Above is a recent New Yorker cover mocking Sarah Palin. The drawing is a parody of one of the New Yorker’s most famous covers:
It was drawn by the late Saul Steinberg, and titled “View of the World from 9th Avenue, 1976“:
The New Yorker has gotten a lot of mileage out of it with parodies like this:
Lighthearted parodic adaptations for other cites are also common, e.g.:
Other homages to the work have been more serious:
Steinberg successfully sued Columbia Pictures over this “improper appropriation” of his work:
If Steinberg was still alive, I wonder how he would feel about a parody of his work being used to mock Sarah Palin, as depicted at the very top of this post. I’m not a Palin partisan, but the ridicule she is enduring seems to far exceed what is being thrown at the very gaffe prone and not particularly progressive Joe Biden (see also, at very bottom) or so it seems to me, and I have to believe it is due at least in part to her gender.
–Ann Bartow
I disagree.
I think most of America has been able to separate her sex from her lack of credentials, her provincialism and parochialism, and the fact that she is not, by any objective means, informed on the large and complex issues that bedevil the nation.
She is being satirized because she is uninformed, not ready for the national stage, and running to be the second most powerful person in the most powerful nation in the world. If you run for office, you open yourself up to the world and being ridiculed is part of campaigning.
Sexism, however, is not. The sexist behavior (all the Photoshopped images and the objectification) exhibited by some people in this great nation is wrong.
The New Yorker cover, to me, emphasizes Governor Palin’s provincialism and parochialism and has nothing what-so-ever to do with her sex. Also, she’s in high-rotation in the news and comedy cycles so it makes perfect sense from a business standpoint to publish a cover that refers to Governor Palin.
Also, in regards to cultural references, due to the rise of Governor Palin and her ubiquity in the press, the first thing I saw as I scrolled down the entry was “Alaska” and then the subsequent Alaskas.
My first thought wasn’t polar bears, penguins, moose, ANWR, or even The Golden Compass. It was, “This must be about Sarah Palin.” Then I saw the rest of the drawing and, well, there you go…