Obama Needed to Comment on New Yorker Cover

Michael Crowley argues that Obama campaign is responsible for much of the petty drama now circulating about the New Yorker cover pictured above.

Had Obama simply shrugged it off, instead of having his spokesman brand the image “tasteless and offensive,” I don’t think this story would have blown up so dramatically. It’s the man-bites-dog conflict, the internecine liberal feud, that makes it so sexy to the media–and particularly an outlet like Fox. No tart comment from the Obama camp, no breathless daylong exposure (or far less of it, at least.) I’d say that by denouncing the cartoon the Obama campaign magnified the reach of that image tenfold.

That argument would scarcely have flown in the pre-blogosphere days, and now it’s not even plausible. MSM reporters trying to get a rise out of a candidate will ask about such things, and bloggers routinely chatter on about images less than half as incendiary. Case in point:

I would hope that — at least in private — the Obamas have not lost all sense of humor. Barack and Michelle strike me as the kind of couple who would have a good chuckle over such a cover were they living in less intense times. But publicly, they have to take a stand on imagery like this. We live in an era where some people are so misinformed that they believe Larry Sinclair’s bizzarre rant.

Obama can’t afford to have things like this taken out of context.