furrbear | Why The New Yorker Cover Fails as Satire

Guest-blogger and political satirist Austin Cline has an excellent post up over at Jesus' General explaining why the recent The New Yorker cover fails as satire. It's worth a read.

This Satire Intentionally Left Understated

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Comedy is serious business. There are many reasons why, not the least of which is the fact that when you fail, the results are far worse than when you are insufficiently dramatic. Failed comedy is painful at best and can often be offensive because good comedy typically nudges at the boundaries of what people typically find acceptable or appropriate. This is why the debate over the New Yorker cover isn't just a tempest in a tea pot, but rather touches upon a lot of serious issues which do deserve some consideration. Given what I do here, I could hardly let it pass by without comment, could I?

A lot of different people have weighed in on this, but I find the ideas from Tom-Tom to be the best: Tom Tomorrow and Tom the Dancing Bug (Dan Perkins and Ruben Bolling, respectively, but Dan-Ruben doesn't sound nearly so catchy, does it?). They disagree with each other, yet I think that both of their positions are worth reading.