NEW YORK, July 15: A cover cartoon in the latest issue of the New Yorker magazine depicting Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as flag-burning and fist-bumping radicals has come in for a bi-partisan condemnation (except for some extreme right groups).

The cartoon, titled ‘The Politics of Fear’, shows Obama wearing traditional Arab Muslim dress – robe, turban and sandals — while his wife Michelle has an assault rifle slung over one shoulder and is dressed in camouflage and combat boots with her hair in an Afro. The cartoon, which Obama’s campaign said was ‘’tasteless and offensive’’, is not explained inside the magazine. The issue, dated July 21, also contains a 15,000-word report about Obama’s political education and early years in Chicago.

The timing of the cover is considered ominous coming on the eve of a trip to the Middle East in which Obama is to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders and hopes to shore up his credentials with American Jews who have been sceptical about whether he is a true friend of Israel.

In a statement, the magazine’s editor David Remnick said the cover combined ‘’fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are’’.

‘’I can’t speak for anyone else’s interpretations, all I can say is that it combines a number of images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some, about Obama’s supposed ‘lack of patriotism’ or his being ‘soft on terrorism’ or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers. That somehow all this is going to come to the Oval Office,’’ Remnick said.

A national Islamic civil rights and advocacy organisation called the cartoon inflammatory, intended to portray them as Muslim, militant, pro-terrorist and anti-American.

In a statement, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said: ‘’Unfortunately, the New Yorker’s front cover cartoon failed to achieve its stated goal of exposing and lampooning right-wing caricatures of the Obamas. These inflammatory images and spurious associations will only serve to reinforce the racism and anti-Muslim stereotypes that the magazine says it is out to challenge.’’

Obama, who is Christian, has long fought rumours that he is secretly a Muslim. His wife has endured her own attacks, including ones that claimed there was a videotape of her criticising ‘’whitey’’ from a church pulpit. The Obama campaign says there is no such tape because she never spoke at a church.

Asked about the cartoon, Obama himself said: ‘’I have no response to that.’’ His spokesman Bill Burton said: ‘’The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create.’’ ‘’But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.’’

Obama’s Republican rival in the race for the White House, Senator John McCain, concurred that the cover was out of bounds, calling it ‘’totally inappropriate, and frankly I understand if Senator Obama and his supporters would find it offensive.’’