Let me say from the start that I think the New Yorker cover is quite brilliant. Let me also say that as a college professor who teaches about language, culture, and humor, I'm not the least bit surprised at the righteous indignation around here, although I'm deeply disappointed in you all. I'm even more disappointed in the Obama campaign, whose statement makes them look just as clueless.

Many of the now thousands of comments posted on several diaries indicate that lots of you really did not understand that the cartoon is lampooning not the Obamas, but their detractors. When a few voices in the wilderness pointed this out, the standard responses included things like, "Oh, yeah, we here at DailyKos understand it's satire, but now it will be all over the cable channels and on the newstands and in emails and everyone in the rest of the country will think it's true," etc, etc.

I truly believe that much of this response is out of embarrassment at not having initially understood it, at needing to have it explained. And don't we all usually say, "Well, I still don't think it's funny," when we need to have something satirical or humorous explained to us? I do!