Contrasting New Yorker Caricatures

None of the New Yorker covers below are particular satirical.

Because they constitute charicatures that try to drive home a certain truth by exaggeration, no one should be surprised at the anger of the Obamas.

If the cartoonist had drawn the Obama cover as an overhead slide in a lecture given by someone looking suspiciously like Robert Spencer, Martin Peretz, Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, John Hagee, James Dobson or some other ideological scare-monger, the cartoon might have served as clear satire, but the effort would have been tricky.

Dobson might have worked best if the cover had been captioned with the Dobson figuring blithely stating, "So what if I distort the facts? Obama distorts the Bible," but it would have been old news, and I am not sure it would have worked.

Barack might benefit from The New Yorker cover if the controversy proves sufficiently cathartic to drive this nonsense out of the consciousness of the American body politic before September.

Michelle as Angela Davis; Barack as Muslim cleric

George W. Bush as Nero

The Real Boss

George W. Bush as Cowboy with Blinders

Cheney as an Incendiary Device

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TNR Versus Senator James Webb

Peretz' Logic for Disqualifying VPs

by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

 

The New Republic has published two articles in opposition to a Barack Obama James Webb ticket in the presidential campaign.

 

Web of Deception by Richard Just argues that Webb is a reactionary with whom Obama should not team even though in the past VP candidates were often chosen to appeal to constituencies different from those that back the presidential nominee.

 

Mad Skills by Eve Fairbanks argues that Webb really appeals to exactly the same voter base as Obama and adds nothing to the ticket.

 

TNR is trying to cover all the bases in its opposition to Webb.

 

Jim Webb's Anti-Semitic Campaign Fliers « C.A.R.D may give a better hint of the real concerns of Editor-in-Chief Martin Peretz, for this blog entry argues that Webb is an anti-Semite.

 

In the discussion Why Is The New Republic Bent on Tearing Webb? from Mondoweiss, I point out:

Liberalism really isn't the issue.

Peretz is not exactly a liberal, and there is little in Nazi ideology with which he would not agree as long as Arab is substituted for Jew, Jew for German, Medinat or Eretz Israel for Germany, and Palestine for Poland.

While Webb does not seem to like Arabs much (see http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/05/nuremberg-law-and-hollywood-films.html ), he has not shown any particular affection for Jews, and with his psychological profile, Webb probably is not particularly amenable to Zionist manipulation and might even make achieving Zionist influence over Obama more difficult -- probably the only real issue for Peretz, CanWest [part owner of TNR] and TNR.

Webb has some personal integrity. I have a slight acquaintance, who was hitting on him a few years ago before she knew he was married. He proved resistent, and when she realized he was married she quit.

With Webb as VP, there would not be any Lewinsky's in the VP's office.

 

 

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From Anti-Semitism to Islamophobia

It only took Germany 60 years

Are extremist Zionist American Jews enabling and empowering German Hate?

watch video

Video Description

Hagen Rether: Scheibenwischer Jahresrückblick 29.12.07

The video says it all (unfortunately in German).

Steinberg Recherche provides an excellent discussion of the response of Der Spiegel star-writer Henryk M. Broder to Rether's J'accuse (also unfortunately in German).

The congruence of the Islamophobic incitement of Der Spiegel with the vitriol of the most extreme racist ethnic Ashkenazi Americans like Daniel Pipes, Alan Dershowitz, Ruth Wisse, Charles Jacobs, and Martin Peretz is striking. Unlike anti-Semitic incitement, Muslim-baiting modeled on the anti-Semitism of the nineteenth century and of the Nazi period is not illegal in Germany. (See The Boston Globe's Problem with Muslims and Updating "The AJC attacks".)

Broder also regurgitates the standard Dhimmi-shtik of Zionist propaganda.

In point of fact, the Ottoman Empire, which was, until its vivisection at the end of World War I, the most advanced Sharia state, eliminated dhimmi status in the middle of the nineteenth century well before many European countries (including Germany) removed legal discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities from their law codes.

Hebrew University Professor Haim Gerber provides some of the results of his research into the Sharia-based legal system of the Ottoman Empire in State, Society and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective.

Gerber's data and analysis indicates that in a comparison of the courts of the core Ottoman Bursa/Istanbul region with those of core English region of the UK, the Ottoman State was far closer to the ideal of a Rechtstaat and achieved far greater legal equality among members of different religious groups or economic classes than the contemporary UK at all periods that Gerber studied.

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