Vanity Fair Misses the Point

Vanity Fair has released a cartoon cover online in response to the New Yorker's swipe at the media coverage of the Obamas. The fake Vanity Fair cover shows John McCain, in a walker with a bandaged head and Cindy with a bundle of pills giving her hubby a fist-jab. A portrait of George W. Bush hangs over the mantle-piece; the Constitution is burning in the grate.

Some are finding it funny. I'd say not so much. Worse, it's all wrong. If Vanity Fair's cartoonist wanted to flip the New Yorker cover on the GOP, they'd have to portray the media's lies about the candidate. Not the true stuff.

Sure, she's no drug addict, but the candidate's wife has been forced to admit that she was once addicted to prescription drugs. (She even stole the drugs from her own nonprofit medical relief outfit.) And while McCain doesn't use a walker, it's not as if the media misrepresent his age. Those aren't the media's wrongs where the McCains are concerned. It's not her looks, it's her wealth the media understate, and it's not his physique, it's his politics.

To do the media hit job fairly, Vanity Fair should have taken aim at the media's lies: pundits pretend McCain's a maverick. He's not. He's voted with Bush 95 percent of the time. The equivalent to the lie about Obama being a muslim is the lie about McCain breaking with the Bush pack. The equivalent to the lie about Michelle being dangerous -- is the lie about Cindy being one of us. She's a $100 million aristocrat--who stands to win big from her husband's tax plans.

For all the flips and flops of the McCain campaign so far, the one thing that's true is that the Constitution might as well be burning in the grate. And if McCain ever wins the Oval office, you can be sure GW's policies, if not his portrait will be on display. Again, that's not satire. Satire, sadly, would be the Constitution safe and GW banished.

Funny it's not. We can only hope that this sales-boosting silly season's over.

The F Word is a daily commentary by Laura Flanders on GRITtv. Watch GRITtv on Free Speech TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415) or at GRITtv.org. And become a subscriber.

Comments (4)

1. "He's voted with Bush 95 percent of the time."

   so, mccain's a democrat?!?!?

   Posted by frosty zoom at 07/23/2008 @ 10:56pm

2. the one thing,

   yes, the one thing,

   that you don't have to worry about with mccain is his age.

   the guy crashed like 5 jets, blew up a boat, and survived pow torture.

   his mom's 95 or something.

   he's made of resilium and will live to be at least 90.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 07/23/2008 @ 10:59pm

3. Want a true cartoon of McCain?

   Show him teaching GEOGRAPHY....in a class room with a map on the wall with the "still existant Czechoslovakia" and Iraq and Pakistan sharing a common border!

   Posted by Maskdelta at 07/24/2008 @ 09:13am

4. Look, despite the so-called "make-over" of this guy by a crew of comm experts, trumpeted just a couple of weeks ago, he's still calling his audience "My Friends..." every 30 seconds, and still tripping over his own garbled syntax and verbal flood of empty, comic-book political platitudes, perhaps in auto-homage to you-know-who. Not only is he another oratorical zero after 8 years of the Great Obfuscator, but he looks like one of the cadavers layed out on "Law and Order". Add to this queasy image his Ghengis Khan politics and you've got a recipe for an over-the-cliff landslide. His "war hero" mantle, however genuine or exaggerated (depending on your definition of heroism, and whether caving to VC demands for complicity in propaganda doesn't remove at least some of the patina), isn't an automatic ticket to the Oval Office, as we saw with WWII wounded fellow vet Dole.

   So far, all I hear from McCain is Rovian rhetoric targeted at mental midgets and nationalistic bigots. More Of The Same! To which I scream, "Enough is Enough!" Run your pathetic campaign, get hammered in November, and retire to the American Legion circuit, where you can get the old regressive geezers, in their frayed, overly festooned beenies, all fired up. The world is too complex and way too advanced for an old guy running for CINC who thinks there's something out here called "a Google"(LMFAO).

   Posted by stonecutter at 07/24/2008 @ 11:21am