Jul 23, 2008 8:30 am US/Pacific
Vanity Fair Spoofs New Yorker With McCain Cartoon
(CBS)
If you thought the New Yorker cover cartoon of the Obamas crossed a line, then you may also find Vanity Fair's fake cover featuring the McCains offensive.
CBS station WBBM-TV in Chicago reports that Vanity Fair put the spoof on its blog in what it says is an act of solidarity.
The Vanity Fair cartoon shows John McCain with a walker; his wife Cindy with a fistful of prescription drugs, the Constitution burning in the fireplace and President George W. Bush's portrait on the wall.
Chicago Magazine Editor Richard Babcock said, "The clever meter is higher for Vanity Fair than for the New Yorker."
The New Yorker cover last week made waves with U.S. Sen. Barack Obama dressed in Muslim attire, his wife Michelle as a machine gun-toting 60s radical, the American flag burning in the Oval Office fireplace with a picture of Osama bin Laden on the wall.
WBBM spoke to several people about the Vanity Fair spoof and the original New Yorker cartoon.
Steve Silverman said, "This is traditional print satire in editorial cartoons; it's been going on for over 100 years."
The problem is that many people didn't realize the cartoons were satire.
Victoria Nunn said, "I don't think its funny at all, either one of them."
Political Consultant Don Rose said, "When you have to keep explaining, you lose the point of satire."
Babcock said that need to explain the Obama cover left the New Yorker an easy target for Tuesday's Vanity Fair cartoon depicting the McCains.
"It adds a level of wit because it's making fun of the New Yorker cover itself," Babcock said.
As for candidates Obama and McCain, they're used to the jabs and voters understand that.
Amit Tripathi said, "As a whole, it's probably in poor taste, but it's free speech. It's fair game."
But there is a difference between one cover making fun of what McCain is, the other on what Obama is not.
"We focus on McCain's elderliness and for better or worse it's not quite a hot button issue as Muslim or African-American radicalism," Babcock said.
"Not that they don't have a right to do it, it's just bad editorial judgment and they deserved the needle Vanity Fair gave them," Rose added.
So score one for Vanity Fair, according to experts in Chicago, in a battle you might call journalistic sibling rivalry; both the New Yorker and Vanity Fair are headquartered in the same building and owned by the same company.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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