The New Yorker's new cover has a caricature of Obama and his wife. He's got a turban and Michelle has a big fro, and an AK47 strapped to her torso, and they are giving each other a fist bump with a picture of Osama bin-Laden on the wall in the background. Obama says it's tasteless, and I'm sure a lot of people will see it as a right-wing attack.

Get real, the New Yorker is about as consistently left wing as it gets. This caricature is not an attack in any way, nor is it really about lampooning right-wing attacks. What it's really about is conflating ridiculous attacks on Obama with legitimate criticism. You throw the ridiculous in the same pot as the legit, mix them up, and it confuses the issue. All of the sudden legitimate criticism gets poo-pooed as ridiculous, and suddenly all criticism of Obama is seen as ridiculous. You'll see more and more of this sort of thing pop up in the Obama-supporting media, helping his campaign by subtly changing the nature of how we view criticism of the man.