Everyone's agog over the New Yorker cover which depicts the biggest smears against the Obamas. I was holding off from writing about it on the blog until I got my copy so I could see the title of the piece, which is "The Politics of Fear." As such, the cover isn't as tasteless as it first appeared. It's just stupid. Or, to put a specific term to it, it is a botched joke. And like other recent botched jokes (cf. John Kerry in 2006, Don Imus, or even Michael Richards) the fact that you WANTED to be funny, doesn't exonerate you from actually not being funny.
A botched joke isn't bad, many comedians suffer through them, but when the subject of the joke is a taboo (Kerry: Democrats talking about soldiers; Imus & Richards: whites about blacks), then the botched-ness shows a maladroitness in not only delivery but in judgement. Taboo humor is like live ammunition. Leave it to the professionals.
Speaking of professionals, compare the cover of the New Yorker to Jib-Jab's latest on the campaign (from Slate). Jib-Jab goes even further into taboo territory than the NYer, but because its so skillfully done, the jokes work:
Pic nicked from gawker.
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