The New Yorker magazine publishes great writing on many subjects other than politics.

Of those in that latter category, the articles serve as a weathervane for leftism.  

Perusing my copy each week, I focus on the former while ignoring the latter.  However, the vast majority of readers swallow the whole thing.

I knew that The New Yorker would celebrate Pride month, but how?  

Then I saw the June 12 cover.  The title in front of the Andy Warholish rip-off image was "The Look of Pride."  Against a pink background, a cartoon figure with a mohawk haircut and of indeterminate sexuality stared at me while picking a blue-edged white tooth with a long yellow fingernail at the end of a pinkie finger.  This person would have been a clown except for the combination of the partially pixelated beige sneering face and the ingenious use of black in the hair, eyelashes, and tunic, which suggested an Antichrist seducing or coercing followers and unbelievers as necessary.

This week’s cover, “The Look of Pride,” by @sasha_velour. #NewYorkerCovers https://t.co/AwatgPP5tB pic.twitter.com/AVf1AxpJIm

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) June 5, 2023

I wondered what was going on here.  The gay artist Andy Warhol would never have taken this approach.  I imagine that he would have executed such a commission by producing iconic images of: Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Britten, Alan Turing, Gore Vidal, Jan Morris, and Camille Paglia. 

No such luck.  So what is the cover's meaning?

The New Yorker's tongue is firmly in cheek.  All the "squares" are frightened by the brave new world, but we are laughing at them while enjoying the garish portrait.

More importantly, the cover reflects a change in the LGBT movement.  It began with a plea for acceptance.  Most of us are just like responsible heterosexuals.  Therefore, we want to end discrimination and become members of civil society.  The New Yorker now presents a new bizarre and incoherent message to its audience: we are not just like you; we are better, because we transcend not only biology, but objective reality.  Men, women, and children no longer exist as fixed categories in the taxonomy of our species.  These assertions undergird our politics.  We favor the sexualization of humans under age 12; the castration of humans under age 18; men, whoever they are, identifying as women, entering all women's spaces whether in athletics, locker rooms, bathrooms, prisons, etc.; and a limitless number of genders.  Anyone who disagrees will be canceled while we build Utopia.

The irony is that the full implementation of this world view would lead not to Utopia, but rather to dystopia (even for the small number of adults with gender dysphoria), governed by someone very like the Antichrist on the New Yorker cover.

Image: Twitter screen shot from The New Yorker.