Stewart & Colbert: New Yorker Fistbump, Take Two!

I loved July's infamous New Yorker cover in all its Swiftian, satirical glory. A few days after its publication, The Daily Show did a great bit called "Satire on the Street" mocking the backlash against the "controversial" illustration by Barry Blitt. But Entertainment Weekly does one better this week. Not only is the cover sublime, its corresponding chat with the simultaneously modest-yet-genius team of Stewart and Colbert is well worth reading if you're at all interested in the current (sad) state of affairs.

The entire Mock the Vote Q & A interview with both of Comedy Central's Emmy-winning funnymen (Colbert for Best Writing, Stewart for Best Late Night Overall) is online and includes the below excerpt, my favorite analogies from the entire piece.

E.W.: There are a lot of issues in this election. The biggest one right now is the economy.
STEWART: We were in this huge credit crisis, out of money. Then the Fed goes, We'll give you a trillion dollars, and all of a sudden Wall Street is like, ''I can't believe we got away with it!'' Can you imagine if someone said, ''I shouldn't have bought that sports car because it means I can't have my house,'' and the bank just said, ''All right, you can have your house. And you know what? Keep the car.'' [He throws up his arms joyfully and shouts] ''Yeaaaaah, I get to keep the car! Wait, do I have to give the money back?'' ''No, it doesn't matter.'' ''Yeah, I'm gonna get another car! I'm gonna do the same thing the same way, except twice as f---ed up!''
COLBERT: The idea that Lehman Brothers doesn't get any money and AIG does reminds me very much of ''Iran is a mortal enemy because they have not achieved a nuclear weapon. But North Korea is a country we can work with, because they have a nuclear weapon.'' The idea is, Get big or go home. How big can you f--- up? Can you f--- up so bad that you would ruin the world economy? If it's just 15,000 who are out of jobs, no. You have to actually be a global f---up to get any help.

2008 Emmys

Daily Show clip "Satire on the Street"

One of the funniest Daily Show clips I've seen in a long time. Especially great? The guy who didn't even get the dog shit joke. Wow.

The New Yorker cover and the politics of satire

In the early 1700s, English Protestants were the primary land owners and they charged outrageously high prices to poverty-stricken Irish renters. In "A Modest Proposal," Jonathan Swift proposes that plump, healthy Irish infants be sold as food to give the Irish a new source of income and the English a new food product to bolster their economy and eliminate the number of Catholics in Ireland. This premise is genius -- if you understand the concept of satire.

Everyone is freaking over the July 21st New Yorker cover this week. I think this bastion of liberal highbrowness may have run this cover in response to the tremendous amount of attention that New York magazine garnered recently with the death of its founder, Clay Felker, whose impressive obit ran in the New York Times, and whose praises Tom Wolfe sung in the July 8th issue. Until I read Wolfe's tribute, I didn't know that the New Yorker and New York were big rivals back in the day. Perhaps the New Yorker editor felt they needed a punchy, attention-getting cover.

The cover, which is brilliant, backfired. I'm sure the sophisticated readers of the magazine get it. But the majority of the country? Hardly. Right wingers are probably tacking it to their fridges with their Confederate flag magnets.

The illustrator, Barry Blitt, responds to an email by the Huffington Post regarding the cover :

I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous. It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.

The New Yorker press release says it "satirizes the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama's campaign."

It seems as though we have lost touch with the very essence of irony and satire.