Of course America doesn't get it

Satire is in the eyes of those who get it.

I am not going to say I'm a regular New Yorker reader. I get junk mail asking me to subscribe but I just can't justify adding yet another magazine to my bathroom reading list.

But I read it enough to know where it's coming from. It's on the tabletops of my more affluent and well-read friends. I know it serves a small, niche demographic. It serves an small, educated and elitist (gasp) group of readers.

For the most part, the contents of The New Yorker are overlooked by the vast mass who are content with their gossip rags and just-on-the-surface news, which at times includes me.

So it doesn't surprise me at all that a lot of people are having a knee-jerk reaction to this week's cover.

Instead of attacking Obama and his wife, the cover and article attack their critics who portray the Obamas as anti-American Muslim fundamentalists.

Satire does come with its pitfalls. If people don't see the joke, they take the comment at face value. Though many are quick to condemn the cover, I wonder how many even know the the title of the accompanying article (“The Politics of Fear”)?

People who just look at the cover without looking inside to read the context of the drawing are simply morons. For the people who think assume Obama is a Muslim and if this cover confirms those misguided views, then I'm sorry but they are ignorant idiots and no argument from the other side will change that.

The only mistake The New Yorker made was being too witty for its own good and thinking more than its core readers would understand satire.