These are difficult days to be a liberal with a sense of humor, and I feel your pain, so I'd really like to help the three of you.

Just kidding! I'm sure there are way more than three liberals with a sense of humor out there -- nationwide, the figure's got to be at least in the upper hundreds -- but we'd never know it, because their appreciative chuckles were drowned out by all that faux-wailing over The New Yorker cover.

Worried lefties expended a lot of energy fretting over a friendly, even helpful, satirical cartoon when they should have been saving some moans for the jolly JibJab crew's late-week lacerations.

The New Yorker's cover, in case you missed it, depicted Barack and Michelle fist-bumping in the Oval Office, he in Muslim garb, she with an Afro and machine gun, a portrait of Osama bin Laden above the fireplace mantel, an American flag burning below.

Today's liberals, though sadly misguided, are certainly not so ignorant that they thought Barry Blitt's drawing was a straightforward rendering of this reliably left-wing publication's political viewpoint. Despite all the confusion caused by their political correctness (Barack as a Muslim -- the horror! -- not that there's anything wrong with that), they did realize the cartoon was lampooning the right-wing lunatic fringe.

No, what deeply concerned the liberal elite was the possibility that less sophisticated voters -- the fearful kind, who cling to guns and God -- might not get the joke. These crucial but dimwitted "swing" voters (not many of whom number among the magazine's million or so readers) might think there's enough truth to the ugly rumors that they'd vote against the left's latest political messiah. The outcry was to make sure the correct message got through.

Such is the frightening power of the satirical magazine cover that a cartoonist generated a spoof cover last week of the National Review, a conservative magazine, portraying Cindy McCain showering pills on a wheelchair-bound, bomb-happy John McCain, with Dick Cheney's portrait over the fireplace mantel and the Constitution burning below.

Remember how that satire made the evening news and the front page? No? Me either. But then, a black Democrat's election chances weren't at stake in that spoof.

Remember when Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" cartoon had George Bush addressing Condoleezza Rice as "brown sugar"? When Ted Rall depicted Ms. Rice as Bush's "house nigga" and suggested she needs "racial re-education camp"? Or when Jeff Danziger drew her as the slave Prissy from "Gone With the Wind"?

Remember the outcry? No, you don't, because there wasn't one.

The New Yorker cover was satirizing right-wing, racist rumor-mongers, while the much more widely seen cartoons by Trudeau et al straightforwardly condemn black conservatives as not "real" blacks. Which is more offensive? It doesn't matter, when the butt of either kind of joke is a Republican.

Considering what conservatives routinely weather, all this uproar over a New Yorker cartoon makes me think the leftists may have become too delicate to govern. So just as a good gardener gradually acclimates hothouse seedlings to the real-world climate, let me invite humor-loving liberals to try jibjab.com's latest good-natured foray into equal-opportunity political pokes.

During the 2004 presidential campaign, the comedy Web site's animated video of John Kerry and George Bush singing "This Land is Your Land" was seen more than 40 million times. When the new one debuted Wednesday, it was seen nearly a million times in the first 24 hours. (Three of those were mine; I love it.)

"Time for Some Campaignin' " needles the outgoing Bushies and this year's candidates, to the tune of "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

From atop a tank Mr. McCain sings, "Gather conservatives, lend me a hand / Unless you want this liberal wuss in command!" as he runs over Mr. Obama.

Then Mr. Obama appears astride a unicorn gamboling through fields of flowers and croons,

Gosh I'm so tired of divisive exchange
And I got one or two things to say about change,
Like the change we must change to the change we hold dear.
I really like change: Have I made myself clear?"

Oooh. Direct hit. But trust me, lib-friends, it'll be OK.

Here's how British writer Martin Amis mocked Ronald Reagan's rhetoric: "[He] shared ... the gift of the trust in a dream of a vision whose brilliant light in a shining moment showed a sweet day of extra love for a special person between the great oceans."

And you know, despite the satire, Mr. Reagan had some success.