We The Thin Skinned: The Public and The Media

The court of public opinion can seem like a sand trap. In 2002 Thomas Friedman watched George W. Bush talk on CNN about the need to bring democracy to an Iraq called threatening by the US. Then in his column he chastised Bush about playing golf:

"I had no problem with what the president was saying. What bothered me, though, was that he was saying it in a golf shirt, standing on the tee with his golf clubs....[H]e shows real contempt for the world, and a real lack of seriousness, when he says from the golf tee, as he did on another occasion: 'I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.'"

Flash forward six years to May, 2008, when George Bush told Politico that he'd quit playing golf. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

2008 is not 2002 and Bush's gesture of solidarity raised hackles. Satirist Steve Young called it an occasion for "satirical nirvana" and in "solidarity" gave up satire for a week. The web mob ripped into Bush's out-dated gesture but the anger wasn't contained to the internet. Keith Olbermann raged on Countdown, MSNBC, that Bush delivered a "final blow to our solar plexus". As he said in his 10 minute rant:

"...Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you six and a half years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people, but the war in Iraq is not about you. . . It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game! "

Olbermann counseled Bush to "shut the hell up" on future golf questions. As the New Yorker describes the episode, when challenged ahead of the broadcast by the show's producers about the divisiveness of "shut the hell up", Olbermann responded that he favored "shut the f_ck up" but had censored his ending.

The president was out of sync with the nation's mood on golf vis-a-vis Iraq. In 2008, the public, once reticent about invading Iraq and putty in the Bush's hands, expresses moral outrage about the US state of affairs. 4000 deaths? How dare Bush think about golf!

Manhattan's Tasteless, Meanspirited, Malignant Rag: The New Yorker and the Obamas

Moral outrage of a milder sort arose over the New Yorker cover showing Barack Obama in "what many [Americans] see as 'Muslim clothing'", as Al Jazeera put it, standing with his wife in front of a fireplace with a burning flag. Only a couple of years earlier the country expressed bewilderment when European Muslims protested Danish cartoons featuring Muhammad. In response, the US shh-shhed so as not to inflame, while parading its tolerant, liberal sensibilities to the world. Yet last week the US population became apoplectic, in its own little way, over the cartoon of Obama.

The New Yorker maybe didn't predict the ire. The magazine enjoys a coveted position in print publishing, with more subscription requests, a slew of journalism awards, and a positive balance sheet. Four days earlier, the Financial Times "Lunch with FT" section featured an interview [accessed July 23, 2008] with editor David Remnick, who on that occasion had "much to celebrate after 10 years". Remnick had turned around a "desperate" situation at the New Yorker, the FT wrote, and over lavish lunch Remnick commented appreciatively (or hopefully in jest?), "We can't live without the goose prosciutto".

Then abruptly Remnick found himself plunked unceremoniously in a distant place, explaining defensively to his now disenchanted "18-to-24 readership [that] grew by 24 per cent and 25-to-34 readership [that] rose 52 per cent", how the New Yorker publishes pages and pages non-offensive journalism about Obama too. His audience called the cover a despicable and not-at-all-amusing attempt at satire, a "angry, hateful, violent and unpatriotic", "most malignant, vicious", "tasteless", and "mean spirited" cartoon. One befuddled commenter mistook the magazine for the New York Post.

The audience predicted that the likes of Rush Limbaugh would use the cartoon to promote malevolent myths about Obama and doom his campaign. But nobody died and nobody lost a campaign, so what gives? Maybe the outraged wanted to guard the naive against exposure to incorrect images? Protect Obama, the fragile flower? Did they read the article?

In the flurry of discontent, few said anything about the 14,600 word essay on Barack Obama inside the cover. The profile detailed Obama's deliberate navigation through rough and tumble world of Chicago and Illinois politics. It firmly dispelled the message everyone thought everyone else would get from the cover with an extensive reporting on Obama's history, concluding:

"Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions..."

The article (and the roiling aftermath of the cover's release) brought the spot-on satire into sharp relief.

If Comments Could Kill: Science Commenters Out of Control

I sometimes find these adrenaline frenzied episodes enthralling compared to the drama under the much dimmer science limelight, where for better or worse, humor and satire are dished out in miserly portions. Like politics, the biggest breaches in real science can get only sporadic fleeting attention. But oh how the small science tiffs inspire big (embarrassing) headlines about itty-bitty squabbles where the stakes are squeamishly low.

Don't get me wrong. The science brand of satire gets so vicious on religious subjects that Danish cartoons and satirical New Yorker covers seem positively warm and fuzzy. But the consequences tell the sorry tale. One misstep of political satire and the New Yorker loses access to the front-running U.S. presidential candidates (one it's loyal to) and might be barred from Obama's campaign plane. Sure, not the end of the world, but disconcerting.

Compare this to brutishly spiteful science satire. One person says communion is but a biscuit (wafer, actually), the next threatens to kill them, then the first calls on a frothing pack to snap at the threatener's heels. The tragic outcome of this science satire gone awry is that somebody loses their job at 1-800-Flowers. That's about as funny as it gets. Yeah.