Quick Hit: New Yorker covers and Strange Maps

This Quick Hit is via the enthralling Strange Maps: “Les extrèmes se touchent: Palinworld“:

SM explains the geography:

“Big Diomede and Little Diomede, are where les extrèmes se touchent, as the French say. These two islands in the middle of the Bering Strait, which separates Russia’s Far East from America’s Frozen North, are Russian and American respectively. As they are only 2.5 miles from each other, they are well within visibility range on a clear day. In winter, when the sea freezes over, you can even walk from the US to Russia, and vice versa – but check with customs first.

But to claim that geographical fact alone as a justification for foreign policy experience is just too absurd for words (*). [...]

(*) Strange Maps tries to be nonpartisan and apolitical, but insists on being anti-nonsense.”

[description: A cartoon on a New Yorker cover, depicting Palin, seen from behind, sitting at a desk and peering out of a large window with binoculars. Five blue-grey hills are labelled "ALASKA", with one red hill right in the background labelled "RUSSIA".]

The cover is based on a 1976 New Yorker cover, “The World As Seen From Ninth Avenue”.

[description: Two-thirds of the cartoon vista is taken up with a detailed picture of Ninth Ave, Tenth Ave, NYC, and Hudson River. One-third is a vaguely- and poorly-rendered view of the USA, with marked objects only including Jersey, Chicago, Washington DC, Kansas City, Nebraska, Utah, Las Vegas, Texas, and Los Angeles. The Mexican and Canadian borders are straight dotted lines. Beyond that, we see the Pacific, and three low white featureless islands, China, Japan, and Russia.]

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Tagged as: alaska, bering strait, big diomede, binoculars, canadian borders, customs, far east, foreign policy, geographical fact, hudson river, justification, little diomede, maps, new yorker, ninth avenue, policy experience, russia from my house, sarah palin, strange maps, two islands, visibility range