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To the New Yorker magazine’s decision to run a satirical cover depicting Barack Obama and his wife in a way that it confuses rather than instructs.

The editors said they wanted to hold up a mirror to prejudice and hate, but somewhere on the way all that was lost. The presidential candidate was portrayed as a radical Muslim in the White House, his wife as a gun-toting radical, and with the American flag burning in the fireplace.

Defenders of the cover pointed out that many such satirical cartoons have been printed to poke fun at President Bush, and that is so. The difference is that the Bush covers are routinely understood as over-the-top depictions and, in Obama’s case, many voters are still forming their own images about Obama’s personal story.

When a magazine has to explain what it meant to do when it runs a satirical piece, the point is lost.

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Bachmann’s ANWR fixation

To the silly, simplistic grandstanding by U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann who has launched a crusade to get oil companies to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The freshman Republican from Minnesota was on CNN last week in advance of a trip she and other Republican members of Congress are taking to ANWR.

In the interview, Bachmann said, “There couldn’t be a more perfect place to drill,” than ANWR. Her reasoning? The region, she said, is “actually in complete darkness many days of the year,” and “There are no trees in ANWR.”

And Bachmann continued her claims that America could return to $2-a-gallon gas, if only drilling could speed ahead.

Never mind that the Bush administration’s own studies predict that drilling in ANWR would likely drop gas prices by only a couple of cents per gallon and it would take 15 or more years for the effect to be felt.

Oil companies already hold rights to millions of acres of domestic oil drilling land and production has increased in places such as North Dakota.

Drilling in a pristine area — even one sometimes in the dark and treeless — is unnecessary, foolish and would provide no noticeable benefit.

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