October Surprise

              Political analysts have noted that in campaigning for the presidential election this year, both candidates have made a variety of outlandish claims that are supported by little to no evidence.  It is for this reason that the election has been the subject of much satire, including the political cartoon recently published in the New Yorker titled "October Surprise", by Zachary Kanin.  Kanin regularly contributes cartoons to the New Yorker and is also the author and illustrator of The Short Book.  The New Yorker is a  magazine read nationwide that was created in 1925 and is published on a weekly basis.  In this particular cartoon, Kanin illustrates multiple scenarios in which bizarre facts are revealed about the two presidential candidates.  For example, in one scenario Mitt Romney releases his birth certificate and it is discovered that he is actually a forty-six-year-old woman from Des Moines, Iowa.  In another instance, Barack Obama's "all-nude" issue of the Harvard Law Review surfaces.  By creating these satirical scenarios, Kanin attempts to poke fun at the ridiculous nature of some of the claims made about the presidential candidates.  While the readers of the New Yorker are primarily liberal, the cartoonist decided to take a neutral stance by including both candidates in the cartoon.  Both satire and allusions to popular culture are used to make the cartoon more appealing to readers, such as the reference to a Weekend at Bernie's.  I believe the cartoonist effectively conveyed his message to viewers of the cartoon because it connected with a sense of exasperation among voters over the childish nature of the current election.  In addition, the satire remained light-hearted due to the humorous illustrations and so people who might otherwise have ignored another analysis of the presidential election were drawn into viewing it.