Pollux writes:

Stories and news reports about Bo, the First Dog, had for a time that whiff of newness and now-ness, like the snatches of a Susan Boyle song. But the whiff of newness has now been replaced by that regular doggy smell, and taking care of Bo has been added to Obama’s long, long list of concerns, worries, and responsibilities. The New Yorker once depicted Obama carefully interviewing potential candidates for the First Pet position.

Bob Staake’s cover for the April 27, 2009, issue of The New Yorker now gives us Bo and gives us Bo’s new, immense domain: the White House Lawn. The lawn looks lush, welcoming, velvety, and verdant—and lonely. Have we forgotten Bo?

“The mob is fickle, brother,” Lucilla says to her brother, the Emperor Commodus, in a scene from Gladiator. “He’ll be forgotten in a month.” Commodus, as played by Joaquin Phoenix, gives her a sickly grin. “No, much sooner than that,” he replied. “It’s been arranged.”

Whoever arranges the sequence of news stories at Fox and CNN (I imagine the culprits are the same Ringwraiths who pursued Frodo and friends in the Lord of the Rings trilogy) has arranged for the Bo Story to slip from the public consciousness. We are interested in newer things now—did you know that they’re coming out with an Octomom musical?

Perhaps no one cares about Bo anymore; the months of anticipation leading up to it may be responsible for that. We’ve burned ourselves out, like a child sitting in a pile of destroyed wrapping paper on Christmas Day.

If the general public has forgotten Bo, The New Yorker certainly has not, nor has Staake, who is finding a publisher for his new book, The First Pup: The Unofficial Story Of How Sasha and Malia’s Dad Got the Presidency—And How They Got a Dog.

“You put any dog on the cover and everyone goes crazy,” Staake has remarked. “This cover is good at being cute, but it also works as a metaphor for Obama. The best New Yorker covers are the ones where the reader looks and brings their own interpretation, which brings the image to a new dimension.”

The Phoenix has suggested that the cover is symptomatic of a general fixation with Bo, and Obama in general, that exists at The New Yorker offices. “We’re now reaching the point where it’ll be a surprise,” Adam Reilly of The Phoenix writes, “when the New Yorker doesn’t feature an Obama-related image on its cover—and the problem actually seems to be intensifying. Two Obama-pooch covers in short succession? What were they thinking?!?”

But I believe that Staake’s cover isn’t so much emblematic of a fixation with Bo as much as it comments on the fact that, now that the excitement over the selection of the First Pet has receded, we are now left only with all that we see on this cover: a dog, a lawn, and a house. And that’s a general artistic comment that isn’t necessarily based on a burning social issue of our time, but it is one that is effectively made nonetheless.

Staake’s covers, composed of digitally constructed shapes and soft PhotoShop brushes, are effective in their simplicity: the vast green square that fills the New Yorker cover has almost swallowed Bo up. This dog is one Magic Eraser click away from being digitally eradicated.

Obama’s dog doesn’t have a normal life anymore. Neither does Obama. Staake’s White House is beautiful, imposing, and lifeless. There isn’t a living soul on this cover besides Bo himself, who presumably has the run of the house. Maybe the house has the run of the dog.

The website for the Portuguese Water Dog Club of America, which I imagine saw a lot of traffic in recent weeks, recommends that “Porties” not be “left alone for long periods of time.”

It’s lonely at the top—for Portuguese Water Dogs as well as for humans.