POLITICS

BARRY BLITT ON POLITICS:

“Even when the topic is deadly serious, you don’t want to get too morose or humorless—it’s okay for a cover to not be funny but it can’t be humorless.

“A lot of the animus against Obama has to do with confounded expectations. No one made those demands on Bill Clinton or George Bush—expecting them to be at their service. I know that, but would it kill Obama to come clean my windows sometime?

“I remember driving up to Canada and listening to lots of talk radio—one right-wing blowhard after another. The hatred for Obama was crazy. He seems kind of namby-pamby and middle-of-the-road to me. I got a note from a fellow illustrator: ‘Don’t be so quick to put Rush down. You should listen to him sometimes.’ I listened to him a lot and my fist-bump cover is not a satire of his position—if anyone knows what satire isn’t, it’s me.

“That’s probably one of the draws of talk radio, that you can say anything. When I got to the U.S. from Canada, I thought Rush Limbaugh was the strangest beast, a true American voice. He was the only one talking like that—this was before Glenn Beck or any of them. But I can’t listen to Rush for more than three minutes anymore—he’s just infuriating. There’s so much anger, so much manufactured rage, and no point. Mostly he’s a showman who’s pandering.”