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Taint funny! There are two audiences for the New Yorker magazine -- exiles
from the so-called Big Apple and new immigrants who have moved into it. The
former are people who used to live in New York and have had to move out of
it, either across the Hudson River or the East River or the Narrows and are
desperate to stay in touch with the politically and culturally correct
fashions from Manhattan Island. The latter are the hayseeds who have moved
onto the island and do not want to be perceived as hayseeds. Either way,
they are snobs. Despite its occasional excellent journalism, its
mean-spirited cartoons and turgid short stories are aimed at snobs who want
to imagine that they are au courant in the mores of The Island. There is no valid reason places like Brooklyn or Queens, filled with bona fide, certified Mercans, should be constrained to be part of New York City. Brooklyn should have seceded long ago. It is a distinctive and often lovely city with its own culture and traditions -- the charming Brooklyn accent, for example, which still survives, is a remnant of the Irish-speaking immigrants who settled there in the first half of the 19th century. |
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The movement of the much-traveled New York Nets to Brooklyn will not, alas, reconstitute the fading Brooklyn identity, not unless they are able to claim their proper title of the Dodgers or even the beloved nickname of Da Bums. Yet, the racism of the New Yorker cover cartoon depicting an Obama White House as a jihadist cell should be enough to justify immediate secession. The Manhattan cultural ethic justifies such blatant Republican propaganda on the grounds that it is only a joke, a caricature, a satire, and in fact so absurd that it is clearly intended as comedy. Thus David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, does not feel constrained to apologize. It was a joke, Mr. Remnick, who ought to know better, insists with a hollow laugh. You stupid auslanders didn't get it. |
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Those two other Manhattan establishment sheets -- the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal -- promptly joined the off-key chorus of Manhattanism. Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Staten Island should come together in confederacy, occupy Jones Beach and the Statue of Liberty, seize control of all the police stations and establish customs stations at all bridges and tunnels. As my friend John Lane, an exile from New York (well, Syracuse) put it, the Republicans don't have to "Swift boat" Barack. The New Yorker did it for them. Suppose there were a Jewish Democrat running for president. Suppose there were the usual reappearance of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Suppose the blogosphere produced the usual bigotry about dishonest Jewish businessmen. Suppose there were broad hints that the Mossad had infiltrated the campaign. Suppose that the presumptive first family kept kosher. Suppose (phony) data were collected to prove that most of the campaign staff went to synagogue every week. Suppose that there were rumors about the business practices of the Jews who held key positions on the staff and reports about investigations of charges against them. Suppose there were articles from Tel Aviv papers about how Israelis were counting on automatic support of the prospective new administration in conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah. Then, let us say, the New Yorker created a satirical cartoon about a kosher White House with stereotypical Jewish types living there, an American flag in the fireplace and an Israeli flag tacked to the wall. Who would be laughing then? Would David Remnick argue that it was only a joke? To anyone who complains about this column -- I'm only joking. |
 A Stupid, Unjust, And Criminal War: Iraq 2001-2007 Father Greeley calls to task those who justified, planned and executed the war and reminds us that God weeps at the destruction of war, whether lives lost are ‘ours’ or ‘theirs.’  Order
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