according to a press release about the current issue.

But the Obama campaign (as well as that of Republican rival John McCain) slammed the cover as offensive[…]
…
In satire, however, context is everything–a delicate balance, to be sure. It must be pitch perfect, but not everyone need agree on whether it succeeds. Nonetheless, as a cover of The New Yorker, a magazine known for many covers, cartoons, and articles that “expose and discredit vice or folly,” it’s difficult to see this as anything other than what it is. And like the covers below, satire is designed to make readers question social, political, and cultural assumptions.

See the rest of Steve’s post for a handful of good examples from New Yorkers past. It was ever thus, or, as Carly Simon once sang, it’s coming around again. Election season is bound to produce a few more covers that jangle the carefully calibrated image making of both parties. Some may even twit the voters. We’ll live.

As for this the danger that a satirical image will instantaneously vaporize all life as we know it, not to mention the chances of our guy taking the White House, I’ll quote David Remnick out of context (he was talking with Folio, back in May, about the Democratic race): “The edifying parts of it I’m enjoying. The nonsense, the bullshit, the got-you things that mean nothing, are exhausting and meaningless, obviously.” Breathe: November’s still a few months away, and it’s going to be a bumpy ride.