The New Yorker got a lot of heat last week when it featured a cover that lampooned enduring myths about Barack Obama, that had heretofore only been circulated via anonymous emails. The caricature showed Barack in “muslim garb”, fist-bumping his wife, who, with an Angela Davis afro and machine-gun on her back, smiles as an American flag burns in the fireplace and a picture of Osama bin Laden graces the walls.

Was the cover offensive? I don’t think so. As a subscriber to the New Yorker, I understand their taste for satire. Last week’s cover was certainly not denigrating Obama or impugning his or his wife’s patriotism - it is making fun of people who parrot those bigoted memes and believe them to be true. Seeing all of the ultra right-wing fantasies parodied on the same page was, well, really funny.

Not to be outdone by its rival, Vanity Fair published its cover (which it thought was) capturing the same satirical spirit and aesthetic inspiration, but applied this time to McCain. He’s shown with a walker, his wife carrying pill bottles, the Constitution is burning and George W Bush accenting the wall above the mantle. Also funny, but perhaps not quite as aggressive in its caricature - otherwise, Cindy might be lying on the floor with a black eye.

The fact is, though, that McCain doesn’t suffer from anywhere close to the same degree of fabricated rumors as does Barack, having his religion, patriotism and allegiances impugned by political operatives. So, the Vanity Fair cover falls a little flat. I mean, he is old, he does admire Bush, and his wife does have a certain way with pill bottles. The only image that condemns is his burning of the Constitution.

So why did both the Obama and McCain campaigns condemn the Obama cover? It’s clear that too many people don’t understand satire, and will misread the cartoon as a representation of the truth (they might even think it’s a photograph!). Innocent Harry Potter suffered at the hands of a lasting email meme that J.K. Rowling was encouraging satanism among children (it was screamingly funny satire by The Onion, who, in a rare move, took the article off its site).

Good satire should give thinking people something to laugh and reflect about. It can expose and challenge the absurdities that we give thoughtless acceptance to. But not everyone exposed to such images will understand their intent; the danger appears when people accept them at face value. And, in an election where candidates spend hundreds of millions of dollars for mindshare, a satirical image is just bad PR.

1938Media provocateur and curmudgeon Loren Feldman had this to say about Disqus, Phreadz and Seesmic, startups trying to make a go of comment conversations (the latter two via video):

Now, it’s fair to mention that Loren likes to get mileage out of bursting bubbles (and the world of Web 2.0 is full of them) but I think it’s fair to tease out his arguments.

- Bloggers don’t care about comments; it’s all about the blogger’s vanity. For any blogger that is sensitive to the idea that s/he’s speaking to an actual audience, comments do matter. (For sploggers, they might be completely superfluous) If you’re blogging and no one’s listening, aren’t you just journaling?

- Most comments are one-dimensional and lame (”I agree with you! What a great post! Here’s a link to my Website!”). Yes, maybe some are. But it’s a law of numbers. For every 100 readers, 10 will comment. 5 will leave spammy/meaningless comments, and a handful will leave insightful comments, some of which are in response to previous insightful comments. The total number of comments might be meaningless, but the number of insightful comments gives a clear indication to how many people you’re really reaching and connecting with.

- Who has time to comment? Well, it’s clear Loren’s not a commenter! But plenty are. And some frequent commenters develop a following of their very own on certain blogs, regardless whether the blogger has the time to interact with them or not.

What’s clear, though, at least to me, is that there the reason blog comments are superficial, and conversation attempts so clumsy (via “here’s a link to my blog” entries), is that there hasn’t been a platform for them. There’s a latent need for blog readers to interact with the blogger and other commenters, and, like most latent needs, the solution isn’t necessarily always well-articulated by would-be beneficiaries.

For that reason, I like attempts like Disqus and SezWho to thread blog conversations and follow them across blogs, and even Phreadz & Seesmic for bringing the video dimension to commenting.

We at Dyalogues also understand that blog readers are not all passive, not just providing feedback and “vanity votes” to the blogger. A small number are interested in deeper interaction. The blog post is only a springboard for discussion. The question becomes: where and how does that conversation take place?

The NYT ran this piece at the end of April after the deaths of Russell Shaw and Marc Orchant, who might have succumbed to the daunting work schedule and pressure common among bloggers today. Even Michael Arrington of TechCrunch said that, despite his site’s tremendous success, the workload and stress has taken its toll on his health and is “not sustainable”.

I had just read a more in-depth look at Gizmodo and Engadget in Wired, and although the story focused on the two blogs’ different approaches and personalities, it also detailed the stress involved in covering a story first, the depression at being scooped enacts on an editor, and the grueling number of posts that have to go up during electronics show seasons.

I have heard rumblings about Jason Calacanis (formerly Weblogs Inc, now Mahalo) and Nick Denton (Gawker) both running sweatshops, but I’ve also read testimonials from their current employees that working for them allows for a liveable lifestyle and they make accommodations for the obligations of family and personal life. Calacanis, of course, created a dustup over his tips for startups, in which he famously suggested to fire anyone who’s not a workaholic (he later redacted that in favor of “those who don’t love their work”, which I personally think conveys what he originally meant anyway.)

Building readership is key to building traffic, and traffic translates to revenue, so maybe it just has to be understood that this is a high-pressure job for some and not a leisurely pursuit for many who are earning a living from it.