An Extra Point on New Yorker Obama Campaign ‘12 Super Bowl Cover

Obama’s chair appears to be a swivel chair, which is far more working class than the magnificent one he actually sits in.  The illustrator managed to give Obama rosy cheeks, which is quite a trick, actually.

As Romney and Gingrich scramble for a fumble, Obama sits there smiling with the football on his lap.  Of course it’s not the football, but the suggestion is that they have to scramble for something Obama’s not going to give up. 

I don’t know what to make of the green color of the bottle, which any beer drinker would promptly recognize as Heineken, a foreign beer.  Is this a sly way of bringing up the birth certificate issue again?  Maybe that explains Obama’s broad grin.

The two drawings are also 3 and a half years apart. A lot has happened since then. 

I don’t see them as being so different—both are organizes around the question of ‘how like us is the president?’.  The big point I think about the recent cover is that Obama is ‘in possession’…the target is the Republican candidates.  The earlier cover of the little madrassa boy and his mau-mau woman is asserting the same concept—he’s just like us—only taking the piss re public perception and its manipulations—including the sly glance from the president himself.

They are running because the Republican party has sold its soul to the filthy rich (emphasis on filthy) John-Birch-Society founders and their supporters, the endlessly ignorant and repugnant tea partiers.