Hipster Racism?

I've read several commentaries and a couple FriendFeed threads on the "controversial" New Yorker cover featuring Michelle "Angela Davis" and Barack "Osama Bin Laden" Obama (I won't bore you with a pic, it's everywhere). Try as I might, I can't get worked up about it. Perhaps because I'm old enough to remember real radicals? Even met a couple.

The Obamas are far from it. They are as about as upwardly mobile mainstream as it gets. Harvard, Hyde Park, big law firms, impressive political resumes. Remember?

And I think that's the point of the cover. It's so over the top as to be ridiculous.

I'm really trying here, but to say that this plays into the hands of virulent racists is beside the point. They're already virulent racists. This cover won't make them more racist.

As for what's being termed as "hipster racism" (or perhaps more accurately, "Hipster Smugness"), I'm familiar with the phenomenon. It's the coda of the post-ironic world. Everything is tired and passe. I get it. We're all rubes outside of New York.

But I don't get that from this cover, especially when it's juxtaposed against what I hear is one of the stronger themes of the article; namely, Barack Obama is a savvy political insider who cut his teeth on Chicago politics.

But perhaps I'm just not hip enough for the room.