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http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3568199,00.html

New Yorker caricature shows Obama,
wife as al-Qaeda operatives

Magazine publishes spoof of right-wing
attempts to defame US presidential hopeful
as ridicule of belief he is closet Muslim,
but instead of receiving praise,

editors slammed by Democratic campaign officials,
who call it 'tasteless, offensive'

AFP
Published: 07.14.08, 19:46 / Israel News

Barack Obama's campaign decried Monday
a satirical cartoon on the cover of The
New Yorker magazine showing the Democratic
presidential hopeful wearing Islamic dress
while his wife holds a Kalashnikov.

An American flag smolders in
the Oval Office's fireplace,
below a picture of al-Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden hanging
on the office wall.

The influential weekly defended its cover,
titled "The Politics of Fear," as a critique
of unfounded allegations during the campaign
that have attempted to paint Obama,
who is Christian, as a closet radical Muslim.

"The New Yorker may think,
as one of their staff explained to us,
that their cover is a satirical lampoon
of the caricature Senator Obama's
right-wing critics have tried to create,"

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement,

"but most readers will see it
as tasteless and offensive.

And we agree."

The campaign of Obama's Republican rival,
John McCain, took his side.

"We completely agree with the Obama
campaign that it is tasteless and
offensive," spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

Obama, who aims to become the first
African-American US president,
wears a robe and turban while his
wife Michelle is in military
fatigues with a Kalashnikov
strapped to her back.

The couple also give
each other a fist bump -

a common greeting they have given
each other in public and which a
Fox News television presenter once
called a "terrorist fist jab."

"Our cover 'The Politics of Fear'
combines a number of fantastical
images about the Obamas and shows
them for the obvious distortions
they are," said New Yorker editor David Remnick.

"The burning flag,
the nationalist-radical
and Islamic outfits,

the fist-bump, the portrait on the wall -
all of them echo one attack or another,"
he said.

"Satire is part of what we do,
and it is meant to bring things
out into the open,

to hold up a mirror to prejudice,
the hateful, and the absurd.

And that's the spirit of this cover."

Serious issue

The cover overshadowed a more serious
issue discussed by Obama on Monday -
the retreat of American soldiers from Iraq.

The presidential hopeful published an
article in The New York Times in which
he adopts the stance of Iraqi President
Nuri al-Maliki,

who called on the US government to
set a timetable for the removal of
its military forces.

Obama called al-Maliki's appeal an
"enormous opportunity", and presented
his plan for the retreat from Iraq.

"On my first day in office,
I would give the military a
new mission: ending this war," he wrote,

describing this move as necessary in
order to redeploy troops in Afghanistan
and Pakistan.

"Iraq is not the central front
in the war on terrorism, and it
never has been," he claims.