Barack Obama New Yorker cover 'offensive'

BARACK Obama's campaign team has blasted the latest issue of the New Yorker magazine as "tasteless and offensive".

The cartoon cover depicts Barack and Michelle Obama celebrating with a fist bump in the Oval Office in front of a portrait of Osama bin Laden and an American flag burning in the fireplace.

Senator Obama appears in traditional dress reminiscent of a picture of him dressed in a Somali robe and turban - which appeared on the Drudge Report website in February.

His wife Michelle is seen wearing combat fatigues and with machinegun slung over her shoulder.
 
While the presidental candidate declined to comment on the cover - “I have no response to that” - his campaign didn't mince its words.

The influential weekly has defended the image, which portrayed the Democratic White House hopeful in Islamic dress beside a burning US flag.

The magazine claims its cover, titled "The Politics of Fear", critiques unfounded allegations during the campaign that have attempted to paint Obama, a committed Christian, as a closet radical Muslim.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said any intended satire was wide of the mark.

"The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create," he said.

"But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

Obama's opponent for the White House, Republican candidate John McCain condemned the cartoon as "totally inappropriate".