CELEBRITY COVERS

SOMETIMES celebrity
covers are unavoidable—
Prince William and Kate
Middleton’s wedding was
hard to ignore. David
Remnick liked one of the
first sketches that Barry
Blitt turned in (right), but
still asked that no one be
seen “doing it” on the
cover, royals or not (far
right). When Arnold
Schwarzenegger was elect-
ed governor of California
in 2003, he was the
quintessential
American celebrity—
a rich movie star
married to a
Kennedy. He was
also the target of
allegations of sexual
misconduct in what
was dubbed
“Gropegate,” and
John Mavroudis put
one and one together
in a sketch (right).

WE LOOK AT images of
celebrities with their media
personas already in mind. In
the hugely popular TV show
Seinfeld, Kramer (played by
Michael Richards) always burst
into Jerry’s apartment looking
surprised, even though there
was never any cause for it. In
late 2006, Richards unleashed
a string of racial slurs against a
black heckler during a stand-up

routine. In the sketch that Barry Blitt proposed for the next
Martin Luther King Day (opposite), he used the recognizably funny
situation of Kramer walking into a room, but made sure to give
Kramer-Richards something to be truly surprised about. Donald
Trump’s aborted run at the presidency in 2011 lasted just long
enough for Blitt to mock Trump’s questioning of the legitimacy of
President Obama’s citizenship (above); Blitt also showed nesting
birds putting the magnate’s signature hairstyle to good use (left).

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