A Modest Proposal For The Hopester

I want The Hopester to appear at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate for next week's Euro debut wearing either (his choice) a U.S. flag dashiki or (remember, it's his choice) a Muslim costume inspired by the infamous New Yorker cover by Barry Blitt. Personally, I like the Muslim option.

Copyright © 2008 Barry Blitt/The New Yorker

And complete the whole tableau with Mrs. Hopester dressed in camo with a huge, Angela Davis afro. That would give The Bombastard (John McLaughlin) something to talk about rather than calling The Hopester an Oreo cookie. Let all of the bloviating Righties choke on the sight of The Hopester engaging in a little satiric theater. The good volk of Berlin would get something that would make them forget JFK calling them jelly doughnuts. If the people who walk on their knuckles in this land of the free and home of the brave want to believe that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim, The Hopester should give it to the ignorant bastards in prime time! If Dutch could pay his respects at the Kolmeshöhe Cemetery in Bitburg (the Waffen SS-equivalent of the Arlington National Cemetery) in 1985, The Hopester can wear sandals, a robe and a turban. Let The Hopester cry, "Ich bin ein Gläubiger!" while wearing Muslim gear. If this is (fair & balanced) guerrilla communication, so be it.


[x Miami Fishwrap]
When Hysteria And Satire Meet
By Leonard Pitts Jr.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled . . .

-- Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal, 1729

Satire is tricky. It makes its point by exaggerating wildly with a straight face. In inflating a thing beyond all common sense or propriety, it seeks to render inconsistencies and hypocrisies glaringly apparent. Satire seeks truth in the ridiculous. For illustration, see any given episode of "The Colbert Report."

What makes satire difficult is that sometimes, people don't realize they are being had. Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal, for instance, had some convinced he wanted to eat babies; they didn't realize he was actually attacking people's blithe unconcern with the plight of the poor. For that matter, when "All In the Family" came along 2-½ centuries later, some folks saw Archie as the soul of reason.

I have experience in this. Some years back, I satirized a study that said many Americans feel news media routinely get the facts wrong. In a column "defending" media accuracy, I made misstatements so grandiose — Bob Hope was host of the Tonight Show; Quincy Jones was his bandleader — I thought no one could miss my point.

Silly me. I got hundreds of e-mails "correcting" my supposed errors.

So I feel the New Yorker's pain. The magazine is under fire for a cover illustration depicting Barack Obama in the Oval Office wearing a turban, bumping fists with his wife, Michelle, who wears an Afro, fatigues and has an assault rifle slung over her shoulder. Osama bin Laden watches from a portrait on the wall. An American flag burns in the fireplace.

A touch of ridiculousness

The Obama and McCain campaigns have pronounced the cover offensive. There have been calls for a boycott.

Me, I like the cover. It strikes me as an incisive comment on the fear mongering that has attended Obama's run for the presidency. Still, I understand why it is incendiary: some of us will take it seriously.

To be effective, satire needs a situation it can inflate into ridiculousness. But the hysteria surrounding Obama has nowhere to go; it is already ridiculous. In just the last few days, we've had Jesse Jackson threatening to castrate him and John McLaughlin calling him an "Oreo."

Add to that the whispers about Obama's supposed Muslim heritage (not that there's anything wrong with that), the "terrorist" implications of bumping fists, and Michelle Obama's purported use of the term "whitey" (a word no black person has uttered since "The Jeffersons" went off the air in 1985), and it's clear that "ridiculous" has become our default status. What once were punchlines now are headlines.

So, as absurd, as over the top, as utterly outlandish as the New Yorker image strikes the more sophisticated among us, there is a large fringe out there for whom it will represent nothing more or less than the sum of their fears.

Indeed, as I sat down to write these words, there beeped into my mailbox an e-mail with this subject line: "WOW, The New Yorker got it exactly right, for once." Said without a trace of irony.

But increasingly, that's who we are in this country: ignorant, irony-impaired and petrified. So maybe we should just cancel the campaign and ask that the last intelligent person turn off the lights when he or she leaves. And bring the last book with you. Nobody here will need it.

Somewhere between the stained blue dress and the vice president shooting a guy in the face, between Swift Boat lies and "war on terra" alibis, the absurd became the ordinary, facts became optional and satire became superfluous.

We are beyond satire, my friends. These days, there's nothing more ridiculous than the truth.

[Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 2004. A former writer for Casey Kasem's radio program "American Top 40," Leonard Pitts, Jr. was hired by the Herald as a pop music critic in 1991. By 1994 he was writing about race and current affairs in his own column. His column was syndicated nationally, and his 1999 book Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood was a bestseller. After the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. on 11 September 2001, Pitts wrote an impassioned column headlined "We'll Go Forward From This Moment" that was widely circulated on the Internet and frequently quoted in the press. In the column, Pitt bluntly expressed his anger, defiance and resolve to an unnamed evil terrorist: "You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard."]

Copyright © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company

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