It's generally known as the thinking person's magazine, but yesterday a lot of people wondered just what The New Yorker was thinking when it published a "satirical" cover of Sen. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, on its July 21 issue.

The illustration by artist Barry Blitt shows the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and his wife standing in the Oval Office. He's in Muslim garb; she's a gun-toting terrorist. There's a portrait of Osama bin Laden behind them, and an American flag burning in the fireplace.

And they're fist-bumping.

The magazine cover -- titled "The Politics of Fear" -- was meant to mock the "absurdity" of rumors that have swirled relentlessly around Mr. Obama during the campaign, New Yorker Editor David Remnick said.

"What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama's -- both Obamas' -- past, and their politics," Mr. Remnick told The Huffington Post, adding that the July 21 issue also contains commentary and a substantial 15,000-word piece on the candidate's political education and rise in Chicago.

"I wouldn't have run a cover just to get attention," he said. "I ran the cover because I thought it had something to say."

Nonetheless, reaction in political circles and the news media was overwhelmingly negative.

"Tasteless and offensive," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

"Totally inappropriate," said Mr. Obama's opponent, Sen. John McCain.

While the magazine's subscribers -- Upper East Side liberals and their ilk -- may "get" the magazine's cover, one expert said it's unclear if it will ultimately serve to defuse the false rumors about Mr. Obama or merely reinforce them.

"What this cover will do is at least maintain the uncertainty that some people may feel about his religion, family history or other issues," said Nicholas DiFonzo, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology and author of "Rumor Psychology" and "The Watercooler Effect."

"The stereotype of people who read The New Yorker is that they are more cosmopolitan and they'll look at this and understand the irony, but for some people the irony will be lost on them," he said. "That's not to say they're backwards or unintelligent or anything like that, but had the magazine published a cover showing Mr. Obama shaking the pope's hand, it would have been more beneficial to him."

Even professional satirists -- at least those of a liberal bent -- said they weren't amused. Writing in The Huffington Post, a widely read political blog, Trey Ellis said he bridles at "any and all PC constraints, and of course coming from a venerable, legendary and reliably center-left magazine, I get the intended joke, but dressing up perhaps the next president of the United States as the new millennium equivalent of Adolf Hitler is just gross and dumb."

Jeffrey Goldberg, a blogger at The Atlantic, begged to differ.

"The New Yorker cover this week is exceedingly funny," he wrote in a piece titled "Obama, The New Yorker, and the Death of Humor."

"It's not a magazine's job to protect presidential candidates from misinterpreted satire. As someone who appreciates a good joke, as well as bad joke, it bothers me that people are reacting so dyspeptically to the cover, and it's a shame Obama's campaign couldn't have laughed it off."

Within 24 hours, the controversy had crossed the Atlantic to England, with readers of The Guardian debating whether Americans really understand satire, a staple in the British press.

"Look, the average American doesn't get satire or 'nuanced' message," wrote a poster, identified as Concerned1. "They will see this cover for what it is and believe he is a Muslim, when he is not."

The magazine hit the newsstands on the same day that a USA Today/Gallup poll of 2,000 Americans found that a majority of blacks, whites and Hispanics think Mr. Obama's election would improve race relations.

The firestorm over The New Yorker cover actually may present an opportunity for the Illinois senator, said Drew Westen, a political scientist at Emory University and author of "The Political Brain."

"If I were the Obama campaign, I wouldn't attack The New Yorker, but I would use this as an opportunity once again to talk about how the right is trying to paint him and his wife as 'foreign, different, not like us, and, by the way, did I mention that they're black?' I don't think the cover does much other than give the Obama campaign what they need."

Some months ago, Obama staffers decided to confront the Internet-generated rumors about the candidate and his family head-on, with a Web site "rumor clearinghouse" -- fightthesmears.com -- to debunk all the stories about Obama's faith, upbringing, family and friendships.

It's not clear if the Web site has had an effect, but a recent study by the Pew Research Center found that the Obama-is-a-Muslim rumor was believed by only 10 percent of registered voters, although some subgroups -- conservative Republicans, conservative Democrats, those who did not attend college, voters from the South and Midwest, rural voters, and white evangelical Protestants -- were more likely to believe it.

"People who may not have the time or energy to find out the truth may see this kind of picture and say, 'Oh my goodness, I've seen [Obama's] picture in African garb, there must be something to this,'" Mr. DiFonzo said. "But for that segment of the population who want to believe it, the evidence won't affect their views one way or the other. This cover is really a wash for them."

Still, mocking a rumor isn't the best way to eliminate it, he said, noting that when corporate giant Procter & Gamble was beset by rumors that Satanists ran the company, they did exactly the right thing.

"They got Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell to urge Christians and religious people not to spread this rumor," he said.

"What they didn't do was come out with a cartoon with a picture of a Procter & Gamble CEO dressed as Satan."