I was born & raised in New York. We were regular subscribers to Life Magazine, Look, The Saturday Evening Post and Readers' Digest. It is becoming clear to me now why my family never subscribed to the New Yorker. In my mind, there is a spectrum of "taste" where humor can be blended with tasteful parody. Tasteful parody can be blended to become satire, to biting satire to tasteless. Then on the far end of the spectrum is dumb. Dumb which is worsened by prejudice, terrorism, disrespect, fear and other negative actions and emotions.
This brings us to the cover of the current New Yorker. It has everything! It depicts Obama in a turban, fist-bumping his gun-slinging wife. An American flag is burning in their fireplace. The New Yorker says it's satire. At first, Obama said nothing abour the picture. Then, his spokesman, Bill Burton said in a statement: “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. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree." John McCain is also in agreement. HEY, it took the New Yorker to get these two guys to agree on something!
