Cover Down

A controversial New Yorker Obama=Osama cover has sparked fear that its import may all be too rich for an "irony-challenged" country -- that's one way to look at it. Here's another: what could be more tone-deaf than a cartoonist who has to explain -- to anyone -- that his intent was satirical?

I don't know why the Obama camp bothered to denounce the hapless doodling. I'm not sure anything the New Yorker does is of all that much consequence. I've walked all over Manhattan looking for a newsstand that carried it. A couple of years ago I had to ask five times -- down in the Lower East Side -- before I found a vendor who had even heard of it.