This is why Gwen was pessimistic about the New Yorker cover. Another product sold at the Texas Republican Convention:
Also sold at the Texas Republican Convention: If Obama is President… Will We Still Call it the Whitehouse?
Found here via Copyranter.
Breck sent in a link to this post about the controversial New Yorker front cover depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as Muslim extremists (I found the full-size image here):
As you may guess, there have been some quite negative reactions to this cartoon. The Obama campaign did not particularly like having him portrayed as an American flag-burning Muslim, oddly enough. And apparently this has gotten wide enough press coverage that even my mom had heard about it and was distressed, and my mom doesn’t follow politics too closely.
I’m kind of fascinated by this entire situation. When I went to Oklahoma last month to visit my family, my uncle informed me that Obama is a Muslim with some secret evil motive for wanting to be president that the rest of us can’t even imagine because we aren’t diabolical enough to think of it. When I pointed out that Obama is not a Muslim, my uncle said he used to be, which is the same thing, and that if Obama really loved America he would change his middle name from Hussein. I gave up on the conversation at that point and returned to pulling ticks off the dog, since that was a lot more pleasant.
What I’m saying is, I have first-hand knowledge of the people out there who honestly believe Obama is some type of Muslim extremist with an evil plot for when he gets into office. Fox News reported on the “fist bump” as a possible terrorist gesture. This distrust of Obama is out there. So this cartoon could spark a really interesting discussion of political humor/satire and the boundaries between “appropriate” and “inappropriate.” I assume–and I’m just assuming here–that this cover was supposed to be a commentary on the fact that some people (and Fox News) are convinced Obama has a connection to Muslims and/or terrorists and, as a result, has evil plans for the future of America. But the cover could also simply reinforce those ideas–I really hope my uncle doesn’t suddenly take up reading and pass by a magazine rack in the near future, because this cover will prove to him that he’s been right all along. So what’s the line between social commentary that points out and/or ridicules issues such as these and just reinforcing the misconceptions or stereotypes that you claim to be undermining?
It could also be used for a discussion of how we read things into images based on our own assumptions. I mean, I have no evidence this cover is supposed to be a commentary (however misguided, dumb, or inappropriate it might be) on misconceptions about Obama; I’m just presuming based on what I know about The New Yorker, its liberal slant, and my recent experience with my uncle. If you showed me the exact same image and told me it came from Fox News, I am certain my reaction would be different because of my assumptions about what Fox News would be trying to say with the image. I can check that tendency to make assumptions about the intention of the creators of an image, and I try to, but I think it’s always good to point out to students that we don’t just passively see an image; our own experiences, assumptions, and so on influence how we interpret them. This is part of the reason that, once an image is put out there, the intention of the creator doesn’t necessarily have much to do with how people interpret or use it.
Thanks, Breck!
On an unrelated note: If you’ve noticed my absence from posting the last few days, I can only say that the first 2 seasons of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” turned out to be way more compelling than I was expecting and watching them can be quite the time sucker.
I found most these images at Photo Basement, but all were originally posted at The November Coalition’s Random History of Alcohol Prohibition page.
“Good for the engine, but not for the engineer. Good for commercial purposes, but not as a beverage.”
The white man’s burden isn’t infantile non-whites in need of oversight, it’s saloons.
Connecting drinking alcohol with nationalism and the downfall of America.
Again, being anti-alcohol is patriotic.
Do you love drink more than you love your children? Or America?
But we see many of the same themes in the anti-Prohibition campaign:
So now if you love your kids and want them (and, implicitly, America) to be secure, you’ll repeal Prohibition.
“Protect our youth. Stamp out Prohibition. Love our children.”
At first I wasn’t sure if this was pro- or anti-Prohibition (asking people to vote to repeal it, or to overturn the repeal). But according to this history of Prohibition, Democrats came out with a “wet” (anti-Prohibition) platform as a way of drawing “ethnic” (i.e., European immigrant) and working class votes. So the message here is that we need to protect our children (and wives?) from the hordes of gangsters and bootleggers who emerged because of Prohibition, and their way to do this is to vote Democratic.
Thanks for the tip, Miguel!
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
Since we’ve been on the topic of language (see yesterday’s George Carlin post), I thought I’d add something sent in by Z of It’s the Thought that Counts, who first read about it here. The conservative Christian organization American Family Association has a website called OneNewsNow where they post various news stories. Apparently the website has a filter to automatically replace the word “gay” in any news stories with the word “homosexual.” This became apparent when a news story about an athlete named Tyson Gay was posted with his last name changed to Homosexual in both the title and the text. Here is a screenshot (found here) of the original post from OneNewsNow:
The story has since been corrected. But as FriendlyAtheist points out, they have not corrected “Rudy Homosexual” in this sports story (thanks to Jon for the screenshot):
What is the symbolic power of saying “homosexual” instead of “gay”? What is the cultural difference between those two words? Is it an attempt to keep the focus on sexual activity? For some reason “homosexual” sounds more derogatory to me, but I’m not sure why–probably just because it’s used more by those opposed to gay rights, so I’ve come to associate it with an anti-gay ideology.
This might be interesting for a discussion of discourse and language in political movements generally, as well as conflicts around gay and lesbian issues specifically. Groups always try to frame issues to make their position sound more appealing, and a major way of doing this is through language. Think of debates about abortion–the differences between “pro-abortion” and “pro-choice” as well as “pro-life,” “anti-abortion,” and “anti-choice,” are symbolically meaningful, and different groups choose to use some of these terms rather than others in an effort to make themselves seem appealing and rational and the other side unappealing and radical. I suspect something similar is going on with “homosexual” vs. “gay.”
Thanks, Z!
UPDATE: In the comments to this section, Sanguinity made some great points about the differences between “gay” and “homosexual”:
“Homosexual” is the clinical term, and was used to pathologize gays and lesbians — it’s meant to invoke all that psychiatric-illness stuff. Also, the term focuses on sexual behavior, completely sidestepping romance, relationships, communities, cultures, and other sympathy-generating aspects of pershonhood. Additionally, by focusing on behavior above identity, it allows one to write entire articles with the implicit assumption that being gay is a choice: i.e., one isn’t gay, one chooses to engage in homosexual activities. That last item is especially important — while “gay” and “homosexual” may look like synonyms, they aren’t quite. “Gay” is a noun; “homosexual” is an adjective.
Thanks for the elaboration, Sanguinity!
This five dollar bill ended up in someone’s pocket in Staten Island. It reads: “Lets (sic) keep the white house white.”
Point: Okay, so this means some guy is a real racist a-hole, no doubt.
Counterpoint: Um, yeah, but this pin was sold at the Texas Republican Convention last week:
Sigh.
Via Jezebel.
Elizabeth, over at Blog of Stench (and now a regular Soc Images blogger), brought our attention to a New York Magazine article about the Obama sock monkey doll (the company set to manufacture it has apologized and canceled production). Here is a picture of the doll:
From the article:
We were happily cruising around the Internet yesterday when we stumbled upon a link on Andrew Sullivan’s blog that gave us one of those moments Dave Chappelle joked about in Killin’ Them Softly: “Have you ever had something happen that was so racist that you didn’t even get mad? You were just like, ‘Goddamn, that was racist.’” That’s how we felt when we saw TheSockObama.com, a Website peddling an “Obama” monkey doll.
The response the author got after contacting the company:
To Those with Heartfelt Queries,
We chose twenty-two customer queries today that we believe merit a response. You touched us with either your concern, intelligence, humor, sensitivity, and/or your thoughtfulness. We thank you. There are other queries we received today as well that we chose not to respond to, because of their spewing of venom and their aimlessness.
We at TheSockObama Co. are saddened that some individuals have chosen to misinterpret our plush toy. It is not, nor has it ever been our objective to hurt, dismay or anger anyone. We guess there is an element of naviete on our part, in that we don’t think in terms of myths, fables, fairy tales and folklore. We simply made a casual and affectionate observation one night, and a charming association between a candidate and a toy we had when we were little. We wonder now if this might be a great opportunity to take this moment to really try and transcend still existing racial biases. We think that if we can do this together, maybe it will behoove us a nation and maybe we’ll even begin to truly communicate with one another more tenderly, more real even.
This is only our introductory plush toy. If we choose to move forward with a Republican candidate, we’ll begin with an elongated and slightly lumpy, fuzzy Idaho potato. Had a different Democratic candidate won the nomination, we were prepared to move forward with the cutest, fluffiest 12″ chestnut and golden-haired squirrel, with a short Farrah-like do in a brown pantsuit and call her Squirellary.
In earnest folks, we’re so sorry we offended anybody.
Best Regards,
TheSockObama Co. www.thesockobama.com
Thanks, Elizabeth!
NEW: Consider also…
Thanks to Green Ink for pointing this out in the comments!
WOW, AN UPDATE: Click here to see the TheSockObama Co. aggressively, and I mean aggressively, revoke the conciliatory words they offered in apology (thanks to Breck C. for the tip!). Some highlights:
We at TheSockObama Co. have some questions to pose. What’s really going on in America? In the good ol’ fashion spirit of entrepreneurialism ; free enterprise has been censored, and TheSockObama politically plush toy has been discriminated against in the marketplace of the United States of America…
Double standards appear to be a common thread here. It’s okay for there to be hundreds of thousands of Google sites containing references to our current president’s resemblance to a chimpanzee. However, it’s not okay to make that same association regarding our possible next president. Isn’t this the very definition of hypocrisy?
TheSockObama is no longer scheduled to go into mass production… Have the bullies won here?
…the blogging dens of resistance quickly began their fury of emails. An electronic battery of fiery darts flowed swiftly but silently through the veins of technology. Feverish fingers frantically clicking coast to coast, crashing and burning our tragically naive – yet sparkling website. A steady stream of repetitive verbal eloquence graced our Customer service inbox with tasty tidbits like, eff-ewe and every other colorul expletive you could possibly imagine. We thought we had heard it all. Hey thanks. This is America, right?
…With the number of Customers we’ve had to disappoint in our first week of business; are we saying it’s okay to take something out of the marketplace that other people want to buy? Are we now censoring one another’s liberty as Americans to freely purchase goods and services on our own terms? Is this the kind of America we want?
Lisa analyzed their “anti-apology” and what it means for U.S. race relations over at the Huffington Post. Check it out.
Also, it appears they are still selling the sock monkey, now at another website. The website has exactly the same design as the original one.
See our follow up to this post here.
Alongside an article in the New York Times today was this graph comparing the percentage of positive statements made about Obama versus Clinton by the media over the course of the primary race. The article discusses whether players in the U.S. media think their coverage was sexist. Lots of people do not think so. It has some really interesting quotes from people in front of and behind the camera.
Click here to see a montage of sexist statements about Hillary Clinton by media pundits.
