Why Does This Have to Be the New Yorker’s Cover?
This is the cover of the latest issue of the New Yorker:
Ok, I “get” the image. I know it’s not about Steve Jobs‘ faith and that it’s about his products’ omnipresence. I know the image is a “universally understood” icon of the afterlife. Still, does anyone else find it disrespectful that Jobs, a Buddhist (if anything at all), is being portrayed as a man making his way to the Pearly Gates of Christianity?
Xavier Lanier feels the same way:
Each religion has its own theory of what happens to us in the afterlife. Whatever your beliefs (or lack of religios beliefs) are, it’s an ultimate sign of disrespect to be memorialized in a manner which doesn’t reflect how you lived. You wouldn’t place a a cross over a Jew’s grave or hold a Catholic mass for an atheist, would you? The New Yorker most certainly wouldn’t dare depicting a deceased celebrity in any stage of [Islamic] rites unless its editors were 1000% sure he was a Muslim.
…
On a side note, it’s pretty goddamn annoying to see the St. Peter image trotted out in a cartoon every time someone famous dies. It’s the lazy cartoonist’s way to honor someone worthy of respect and it’s especially egregious when the deceased person believed a scenario like that would never happen in the first place.
Like when atheist comedian George Carlin died…
It’s not an insult. I know the cartoonists mean well. But surely they can come up with something better suited for the person they’re portraying.
From Friendly Atheist
I was waiting for something like this to come trotting out. He's dead, he was apparently loved the world over, so what do they do? Depict him in Heaven, whilst ignoring his beliefs whilst he was living.
Not. Surprised. At. All.
~Mooglets