Chill, Baby

I, for one, think the notorious new New Yorker cover is good satire. Obama should show a little more of a sense of humor about it.

"If you would diminish something, you would first increase it," said Lao Tzu a few millennia ago. In precisely that fashion, people like Stephen Colbert and the New Yorker editors are defusing a jingoist scare tactic by amplifying it in a comical way. Obama's best tactic is to laugh along at it - while saluting Old Glory, sporting a flag lapel pin, and munching on some apple pie.