Fear has become a mainstay in American Politics. Fear has become the political device that has divided the American People. According to poles, We the People are split right down the middle and we are frightened. The latest cover of the New Yorker tries to make light of the fear tactics used to sway voters with a cover cartoon that was suppose to lampoon Barack Obama and the false fears generated by his detractors. The image on the current cover shows Barack and his wife fist bumping in front a fireplace with an American Flag burning and with a picture of Osama Bin Laden hanging over the mantel. Mrs. Obama is dressed like a Black Militant with an AK-47 slung over her shoulder, Mr. Obama is dressed in a tunic with a turban, and the two are shown bumping fists in a sign of unity. The New Yorker argument goes as follows. The sophisticated reader will understand that the cartoon is a joke, and educated reader will understand the intention of the image to poke fun at the Fear of Politics. This is what New Yorker Cartoons are famous for, sophisticated humor. However, nobody is laughing. The cover art has created a new unity in American politics; tasteless best describes the position of both political sides of the American public in regards to the image and the tactic to sell magazines. Wow, we all really must be uninformed and unsophisticated if we follow the New Yorkers logic. I do get it but I am not laughing either. At first, I thought little about the impact of the cover image and just dismissed it as more hype more trash. But I know that most people won’t get it. Some may even think that it is a true portal of Obama based on learned fears over the last decade. Everyone say’s well read the article on Obama in the current issue of the New Yorker, so I did. And now I am more confused about the cover art and it relevance to Barack Obama than before I read the long winded article peppered with facts about how he became who he is and nothing about the politics of fear that I could discern in relation to the image on the cover. The New Yorker article titled “Making It” is a detailed and I think often-obscured view of Obama’s political rise in Chicago politics. It portrays a young idealist who breaks the chains of the old school politics of the Daily’s that held the rule Chicago for more than fifty years. It tells the story of a man who over came failure by reinventing himself and reinventing the business of usual in State politics and rising to be elected to the United States Senate in spite of the entrenched political powers that opposed him on both sides of the isle. He over came the issues of race both Black and White. Perhaps the cartoon should have shown him climbing over the mountains of political bullshit he used as stepping-stones to rise above it all and not play ball as a conformer. Maybe that is why the idea, that idealistic idea of change has stuck to him like epoxy and has hardened that idea into the theme everybody wants to be part of, now today. Obama is using fear to sell his ideas to, but it is the fear of not changing that he stumps.
The Politics of Fear takes me back to when I was a young art student working at the Akron Art Museum. John Coplan http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/coplans_john.php the Director curated an exhibit of John Heartfield’s photomontages, images of anti Nazi propaganda created for the AIZ magazine. AIZ was a political anti Nazi publication that attempted to counter the Nazi propaganda machine in Europe in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Their goal was to bring truth to the public about the real deeds of Hitler and his parties Politics of Fear. As near, as I can tell one of the greatest or perhaps one of the most deadly contributions Hitler and his party created was the Politics of Fear. With the Nazi propaganda machine fine tuned Hitler used the media of the day with the cutting edge of a razor to transform the German population into a collation of willing participants in a rein of terror on the world never before imagined, a population transformed by fear. John Heartfield’s http://www.towson.edu/heartfield images lampooned the great cause and the great dictator and all of his disciples and their policies and actions. AIZ published underground in the wake of fear at the punishment of death to inform the world about the real Nazi’s and their political ambitions. I find it ironic that our current administration under the direction of their chief propagandist use similar fear tactics closely related to the Nazi propaganda playbook to divide us and scare us into going along with what today is obvious failed political objectives and policies. They, the current administration have created an enemy of anyone of Islamic background and have saddled them with the image of a terrorist. The fear has now spread to anyone that has a different political point of view. It was unheard of treason to question the need for war in Iraq, to question weather torture was OK or not OK to question the motives that are driving our current foreign policies. This is Fear Politics and now those who support these ideas these ideals of fear are trying to attach them to Barack Obama. Not because they belong there, but because if they can create any kind of association any doubt about him the fear factor will take them to victory and this is why the New Yorkers attempt at Humor isn’t at all funny. After another four years of business as usual we stand at the steps of failure like we have never experienced before and we are at a pivotal place in our history. We the American People are in a war of words and images, calculated and designed to hold us in a state of fear and the fear of change. The issues are War, Oil, Climate Change, The Economy and our Freedom and our Democracy. The real question is who is really and for what purpose is behind The Politics Fear? History has shown that in Nazi Germany it was the interest of the corporations and greed that really drove the Nazi party. While the people lived in fear those in power plundered the world. No, I do not think the New Yorker Cover is an innocent attempt at satire. We the People need to wake up and start looking for the truth before it is too late.
Read the Obama Article in the New Yorker
Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, News, On Art, Politics, Uncategorized , John Heartfield, New Yorker Cover Cartoon, New Yorker Magazine, Obama, Politics of Fear, Propaganda
