It was hard to miss the media frenzy this past week over the latest cover illustration on the New Yorker magazine.

The magazine, in an attempt at satire, published a cartoon showing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife in the Oval Office as victors in the race. The couple are made to look like terrorists celebrating as if they had just fooled the American voting public.

If you've followed this campaign to any degree - and if you know the political leanings of the New Yorker - the cartoon's intent is obvious. It is poking fun at the baseless conspiracies and blatant lies about Obama's religion and heritage that some people are spreading.

The Obama campaign, however, failed to see the humor and quickly blasted the image. The pundits then started chiming in. Soon enough, the big story of the week had nothing to do with any campaign issue or policy.

To me, though, the bigger story to emerge from the coverage of this cartoon is the depths to which political correctness in the country has sunk. Does the outrage over the New Yorker cover cartoon mean that satire will soon be taboo because there's a chance that someone won't understand it?

It's a scary thought.

One of the best features in the New Yorker are the cartoons sprinkled throughout the magazine's pages, and plenty of them are sarcastic and poking fun at some issue or person in the news.

Newspapers throughout the country publish editorial cartoons daily, and some of the most influential people in the world of journalism have been editorial cartoonists.

The Citizen publishes a couple of editorial cartoons each day, one national and one local. We've been fortunate for countless years to have the talented cartoonist Marty Stanton contribute illustrations on local topics, from Auburn's crows to the recent dust-up in Sennett over a new restaurant.

I do realize the New Yorker flap erupted in part because the cartoon was a cover illustration, which certainly gives it much more attention than if it had been buried on page 44.

But we should all still worry that the fallout from this case will have a chilling effect on political cartoons in general.

Does that mean I think anything goes if it's a political cartoon? No. There can certainly be cartoons that go too far, especially when their intent is to promote hate or bigotry.

Unfortunately, this society is losing its collective ability to see where that line should be drawn.

Executive editor Jeremy Boyer's columns appear Saturdays in The Citizen and he can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 231 or jeremy.boyer@lee.net