David Dante Troutt

Judging the Elitist by Its Cover: The New Yorker Revealed

Just before the New Yorker cover came out depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as black power/Muslim terrorists, I was telling someone how useless the term “elitist” was.  It was one of several pejorative labels tossed recently at Barack, and it was pure epithet disguised as a descriptor.  But of what?  It describes nothing.  It only rankles.  It’s subject to so much modification in order to make sense—pedigree, social distance/indifference, unearned/unacknowledged privilege—that it’s useless except to impugn.

Then the cover appeared.  It showed up first on the Internet, then in the corners of printed tabloids, next, in my city of New York, on the real cover of the magazine itself hanging defiantly from clips along the tops of newsstands, baiting you as you passed or waited for a train or a light: That image.

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