It's not that David Petraeus didn't betray the American people. He did. MoveOn nailed it. But MoveOn's timing was poor; they got the wrong reaction; and they're paying for it. And they lost contributors -- this one, among many.
As a subscriber to the New Yorker, I can attest that some of their covers lately have been over-the-top and plum ugly. It'll take more than that to get this subscriber to quit, but it's close. The latest cover depicts a cheerful Obama in Muslim garb bumping fists with his wife, dressed as a afro-sporting '70's radical and carrying heavy weaponry. An American flag burns in the background. It's a "satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics." Sure, sure. We get it. Trouble is, we'll be seeing it reprinted over and over again by those right-wing critics and likely will serve as a useful prop to the very group it disparages.
But it's getting the New Yorker a lot of attention. They enjoy that. So why not just call them and say, "I've been a subscriber since the year dot but no longer"? Because inside those lousy covers is stuff like this:
One of the World Wide Web’s most distinguished organs of fake news, the Borowitz Report, leads its current issue with this flash:
The liberal blogosphere was aflame today with new accusations that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) is trying to win the 2008 presidential election.
Obama, it turns out, is a politician. In this respect, he resembles the forty-three Presidents he hopes to succeed, from the Father of His Country to the wayward son, Alpha George to Omega George. Winning a Presidential election doesn’t require being all things to all of the people all of the time, but it does require being some things to most of the people some of the time. It doesn’t require saying one thing and also saying its opposite, but it does require saying more or less the same thing in ways that are understood in different ways. They’re all politicians, yes—very much including Obama ... Hendrik Hertzberg ...
Too bad the New Yorker is out of touch with the reality that a lot of Americans look, but don't read.
NB: More and more liberals seem to be dropping the "-ic" of "Democratic." I wonder if they think Dems no longer deserve it, that they have to win back their "-ic." It's not hard to get fed up with certain attitudes out there about Obama's politicking -- ohmigosh, he's a politician! The New Yorker with the controversial cover also has a great article by Ryan Lizza about Obama-the-politician earning his stripes in Chicago. Lizza talked about his discoveries about Obama with Terry Gross in a long, informative interview on "Fresh Air" today. Worth a listen (but perhaps not for tender Democrat ears.)
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