What's wrong with the New Yorker cover?

Make no mistake: I am a near-absolutist when it comes to the First Amendment, and my devotion to that "inalienable" right grows even stronger when it comes to the arts. When it's literature, music, art, anything creative and expressive, I believe a person has full rights to write, draw, sing, dance or whatever it is they feel compelled to do. I do have a couple of cavaets, one of them sensible, which is you can't use "art" to tell lies about others. I'm talking about real lies, the kind whose only purpose is to hurt people for the sake of hurting them (the story about my father abusing me, when he did no such thing).

It's also good to avoid libel.

I think an artist, given the liberty he or she has to be expressive and creative, has concomitant responsiblities. I cannot define these, beyond the most obvious and necessary, which is, I believe, to be honest. I also believe a decent respect for other people is always a good idea. And it never hurts, I think, to be smart when tackling controversy. I don't mean smart as in "It's dumb to raise a stink about things." It's frequently necessary and good to raise stinks. No, I mean smart as in "Make sure the point you're seeking to make is not overwhelmed by the object you create to make that point." The apocryphal examples are the soiled diapers in the Tate Gallery and the jars of urine with crucifixes inside. In both cases, the artist had a valid point to make, and in both cases, the mode of expression tended to obliviate that point.

Which is, I think, the problem with the New Yorker cover.

The scope and nature of the lies about Obama — he's a Muslim, he's a Manchurian candidate, he never says the Pledge, bla bla bla — these lies not only need to be debunked; those who spread them need to be mocked and chastised. These are flat-out lies and there are people who know better who are working hard to spread them to the pea-brain crowd who are looking for a reason to not vote for Obama that isn't "he's a darkie." Imagine if Dems were circulating stories about McCain collaborating with his Vietnamese captors: that would be the same level of heinous intent. The perpetrators of these smears deserved to be mocked on the cover of the New Yorker (however small the readership thereof might be).

But that's not what the cover does. It takes the smears and turns them into a cute cartoon. A joke. An affirmation of the smears. There is nothing in the illustration that turns the lies around at those who are spreading them. There is nothing that takes what is obvious in the drawing and turns it back against the liars. The artist simply expects those who see it to go, "Ah yes, Satire. Droll." And if someone takes offense at the characterization — and this guy put a lot of work into getting as many of the lies into this picture as possible, including a portrait of bin Laden in the Oval Office above the burning flag &dmash; then, well, that person just doesn't get Satire As The New Yorker Does It.

Art, and especially political art, is not merely useless when it fails to actually convey its meaning: it's destructive. What makes something like "This land is your land" so effective is that it's both a very singable song and the lyrics are simple, strong, evocative. Bruce Springsteen and Bruce Cockburn do great political music not only because the lyrics are excellent but because both write great music. "East of Eden" is a wonderful piece of literature. "The Manchurian Candidate" is thrilling cinema. Colbert and Stewart are not merely insightful; they're hilarious.

The New Yorker cover was an excellent drawing, but fails because what it just does not illustrate the point the artist says he was trying to make. It very nicely illustrates all the lies about Obama. It says absolutely nothing about those spreading the lies.

A nice drawing of the wrong person.