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New Yorker Obama Cover Called "Tasteless and Offensive"

The New Yorker's controversial cover satirizes the rumors that surround Obama's campaign.

Barack Obama’s campaign says a satirical New Yorker magazine cover showing the Democratic presidential candidate dressed as a Muslim and his wife as a terrorist is “tasteless and offensive.”

The illustration on the issue that hits newsstands Monday, titled “The Politics of Fear” and drawn by Barry Blitt, depicts Barack Obama wearing traditional Muslim garb – sandals, robe and turban – and his wife, Michelle – dressed in camouflage, combat boots and an assault rifle strapped over her shoulder – standing in the Oval Office.

The couple is doing a fist tap in front of a fireplace in which an American flag is burning. Over the mantle hangs a portrait of Osama bin Laden.

“The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. “But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.”

In a statement Monday, the magazine said the cover “combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are.”

“The burning flag, the nationalist-radical and Islamic outfits, the fist-bump, the portrait on the wall? All of them echo one attack or another. Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that’s the spirit of this cover,” the New Yorker statement said.

The statement also pointed to the two articles on Obama contained inside the magazine, calling them “very serious.”

Republican John McCain’s campaign spokesman, Tucker Bonds, agreed that the cover was “tasteless and offensive.”

Already the cover was generating controversy on the Internet.

The Huffington Post, a left-leaning blog, said: “Anyone who’s tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who’s tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism – well, here’s your image.”

Liberal radio talk-show host Laura Flanders told CNN’s “American Morning” on Monday, “I think the Obama campaign made a misstep here. They should have come out strongly endorsing this cover.

She said, “This isn’t a jab at them, terrorist or any other kind. This is a jab at the media. ... It should be cause for our conversation to focus on the kind of fear mongering that the media and people on the right have engaged in.”

Conservative talk-show host Joe Pagliarulo agreed. “I think this could be a very positive thing for the Obama campaign,” Pagliarulo said. “I think they’ve got to embrace this and say ‘Look, there are rumors out there.’ I talk to people every day, like Laura does. People really do believe … that he’s a Muslim. They believe he was sworn in on the Quran. They believe that his wife is unpatriotic and so is he.”

A Newsweek poll released Friday showed that 12 percent of those polled believed Obama was sworn in as a U.S. senator on a Quran, and 26 percent believed that he was raised as a Muslim. Neither is true.

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