My copy of the New Yorker was in my mailbox when I arrived home Tuesday night.  I have been receiving the New Yorker for about 30 years after reading Brendan Gill’s book about it, and deciding that my mother (who has probably been a subscribe since the mid or late 1940s) might have been right about what the magazine presents.  Between Roger Angell, John Updike, Woody Allen, Garrison Keillor, Elizabeth Kolbert (today, Elizabeth Drew in the days of yore), Seymour Hersh and the drawings/cartoons, if you insist, and everything else, I am always glad to see it.

This week, of course, I had to slip it under my shirt so that nobody would see it as I walked from the mailbox into my own home, where I could hide in the bathroom and covertly read its hot contents, or more accurately, gaze upon its provocative cover.

Of course, I immediately saw what everyone was talking about.  I mean, the minute you saw the cover you knew—and if you did not know, you suspected your gullible neighbors at least would know—that it was true: there it was, not just in black and white but in starkest color, clear as a bell: Senator Obama is a Muslim, his wife is a terrorist and they hate America and love Osama bin-Laden.  There is no way, with a cover such as this, that he could be elected president and even if he could survive this exposé, his election was certainly made harder by the New Yorker’s attempt at satire.

Sure, you and I would understand the intention of the cover, but if we think that Mr and Mrs. America out there pays attention to this kind of subtle attempt at humor and won’t just accept the cover at face value, well, we have not been paying attention.  After all, John Kerry was swiftboated out of the race, and this is just the kind of thing the Republicans need to fool them once again.

And I’ll tell you one other thing: if you have to explain it was satire, it wasn’t very good satire.