the Common Place

By now, I suppose everyone* has seen and formed an opinion about Barry Blitt’s illustration for the July 21 New Yorker cover:

No one really disputes that it is only a slightly exaggerated depiction of the way some Americans view the Obamas. But people who think it is a Bad Thing are worried that it reinforces and perpetuates the outrageous claims it attempts to satirize.

Chris at the Underverse reviews a particular tin-eared critique of the cover by Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, a Harvard psych professor:

… it’s not hard to detect a note of fear-mongering (no doubt unconscious) in Banaji’s words, which conjure themes of infiltration, hidden intrigue, contamination, and subterfuge, bracingly reminiscent of just about every fear campaign ever run. Her implicit argument, then, is that human nature demands that we purify our information stream to keep out harmful imagery, which, once loosened, can never be eradicated. This, I confess, suggests a branch of psychology that is unknown to me. At one point she goes as far as to state that any imagery we are exposed to, under any conditions, is fairly compared to Pavlovian conditioning:

Learning by association is so basic a mechanism that living beings are jam-packed with it — ask any dog the next time you see it salivating to a tone of a bell.

If only we had a cultural weapon against this mechanism, something that could subvert the meanings of these associations by calling close and precise attention to them. But such is not our fortune, alas.

I commented glibly that my reaction to the cartoon was “Wouldn’t it be cool if Obama really did have a hidden agenda to undermine the American empire?” I had the same reaction when Hillary was described as a dangerous radical feminist bent on forcing us into socialized medicine: if only!

(Here I must clarify that my first impression of the cartoon zoomed in on the depiction of Michelle as a black revolutionary complete with Angela Davis ‘do, machine gun, and combat boots, rather than the portrayal of Barack as a fundamentalist madrasseh grad. So my comment doesn’t really reflect sympathies with radical Islam but rather my persistent 1960’s nostalgia complex.)

Arnold Zwicky at Language Log comes down on the side of the cover as Bad Thing, but his problem is more specific, and I think, more justified than Dr. Banaji’s. It centers precisely on the gesture that unites the black revolutionary and the Islamic radical in the cartoon:

In the cover, the fist bump is presented along with clear signifiers of anti-Americanism, Muslim identity, and terrorism, suggesting that it is another such signifier. That’s just wrong, and presenting the gesture this way is pernicious. The primary social-group signification of the gesture is, or at least was, “African-American”, and it’s never been associated with either Islam or terrorism, so that linking the gesture to anti-Americanism and terrorism (and, via another link, to Islam) promotes a (groundless) slur on African-Americans. I’m sure this is not what the New Yorker intended — quite the contrary, in fact — but its depiction of several signifiers together encourages this interpretation, and so advances a slur on African-Americans as treacherous anti-Americans.

Of course, it wasn’t Blitt’s cartoon that first made the association between an innocent gesture of greeting/congratulation with terrorism. That distinction apparently belongs to a commenter on Human Events, a right wing site. (Behold the power of the blog commenter!)

It was then picked up by the host of Fox News’ America’s Pulse:

…host E.D. Hill teased an upcoming discussion by saying, “A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently.”

[Read the transcript on Media Matters]

Zwicky’s point, then, is not that the cartoon viewers will have the image of the Obamas as jihadis implacably seared in their brains. He grants that most people will get that the cartoon is a satire of “sleazy slurs on the Obamas.” No, what bothers him is that the fist-bump - culturally specific to African-Americans but innocent of political or terrorist associations - will be taken at face value as “just another signifier of Islam, terrorism, or anti-Americanism.”

That’s rather charitable to the many Americans for whom “America” means “white America. ” (After all, there weren’t any black characters in “Little House on the Prairie ” or “Davy Crockett” were there?) To those voters anything specifically “black” about the Obamas is as threatening as the sound of Barack’s middle name. The well known terrorist news network , Al Jazeera, interviewed some of these voters back in May. The key to their attitude is expressed by the guy at 2:02 in the video:

It is a race problem… the white people have put the Negroes at the back of the bus for years, and if we’re not careful, we’re going to be at the back of the bus and they’re going to be in the front.

I think this is a fear shared by many who would not be so forthright in expressing it as this Kentuckian. But it won’t stop them from flinging all the mud they can at the Obamas, especially Michelle, I fear. Already she’s been portrayed as next door to a Black Panther for writing honestly about her experiences as African-American on an Ivy League campus.
Finally, here’s another example of satirizing an attitude by pretending to espouse it - Hayes Carll singing She Left Me For Jesus:

She left me for Jesus and that just ain’t fair
She says that he’s perfect, how could I compare
She says I should find him and I’ll know peace at last
If I ever find Jesus I’m kickin’ his ass

She showed me a picture; all I could do was stare
At that freak in his sandals with his long pretty hair
They must think that I’m stupid or I don’t have a clue
I’ll bet he’s a commie, or even worse yet, a Jew

She’s given up whiskey and ah taken up wine
While she prays for his troubles she’s forgot about mine
I’m a gonna get even, I can’t handle the shame
Why last time we made love she even called out his name

Now, how could a true lover of Jesus possibly be offended by this? You’d have to be a prude, or be offended by the idea that Jesus had a kickable ass - which is funny if you take seriously the whole point of incarnation.

But I’m sure the petty umbrage-takers who pass for his followers these days will summon up some outrage for Mr. Carll.

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*Except my dad in Omaha, because I asked him last night. I asked because in the ordinary course of events, it’s highly unlikely that he would ever see a New Yorker cover. Indeed the whole tradition of the New Yorker cover has never penetrated into my parent’s world. The very name of the magazine implies, to them, “people who are likely to despise us.”