I thought it was pretty obvious that this was a satire of the plethora of attempted smear jobs on Obama – you know, ‘Secret Muslim’, ‘Barack Hussein Obama’, and all that. But Obama and his campaign have decided to interpret this cartoon as an ‘offensive and tasteless’ attack on the Obamas.

Various commentators chimed in that, while it was fairly obvious to them that the cartoon was satirical, Obama needed to denounce the cartoon because there are so many simple, regular people folk out there who are just too stupid to understand what satire is.

For the benefit of these poor, unfortunate idiots, any cartoons intended to be satirical should be clearly labelled ‘This is Satire’, with diagrams explaining the concept of satire for all those legions of illiterate readers out there.

I know I might be going out on a limb here, but I believe that most people actually don’t like being treated like morons. I think that’s part of the reason the current US President is so unpopular, and I think it’s part of the reason so many people are turning away from traditional media, at least in North America.

It’s a shame that the politician who promised to change politics is now doing the same thing.

Doug Sarro is a POLIS Summer School Student from Toronto, Canada. He blogs at vutube.blogspot.com.