The New Yorker is defending its controversial cover of Barack Obama in an Islamic headdress and Michelle as some sort of Black Panther as satire. I'm not buying it. The articles inside aren't satirical. The cover is meant to shock and sell magazines. (It's also outdated: the Muslim rumor was eclipsed after that little old firestorm over the non-Muslim Reverend Wright, Obama's pastor.)

That said, Obama better stop being so damned sensitive. He's going to be ridiculed and he better get used to it if he wants to be Leader of the Free World. Here's a piece I wrote eight months ago...

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FROM NOVEMBER 2007:

Barack Obama's candidacy is historic: He's the first viable candidate for the presidency ... to not be ridiculed. At all. It's obvious why this is happening. And it's ultimately a disservice to the Senator.

First, let's dispense with the obvious: All things being equal, black men face more hurdles than white men. This is an understatement. Any benefits from affirmative action (and I don't know that Obama has had any) are eclipsed by the constant skepticism and second-guessing that a black man confronts. (Never mind how that impacts opportunity. Just imagine the toll on a young man's psyche if he's always an object of suspicion!) On this basis alone, Senator Obama is an inspiration. (Once he tells us what he plans to do, if elected, we'll decide if he's extra-inspiring.)

But he's running for an American political office. He's supposed to be getting hazed right now, run through the spanking machine, mocked, kicked around, wedgied by columnists, pundits and most of all, comedians. But no one lays a finger on him, because everyone's afraid of seeming racist. (Rest assured, actual racists spread scurrilous lies about Obama's parentage and religion on line.)

I know this from experience:
At the 92nd Street Y - one of New York's temples of liberalism - I was discussing Barack Obama's very, um, extroverted wife Michelle before a crowd of 1,000. She's the woman who inelegantly described her husband as "snore-y and stinky." She's charismatic and pretty funny - and I think she's trying to humanize her husband. But when she talks like that, she clips his wings, makes him sound like he's not statesman material. (Snore-y is presidential; stinky not so.)

I said Barack needed to stand up to her: "If he can't stand up to Michelle, how is he going to stand up to Iran?" I asked indignantly. No laughter. Just an uncomfortable murmur.

Was this a killer laugh line? No, as I'm sure many will tell me in the comments section, it wasn't. But the deep discomfort from the audience said something more. People were on guard, uncomfortable. I suspect they were concerned that I was stereotyping black women. And they wanted no part of it.

Meanwhile the campaign has lasted so long that other candidates have become virtual archetypes:

Hillary is a robot.
Rudy's the man who can only talk about 9/11.
Edwards is a pretty-boy.
Thompson is lazy, maybe even dumb.
Romney is the flip-flopper.
Kucinich is a freaky UFO guy who inexplicably landed a hot wife with a tongue stud.
Mike Gravel is the Grumpy Old Man.
Tony Tancredo hates Mexicans.

Caricaturing candidates is hardly new:

Bush was (and is) an idiot.
Bill Clinton was (and presumably still is) a philanderer.

Reaching farther back:

Reagan, the idealogue who changed the world, was caricatured as the idea-free B-movie actor when he ran for office.
Even Eisenhower in his run for president was mocked as an airhead. And this was after the man had brilliantly led Allied Forces to victory against Nazi Germany.
Hell, Abraham Lincoln was lampooned in cartoons as an ape!

Are these labels unfair? Mostly. But these guys (and gal) are tough. They're crazily ambitious. And if they're going to survive in the Oval Office, they better be battle-tested.

So what about Obama? How can we make fun of him?

Is he the media-whore? Running not for president but for best talk-show guest ever? A Hollywood brown-noser? (Excuse me, I meant suck-up.)

Is he naïve?

Is he pu#@y-whipped by both an overbearing wife and the leading Democratic candidate?

Don't worry, none of the above conceits have anything to do with race. And yet... Why can't his caricature acknowledge his race?

Barack Obama is black. It's undeniable. I'd wager that if you ask anyone to give the first five words that come to mind in describing Obama, one of them is going to be "black" or "African-American."

Another recent experience:

I was on the phone with a producer who was pre-interviewing me for a comedy show. We were discussing Barack and Michelle. (I'm fixated, I know.) He asked how I thought Michelle should behave in public. I said, "Less like Florence and more like Weezie." We both had a good laugh, then agreed that that could never be said in front of an audience.

But why not? The parallel works: an upwardly-moving black family, with the man dealing with two kinds of women. One woman clips his wings and "brings him down to size." The other is more traditionally supportive and makes him look good. The joke works. And yet the producer and I agreed it was way too racy. More than racy. It might actually be racist! Of course it's not.

There are surely ways to make fun of Barack Obama that take his race into account. (Hear ye! Hear ye! That's different from making fun of him for his race.)

Maybe he's the black Jesus?

Or is he the Tiger Woods something-for-everyone-on-the-color-wheel candidate?

Is he the black guy who's actually pretty lousy at basketball? (I confess: that made me uncomfortable to type.)

I'm grasping here because I'm starting from nothing. Seriously, folks, what is it? Or is he just a goofy guy with big ears?

Ultimately not making fun of Obama will hurt Obama most of all. It's more than just an issue of fairness – i.e., that all candidates should be subjected to the same mudslinging and ridicule.

If we (voters and the press) are careful about Obama we create a distance between ourselves and him. And we don't vote for the candidate we have to hold at arm's length. Right now Barack seems dream-like (as opposed to that dreamy John Edwards). He doesn't seem entirely real. The press, pundits and comedians need to poke and prod so that we know he's real. Otherwise the dream will vaporize ...