Obama's Terrorist Cover Story Controversy

I wrote last night on New Yorker's cover satire of Barack and Michelle Obama outfitted as terrorist radicals, "The Elite-Radical Fist Bump from Heaven."

It turns out James Joyner's taken the pulse of the left blogosphere this morning, with his entry, "New Yorker Obama Terrorist Cover."

The liberal blogs are in a tizzy about the cover of the July 21 New Yorker, an illustration by Barry Blitt which shows the Obamas in terrorist outfits, doing a fist bump with a big portrait of Osama bin Laden over their mantle with an American flag burning in the fireplace...

Joyner charts the shifting reactions, from moderate amusement to outright indignation, although, frankly, the reaction among some seems more than a "tizzy." The folks at Daily Kos (there are literally dozens of diaries on this) are looking to retaliate against the New Yorker, and this comment really captures a sense of the outrage on the radical left:

This is an encouragement of every dark, racist, ignorant, and violent impulse that Obama's candidacy has inspired in the hearts of a presumably small number of Americans. Blitt and the New Yorker better pray every day that no act of violence is directed at Obama in this campaign. If it is, they will be culpable.

Where's the cover of Rice or Colin Powell as slaves, or of Lieberman and Haddasah as Hasidic JDL terrorists, or McCain as a Nazi flyer fire-bombing innocent Vietnamese children? Those actually have an element of truth to them. This does not.

The reference to "Blitt" is to Barry Blitt, the cover artist for the New Yorker.

But notice the intense right wing demonization in this comment: Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell are "slaves"? Joseph Lieberman and his wife are "JDL terrorists"? And John McCain's a "Nazi fire-bomber"?

I just briefly culled through the comments at Kos last night, and the one cited above is from "Long Tom," who's apparently a regular Kos diarist. One will no doubt find additional outrage in the various entries (at Kos and elsewhere), perhaps including some outright calls for violence against David Remnick or the Republicans.

In that case, would the folks at the Huffington Post demand a Secret Service investigation?

Stay tuned ... things are just getting warmed up, and there's still more than four months of campaigning left!

Related: See Protein Wisdom for a little of what's going on among conservative bloggers.