By: Jane E. Cross
DAVIE – The caricature of the Obamas on the latest cover of the New Yorker begs the question: what is so funny about fear? It is easy to laugh at our personal and particular fears – spiders, crazy drivers and grays hairs. (Oh my!) Yet, hum or takes a different turn when it engages our political fears. Depicting Barack Obama as a Muslim and Michelle Obama as a black militant may not trigger a personal fear, but the caricature does resonate with a collective fear of the dangerous “other.”
American history is replete with examples of the need for Americans to bond together to fight dangerous others who threatened us – the Native Americans, the French, the English, the Spanish, the Fascists, the Communists and now the Terrorists. (So worthy of a capital “T”!) When we militarize our fears, they fold into a deeper layer of our collective political psychology. That is why the New Yorker’s depiction of the Obamas makes a tragic misstep.
Most thinking persons will recognize the absurdity of placing the Obamas within the camp of the dangerous others. It is indeed laughable that either of these extraordinary individuals would pose any such imagined threats to the safety and security of our country and its people. But is it funny?
There is the ironic rub. Anyone who is paying attention knows that the Obamas embody not our fears, but our hopes. We hope that people will look beyond hackneyed prejudices and see the worth of each person. We also know that fear can distort the truth and rally us to attack our so-called enemies.
The problem is that many cannot distinguish lies and truth because they are traumatized by the harsh realities of their lives. In those minds, fear and hope do not coexist. It is easier to fear anything that looks or seems different and label it a dangerous other than it is, under the siege of a troubled life, to figure it all ou t.
We are in troubled times. The reins of financial insecurity are strangling the middle class and water boarding the poor. In such times, we look for culprits, persons upon whom we can place the burdens of our world. In our fear, we create dangerous others that must be defeated for us to survive
If you are living in that world of fear, the Obamas may not make much sense. Barack Hussein Obama is a black man with a Muslim name. If you do not understand his opinions or don’t take the time to listen to his words, it is simpler to place him in the environs of Islamic terrorists and make him a dangerous other. Michelle Obama is a strong black woman with views forged out of her own struggles. If you don’t understand her journey or take the time to hear her convictions, it is easy to imagine her as angry black woman who might resort to violence and thus embody a dangerous other.
Those of us, who have taken the time to explore the contours of our own fear, prejudice and ignorance, often forget that for others those lines are a tangled blur of suspicion. Many of those indistinct suspicions can easily blossom into erroneous perceptions of the Obamas. How do you see these two individuals clearly when your views have been distorted by the propaganda of fear? The answer is that you don’t. Fear, like this, isn’t funny. It makes you see things that aren’t there and believe things that aren’t true. Fear makes the truth seem like a lie and a lie seems like the God’s honest truth.
So what is the real joke here? Is it funny that the Obamas are not terrorists? Or is it funny that they are? Either way, fear really has the last laugh. And that is really not funny.
