See, this is a much better way to show technological savvy than a blinky computer chip-laden cover: The staunchiest of all print magazine, The New Yorker, is heralding in the 21st century a little bit late with their first all-digital print edition. It's free for subscribers and a year's subscription cost as much as their print issues would.

More importantly, The New Yorker's website has a searchable database going back to 1925, which is one of those neat perks that their boring IRL copies have yet to offer.

So, good idea/bad idea?

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Ooooooh BURN! Sarah Palin, the gun-toting ice bride who as of late has been calling Barack Obama "Barack the Wealth Spreader," seems to have forgotten that the policies of the Ice Planet Hoth, over which she governs, are rife with the very same socialistic practices she claims to hate soooooo much.

This from elitist Kuran The New Yorker:

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HSBC bought all the ad pages in this week's issue of New York magazine, remarkably outbuying all those CBS and and ABC attempts to do the same in People and TV Guide, respectively. Hey, people are still talking about the time Target bought all the ads in The New Yorker a couple years ago!

Still, the HSBC (which, it bears mentioning, is not an American bank so you'd probably be safer there then your current 10-year plan of stuffing hundred dollar bills into a coffee cup under a floorboard) bought the most ad pages (24 total, including web splashes), and spent the most money on their campaign.

So at this point, is it even worth mentioning that the ad-monopoly is affecting how magazines do business, and not necessarily for the better?

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Remember that New Yorker cover that portraying Barack and Michelle Obama as fist-bumping terrorists and everyone was like, "Racists!!" and The New Yorker was like, "You're all hella dumb?"

Well, would real racists come out and officially support Obama with a 4,214 word editorial about why he is the best and our current government and John McCain are the worst?

"Didn't think so (please god stop calling us racists):"

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So, a few thousand weeks late to the saga, Entertainment Weekly satirizes The New Yorker's controversial (or at least labeled as such) Obama fist-bump cover, with Mr. Stephen Colbert playing Michelle and Mr. Jon Stewart playing Barack. That EW opted for the very talented, but most over-exposed pair of political pundits shows exactly how relevant the cover story really is. Read: Everything has already been done. Perfect timing, then, to bring up New Yorker editor David Remnick's thoughts on what his magazine accomplished, or didn't, in running Barry Blitt's cover:

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The MacArthur Foundation is a philanthropic foundation that yearly gives a portion of its $7 billion endowment to twenty to forty people who "show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work."

In case you wanted some of that sweet "no-strings attached" $500k, which each of the MacArthur Fellows receive, you better brush up on your astrophysics, neuroscience, and jazz sax.

Or, if you are anything like one of this year's winners, just be a really good music critic:

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Last month, it was just Wired and Rolling Stone that the marketing kiddies behind Dexter showed the world. Now, a full-blown newsstand: The New Yorker (with a cover from actual New Yorker illustrator Edward Sorel), GQ, and Esquire get the treatment. This comes, supposedly, on the heels of a marketing trend, where advertisers are using mock magazines to push their product — even though print is dying and everyone is using The Twitter!

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Either Ian Parker was giving Alex Baldwin a really long back-handed compliment, or the 8,500 words he used to describe his interview with the actor is an accurate description of how depressing it is to be a Baldwin.

Baldwin, 50, has had a long career in films, is currently winning awards for his role of Tina Fey's boss on 30 Rock, and is the most successful of his tribe. Yet the man just can't seem to catch a break, at least in his own mind. And he's going to tell you allllllll about it:

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While the media accused David Remnick of smearing Barack Obama, the public didn't care — they wanted to know what all the hubbub was about. So they picked up The New Yorker in droves, as much as you can call 85,000 newsstand copies "droves." And nevermind that they didn't even have to purchase the magazine to see what all the controversy was about — newsstands were displaying the cover for free. Like the always do. (Bonus: the Obama cover of Us Weekly sold quite well (about 1 million newsstand sales), just like we thought it might.)

Of course, Google thinks it can do Wikipedia better than Wikipedia. Enter Knol, debuting to the public yesterday, and operating incredibly slowly today, where articles are posted about specific subjects, and they're written by experts, whatever that means. The articles are — so clever! — called "knols," and so far most of them are health-related. And, to really set the project apart from its democratic counterpart, Google has teamed up with The New Yorker to allow authors to post a cartoon from the magazine to accompany their entries. Which means you can expect things like this:

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Barry Blitt's name has been drowned in excrement this week, following his New Yorker cover that portrayed Barack Obama as every Jew in Florida thinks of him. But Blitt's a good guy! His work is top notch! And while, like a movie star or a prostitute, cartoonists are only as good as their last work, it's worth remembering Blitt has delivered some of the finest cover art in recent months.

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Hahahaha — this New Yorker-Obama story isn't going anywheres! But at least we're getting to the fun part. You know, where the attention to David Remnick's defense begins to slide and the amusing satires of the magazine's own satire begin. We already brought you one spin-off, with yesterday's National Review parody. So how about an alternative to The New Yorker's own cover?

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While The New Yorker defends its Barack Obama cover as satire, which was supposed to point out all the ridiculous right-wing smear tactics aimed at the candidate, critics of the cover have been using one tried and true logic experiment: What would everybody think if some place other than The New Yorker published it?

At last (yes, a full 24 hours later!), a cartoonist has solved the mystery.

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Beside Jack Shafer — who, in writing for Slate, must take the opposite opinion of every other critic, because that is the way they do things there — who else is going to call The New Yorker Barack Obama cover for what the magazine intended: a brilliant bit of satire?

None other than Fox News' Fox & Friends, where former MSNBC anchor Monica Crowley and Bob Beckel guested and bitchslapped Obama for not laughing off the whole matter. Hey, maybe this will finally give late night hosts something to make fun of Obama for?

David Remnick has more than a hoard of angry cable news pundits, attack dog right-wing bloggers, and two perturbed presidential candidates to deal with in the fall out from this week's Barack Obama cover. He also has advertisers to answer to. Ad sales execs there say the cover was discussed with advertisers in every single meeting on Monday, "and not in a good way." Though counter that with the official NYer statement that clients haven't been voicing anger over it, and nobody is pulling ad pages. So while you needn't expect next week's issue to be any thinner, you might, in fact, see a thicker magazine in your mail slot of Remnick makes room for the flood of angry letters they've been receiving. Maybe they can beat Vanity Fair's 981?

So here's the takeaway from this New Yorker/Obama scandal: The magazine meant the cover as satire; no media outlet that expresses an opinion can take every viewpoint into consideration; not everybody is going to get it, and that was sort of the point; and yes, the right-wing is going to have a field day with this.

Also: The actual 14,500-word article "Making It" that the cover was illustrating, written by the magazine's Ryan Lizza, is getting zero attention.

Even when Lizza dropped by Hardball.

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While David Remnick spends his hours defending this week's controversial New Yorker cover, one thing is worth nothing: The magazine's liberal slant isn't the only evidence that it's actually on Barack Obama's side. Editors at NYer donated some $4,800 to his campaign. "The largest donation, $2,300, came in February from Francois Mouly, the art director for the magazine. Writer and editor Roger Angell gave $500 to Obama, also during the primary race; while staff writer Joshua Hersh and theater critic John Lahr each $1,000 to him in 2007." (A search for Remnick contributions this year turns up zilch.)

Our only advice to David Remnick, in his defense of this week's New Yorker cover? Dude should've waited until Wednesday to respond to all the critics — and kept the story relevant all week long. [HuffPo]

God bless David Remnick. Were it not for his New Yorker cover this week, and his insistence that its depiction — of Barack Obama as a radical Muslim giving wifey Michelle a good old fashioned fist bump while, for extra effect, an American flag burns beneath the mantle, where Osama bin Laden watches over — the cable news talking heads might have to devote another five days of punditry to the economy, or bother touching on the near collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But now Chris Matthews, Bill O'Reilly, and Lou Dobbs can wrap their heads around this glaring symbol of ANTI-AMERICANISM!

And while we all debate over whether this cover is a depiction of the Obama mythology and scare tactics perpetrated by the right wing — Barack is an Islamic radical! Michelle hates America! — we're nearly certain zero attention will be paid to the footwear that illustrator Barry Blitt chose to deck the couple out in. Michelle dons a pair of military boots to match her army fatigues, and Barack sports the sandals any Muslim in traditional garb would be wearing. And they're both stamping upon the eagle that represents all that is free and good and whole of this country. Burn them at the stake!

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… the first thing you must know is that the funniest line does not capture the prize: "You are not trying to submit the funniest caption; you are trying to win The New Yorker's caption contest." And then there are the tips for getting past the contest's gatekeeper, "the cartoon editor's assistant, a twentysomething from Texas named Farley Katz." Appeal to his past as a Six Flags rollercoaster operator and a telemarketer. And then? And then it comes down to putting together that one simple line.

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