With a portrait of Osama Bin Laden on the wall and an American flag burning in the fireplace, many are finding the incendiary cartoon on the current cover of The New Yorker not only utterly unpleasant, but outright offensive.

And it is.

The illustration of Michelle and Barack Obama as terrorists pounding fists in the Oval Office is an attack on the very image the Obama campaign is trying to rid from the minds of many mindless Americans. But anyone who knows anything about the democratic presidential hopeful knows he is neither a Quran-thumping terrorist nor a Muslim at best. (Has everyone already forgotten Reverend Wright?) Yet, many of us are scratching our heads and wondering how this cover made it through the magazine’s hierarchy of editors all the way to newsstands around the nation. But the answer is really quite clear.

It brought in readers.

Yes, the cover is offensive whether or not you vote red or blue. And yes, it was in poor taste. But it was a brilliant move from a business perspective. It will increase traffic to the company’s Web site. It will sell magazines. It will attract a new audience. And ultimately this provocative cover will accomplish exactly what the editors were hoping for: it got people talking.

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