The whole world has weighed in on the New Yorker cover controversy and there seem to be two points of view. One, as admirably expressed by Chief Hypocrite on this site, is that a line was crossed, a line of appropriateness, a line of taste, maybe even a line of greed. “Arrogant, elitist and money mongering,” was how he put it, and it’s hard to argue with those accusations.

Dress up our next prez like a mullah, make his wife look like the love child of Rambo and Angela Davis, warm the oval office with Old Glory roasting in the hearth under a half-portrait of Osama looking wise as Honest Abe and a couple of things are going to happen. You are going to piss a lot of people off, and you are going to be misunderstood by a lot of folks who live on the “farm”—meaning anywhere west of Manhattan—making the folks who are already pissed off at you even more pissed off.

The second, minority point of view is that the New Yorker cover was satire and satire is supposed to stretch the envelope. The NY’er was making a point about the ugly smear tactics used against the Obamas by exaggerating them, by satirizing them, and there’s nothing wrong with that, they say. Everyone who reads the mag would “get it,” and it’s not the New Yorker’s problem if Aunt Betty sees the cover at the Tulsa airport on the way to visit the kids back east and is “confused” by the image.

That line of reasoning would be easier to take if it didn’t reek of snoot, but okay, I hear you. I don’t expect the New Yorker to limit itself to monosyllabic grunts comprehensible to everyone in America, even mullet-headed, Ford-driving, morbidly obese trailer trash in the flyover states. That would simply be too much to ask.

I can, however, as a card-carrying satirist, expect this: BE FUNNY. That’s the point of satire, you frigging morons, that’s what makes satire work. You can explain and complain all you want, David Remnick, editor of the World’s Most Literate Magazine, you can scream first amendment and the hallowed traditions of Harold Ross and William Shawn, you can name-drop every genius writer you’ve published since Dorothy Parker hit the rag and it won’t change the pure, existential truth of the matter.

You bombed. You told a joke and it wasn’t funny. Not even in the wry, knowing, tongue-in-cheek, smarmy in-joke smirk that passes for humor in the New Yorker. You laid an egg.

There was nothing original about that cover, there was nothing surprising about that cover, there was no meta-narrative about that cover that wasn’t obvious to a sophomore, and I don’t mean a college sophomore, I mean an eighth-grader.

What you did, New Yorker, was take things too far and hope you were redeemed by the brilliance of your humor. It would have worked, if it was funny. It was not. Instead, what you published was seen for what it was, the graphic equivalent of using the N-word. Funny thing about N-bombs, when you drop one and it’s a dud, it blows up in your face. Just ask your fellow bomber, soul mate, and new BFF, Michael Richards.

When a standup comedian tells a joke and it falls flat, he stands there with his face hanging out and takes it like a man. He doesn’t get to go on Charlie Rose and explain himself. He gets booed.

Booooo.

The whole world has weighed in on the New Yorker cover controversy and there seem to be two points of view. One, as admirably expressed by Chief Hypocrite on this site, is that a line was crossed, a line of appropriateness, a line of taste, maybe even a line of greed. “Arrogant, elitist and money mongering,” was how he put it, and it’s hard to argue with those accusations.

Dress up our next prez like a mullah, make his wife look like the love child of Rambo and Angela Davis, warm the oval office with Old Glory roasting in the hearth under a half-portrait of Osama looking wise as Honest Abe and a couple of things are going to happen. You are going to piss a lot of people off, and you are going to be misunderstood by a lot of folks who live on the “farm”—meaning anywhere west of Manhattan—making the folks who are already pissed off at you even more pissed off.

The second, minority point of view is that the New Yorker cover was satire and satire is supposed to stretch the envelope. The NY’er was making a point about the ugly smear tactics used against the Obamas by exaggerating them, by satirizing them, and there’s nothing wrong with that, they say. Everyone who reads the mag would “get it,” and it’s not the New Yorker’s problem if Aunt Betty sees the cover at the Tulsa airport on the way to visit the kids back east and is “confused” by the image.

That line of reasoning would be easier to take if it didn’t reek of snoot, but okay, I hear you. I don’t expect the New Yorker to limit itself to monosyllabic grunts comprehensible to everyone in America, even mullet-headed, Ford-driving, morbidly obese trailer trash in the flyover states. That would simply be too much to ask.

I can, however, as a card-carrying satirist, expect this: BE FUNNY. That’s the point of satire, you frigging morons, that’s what makes satire work. You can explain and complain all you want, David Remnick, editor of the World’s Most Literate Magazine, you can scream first amendment and the hallowed traditions of Harold Ross and William Shawn, you can name-drop every genius writer you’ve published since Dorothy Parker hit the rag and it won’t change the pure, existential truth of the matter.

You bombed. You told a joke and it wasn’t funny. Not even in the wry, knowing, tongue-in-cheek, smarmy in-joke smirk that passes for humor in the New Yorker. You laid an egg.

There was nothing original about that cover, there was nothing surprising about that cover, there was no meta-narrative about that cover that wasn’t obvious to a sophomore, and I don’t mean a college sophomore, I mean an eighth-grader.

What you did, New Yorker, was take things too far and hope you were redeemed by the brilliance of your humor. It would have worked, if it was funny. It was not. Instead, what you published was seen for what it was, the graphic equivalent of using the N-word. Funny thing about N-bombs, when you drop one and it’s a dud, it blows up in your face. Just ask your fellow bomber, soul mate, and new BFF, Michael Richards.

When a standup comedian tells a joke and it falls flat, he stands there with his face hanging out and takes it like a man. He doesn’t get to go on Charlie Rose and explain himself. He gets booed.

Booooo.