The names of colors are stories in themselves. There is poetry in “burnt sienna”, “royal blue” or “payne’s gray”. The names of colors are also tied to subjectivity, perspective, and even something as banal as branding. The paint samples at your local hardware stores are filled with pseudo-literary titles for hues that range from the mundane to the sublime. The great irony of names for color is that everyone conceives of a specific hue as uniquely as we conceive of love or experience the taste of a peach.

It is true that colors play on our emotions. We experience different sensations with different juxtapositions. But what about the names? Does a name sway us? For a painter, colors are both fetish objects to adore and the very elements of the art of putting paint to a surface. For conceptual artists as varied as Yves Klein or Gilbert and George, color can be suffused with symbolic power (International Yves Klein Blue or the gold of the performance “The Singing Sculpture”).

There is mystery and poetry in the relationship between language and color. There is no limit to the historical and political implications of this relationship. Politicians wear their predictable dark blue suits and the environmentalist clothes himself in the green of photosynthesis.

Walking in my neighborhood on a recent sunny Sunday morning I noticed a young and attractive family out for a brisk walk. The father, mother, and newborn stroller-bound baby appeared to be soaking in the breezes and sunshine that made the morning of November 8, 2009 exceptionally beautiful in Lake Worth, Florida. I enjoy observing people in my neighborhood, particularly those that appear to be content and accomplished (probably because they do not appear to fit in what is mostly a border-line lower-income white neighborhood of over-the hill hippies, immigrants, and retirees). The wife, an attractive petite woman in her early thirties, was wearing tight and form-fitting workout wear that articulated a curvy figure, that, along with her confident gait, gave her an air of impetuous eroticism rarely displayed by women when they are with their children. When I looked down to examine her footwear my budding ardour was suddenly stricken down by her rubber and plastic Crocs. What made matters worse were the multiple pairs of Crocs worn by the entire family as if they were some form of signifier representing their political and social standing. In much the same way people used to wear Rene Lacoste alligator shirts in the 1980s, Crocs have become a type of status symbol for 30-something families who wish to project an illusion of comfort, practicality, and accomplishment.

How rubber and plastic, made from petroleum products, can be construed as accomplished or comfortable is only one obvious question that first appeared to me on that walk. Another may be how someone can find hideous, formless, rubber footwear filled with holes and held together with a riveted rear strap “stylish”. But alas, taste, as in beauty and love, is in the eye of the beholder and is also directly proportional to one’s independence of thought. That I find these “shoes” an affront to human dignity and appalling, is a reflection of my aesthetics. What most disturbs me about this fashion and all trends, is how Crocs are a relatively recent example of conformist thinking arrived at as a result of successful marketing campaigns geared toward a particular demographic, in this case a white pseudo-progressive upper middle class family. Those who wear Crocs are not only guilty of bad taste (in my mind) but also pop-culture brain-washing (perhaps their greatest offense). This guilt was a double wound to the visual sphere because once a Croc-wearer leaves the privacy of her home and enters the outside world the first offense of bad taste towards oneself (betraying a demeaned sense of self-worth), is compounded by polluting the visual sphere of a community.

Worse still is how Croc-wearers typify the continuing decline of self-respect and dignity when it comes to American social and fashion mores. Crocs are the final blow to fashion decorum that has pushed the United States over the cliff and into the abyss of “comfort and pragmatism”. This emphasis on practicality, coupled with the American obsession with “comfort,” was perpetuated by such monstrosities as Birkenstock sandals, flip-fops, and a seemingly infinite number of bad t-shirts and inane ball caps. American society has so degraded its understanding of formality and the difference between the private and the public realms that there is no longer any concern for one’s appearance in the world.

The notion of formal attire or respect for one’s community as displayed through one’s clothing and comportment, now seems a quaint and distant thought, like good manners and glamour in films from the 1940s.  If we think of one who is dignified as one who is worthy of esteem, respect, and honor, then Crocs are attack on our collective dignity because they betray an inability to show esteem for both our individual and communal appearance. Crocs are an affront to good taste and a betrayal of the social fashion contract precisely because they demean those who wear them.

I remember hating the polyester green pants and dress shirts I was forced to wear at my Catholic high school, Cardinal Newman, in West Palm Beach. In hindsight, I am grateful for the experience because dress codes strip away the potential for fashion harm and competition and streamline appearances so that the task at hand, in my case, learning, can take priority. The interesting thing about our high school dress code was that we were still able to convey an individual sense of self and construct our identities through our choice of footwear. Our shoes are the single most important marker about our relationship to fashion, and hence, to our anonymous visual world. In my high school the preppy girls (this was the 1980s) wore burgundy dress penny loafers. The rich boys wore leather boat shoes, sometimes referred to as “docksiders” and the cool artistic dudes (like my friends and I) wore some form of Converse or Nike shoe (This was before Nike started exporting the majority of its manufacturing to sweatshops and before Nike came to be a cultural signifier for sports in general and Afro-American cool in particular).

When I was growing up it was paramount that regardless of my youthful protestations, I had to wear suits and ties to our Greek Orthodox Church, weddings, baptisms, and any other important community event. Women had to wear dresses, their best shoes, and so forth. This was not some sort of fashion competition or test for status. Rather, this collective sense of propriety in dress was meant to signal a respect for our community, our Greek culture, and for our religion. One simply did not go to church wearing jeans, t-shirts or anything resembling casual wear. It was just not done and it was a formative experience that taught me the relationship between fashion and dignity, formality and informality and when each was appropriate.

Lest one say that money is a factor in wearing good clothing I respond with two words: thrift stores. I have found handsomely-tailored high quality wool European three-piece suits on many occasions for less than $20! Money is not a factor in looking good any more than it buys love or makes one great. All dignity through fashion takes is imagination, effort, and respect for one’s self. A decent upbringing that comes with a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong in one’s appearance as much as morality in general also helps.

It is true that clothes do not make the man and that the man makes the clothes. In fact, the relationship is more symbiotic than we may care to admit but the bottom line is that we make choices with what we wear. These choices say so much about us. These choices present ourselves to our world and represent our relationship to our self-esteem and our esteem for our community. When we degrade these relationships with ill-informed choices or poor taste or when we are negligent with our appearance in the name of “comfort” or “trends” we demean ourselves in the process and our collective self-worth suffers for it as much as our good taste does.

Cynical irony is a social disease born of cowardice, arrogance, and a derisive sense of humor based on negativity and schadenfreude. In the contemporary political realm of cartoons, sit-coms, talk shows and the relatively recent phenomena of mock news shows such as “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report”, one sees the development and seepage of irony into the popular cultural mainstream at an unparalleled level. We are taught to laugh along with the inside jokes of today’s ironic humor and as we do so, we attain a phantom sense of self-gratification and a feeling that we are a part of (or apart from?) a unique club outside the purview of reality. Ironic humor has been with us since the time of Socrates in the dialogues, where it was used for virtuous aims within the Platonist ideal world right up through the first mock newscasts on Saturday Night Live. What distinguishes the poetic forms of irony of Plato, Jonathan Swift, and Monty Python, from the cynical irony of The New Yorker, is both intent and form. The irony of the philosopher is one at the service of truth and uses its wit to deconstruct untruth. The irony born of cynicism cannot countenance truth and uses negativity for the purposes of humorous self-entertainment. Cynical irony’s pervasiveness in other fields of knowledge, from contemporary art, film, and music is often no less cynical and is perhaps the most ominous sign of the current post-millenial conditions of apathy and defeatism. In short, irony is an easy way out, away from sincere, difficult, and positive thinking. It is a release valve for the steam of frustration that also leaves in its wake, a lack of earnest engagement with life’s questions concerning the good, the virtuous, and the heroic. Irony has become a psychological crutch for the masses and cynical irony has become a mental poison.

The cover illustration of the July 21, 2008 edition of The New Yorker Magazine presents an interesting case of duplicitous cynical irony trying to mask itself as a progressive ironic attack on right-wing prejudices and racist stereotypes while in truth it functions as a dark ressentiment over the defeat of Hilary Clinton by Barack Obama in the race for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. Ressentiment, French for literally, “the sensation of feeling something over and over again”, and commonly, but inadequately, translated into English as “resentment”, is a deep form of existential bitterness and anger, often present without one’s awareness. What makes the New Yorker cover insidious is that while claiming to attack the prejudices, fear-mongering, and fears of the Republican and right-wing machine, it perpetuates those very same qualities in a powerful visual form, and feeding the very hatreds and prejudices it claims to usurp.

The cover, depicting Obama dressed in a turban and Middle Easter tunic with sandals accompanied by his wife Michelle carrying what appears to be a rendition of a jihadi (Kalashnikov?) rifle, wearing a big 1960s style afro while she is giving her husband a dreaded “fist bump”, includes a portrait of Osama Bin Laden in the background and an American flag burning in the fireplace, all of which takes place in the Oval Office of the White House. The illustration’s attempt at ironic political humor claims to be functioning as satire and employs a crucial variable in the history of irony: humor, and demonstrates the importance of perspective in the equation of what one may find funny. Unfortunately, it also perpetuates many falsehoods about Obama that have been propogating as attempts at smear and fanning the paranoias of bigotry: that Obama is Muslim, that because his middle name is “Hussein” he cannot be trusted, that he is some sort of radical Black power figure in hiding, etc. With these untruths and ill-informed attempts at political wit comes a danger. What a KKK member may find humorous in a racist joke, the progressive AFL-CIO crusader will, in all likelihood, deplore. Humor is a powerful weapon, regardless of what political cause employs it.

Humor is the psychological weapon of mass destruction in the mediasphere and the New Yorker has employed it for this end in much of its history, some of it controversial, some of it not, but all of it akin to the bright adolescent trying to acquire both attention and new friends. What is important in deconstructing political cartoons, and indeed, all forms or attempts at irony, is the source. The source is the cipher that unlocks the code of irony.

In the case of the Obama cover this source is an urban, though not always urbane, weekly publication, often seen as the preeminent literary American periodical, in the cultural, financial, and media capital of the United States that also is the home of one, Senator Hilary Clinton who used many cynical racist, sexist, and opportunistic forms of innuendo in her attacks on Barack Obama during her campaign. Thus, without much imagination, one is hard-pressed to avoid making the judgment of a guilt by association or, more precisely, guilt by ressentiment over the Senator Clinton’s failed bid to win the Democratic Presidential nomination. Despite the claims of the illustration’s artist, Barry Blitt, and the magazine’s editor, David Remnick of attempting to point out and belittle, or weaken the power of such hateful depictions of Obama and his wife by the rumor-mongering classes on the Internet and the Machiavellian politicos in the Republican wing of our corporatist political system, the illustration is an affront to any supporter of justice, decency, and truth and any opponent of the perpetuation of hate and hateful stereotypes. It is a poor veil of irony.

Forget about Barack Obama, the issue here is larger than a presidential candidate. What is at stake is the perpetuation of destructive and ruinous imagery that has a long and painful history in the United States and that is lamely served up as some kind of progressive liberal political commentary. The cover is not only cynical, it is obscene on two fronts: because it attacks a candidate attempting to run on virtue, and because it attempts a dissimulation out of weakness, and is therefore hypocritical. The New Yorker cover is a sign of the typical cynical irony of many urban thought-processes: “I am smarter than you.” I am cooler than you.” “I am in the know.” Such an attitude, obviously condescending and self-serving, suffers from a weakness of will that knows no affirmation and cannot contemplate a positive relationship to ideas or to the harsh countenance of political realities. It must always succumb to a negative attack or critique, even when it is trying to mask itself as progressive. Cynical Irony is a form of weak thinking that gives in to negativity even while trying to appear progressive.

What makes the case of the New Yorker cover interesting is the possibility that it may in the end, in spite of itself, help Barack Obama’s campaign because of the outcry it has garnered so far. Read the responses to it in The Huffington Post, the majority of which condemn the cover. If indeed this was the case, it would be irony of another kind: poetic.