•
VF Fights Fire With Fire
Apparently Vanity Fair is not taking the New Yorker’s cover laying down. I think it speaks for itself.
Print This Post
Email This Post
•
12 comments to “VF Fights Fire With Fire”
•
Print This Post
Email This Post
23. July 2008 at :
If I were an American that relied upon a walker for mobility, I might take offense at Vanity Fair’s use of a walker for a sight gag. To me, this isn’t a parody of McCain, this is an insult to the disabled.
Can you imagine what they’d do to FDR if he were running for the Presidency today?
23. July 2008 at :
First of all, FDR couldn’t run today. Today’s America would never elect a president in a wheelchair! The media in his time kept his polio from the public…in today’s tabloid journalism culture, how long would it be before Drudge was reporting that one of the nominees was a cripple!
Second of all McCain is freakin’ old! That’s the point here! VF is being generous, and making no statements that cannot be backed up with fact, whereas the New Yorker cover is perpetuating yet another lie that the right has been trying to spread about Obama.
23. July 2008 at :
Pictorial representations that cannot be backed up by fact:
1. John McCain does not rely on a walker for mobility
2. John McCain has not at any point stated a desire to burn the U.S. Constitution.
3. John McCain and his wife do not fist dub each other.
Pictorial representations that can be backed up by fact:
1. Cindy McCain did struggle with an addiction to perscription painkillers. She recognized she had a problem and sought treatment. She is no longer addicted to painkillers. Cindy McCain is also not running for President, so this is not relevat.
2. John McCain does have grey hair.
3. John McCain did suffer from melonoma. He sought treatment and was cured. I guess cancer survivors are the subject of ridicule also.
4. Groups VF offends in this picture. The disabled. Recovered addicts. Cancer survivors.
23. July 2008 at :
As a maker of Bald Eagle Carpeting, I take great umbrage at the misuse of this American symbol. Also, this is not very original.
23. July 2008 at :
This cover is so unfunny and just proves what an unoriginal ass graydon carter is. This cover spoofs the New Yorker, but it makes no point of its own, and thereby misses the entire point of the original new yorker cover, which was an ironic sendup of *myths* about Obama: that he’s a practicing muslim, the he is in league with terrorists, and that michelle is a militant black panther-esque 70s radical — none of which is true!
By comparison, this cover is a cheap illustration of some facts and some hyperbolic untruths. It would only be similar to the New Yorker cover if EVERYTHING were fabricated. In that respect, the only potentially ironic portion of the illustration IS the walker, because it points out that McCain really isn’t immobile. Everything else is true and, therefore, not funny/ironic. And, as eric points out, the truths here aren’t necessarily negatives: cindy got over her addiction, john got over cancer.
What was the point?
Great example of the difference between witty and stupid.
23. July 2008 at :
Apparently, there are WAY more offensive pictures out there.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/21129038/full_metal_mccain
23. July 2008 at :
Oh, Eric….I can tell you and I are going to get along famously…
The VF cover, in principle, is a parody of the New Yorker Cover, and if we’re really looking for falsehoods we really should start at the beginning.
1. Barack Obama is not, and has never been a Muslim. (lie #1 that simply will not die)
2. The fist dub is not, and has never been a terrorist handshake(to my knowledge…if you have data from someone entrenched in an Afghani/Pakistani cave, please let me know). It is, however a very in-vogue way to greet and/or celebrate…you can find white people doing it in any number of area bars after winning dart tournaments.
3. Neither Barack Obama or his wife, Michelle, are, or have ever been connected to any Islamic terrorist organization. I know that the ethnic last name scares white people, but he, unlike McCain, was actually born on US soil.
4. Michelle Obama is not anything like any of Pam Grier’s blaxploitation characters from the seventies. Of course, Rush Limbaugh will maintain that she wants to “kill whitey!”
5. Neither of the Obamas revere Osama…again, I know that the name has some resemblance, but let’s grow up here!
6. Neither of them hate America, so them burning a flag in the fireplace of the oval office is simply offensive.
Now onto your points…
No, McCain doesn’t walk with a walker…yet. He is, however, old, as evidenced by the gray hair, and becoming rapidly senile. Seriously, the things that he has “mixed up” on the campaign trail in the last week give me serious doubts that he is not suffering from some serious degree of senility.
I agree that McCain probably doesn’t harbor some intense need to burn the Constitution, but seeing the programs he has supported during Bush’s presidency, he sure isn’t in any way going above and beyond to do anything to uphold the laws therein. Surveillance and most of the Patriot Act come to mind.
If you want to be offended on behalf of the disabled, recovering addicts, and cancer survivors, that is your right. If pressed to actually see it, and MAKE myself offended, i probably could, but it’s kind of a stretch. If it weren’t a parody, I could possibly understand, but get real…it’s social commentary.
What I see is an old guy who has already struggled with Cancer once…makes you feel really assured that he’s not going to die while in office!
Also, in a true moment of “It’s ok if you’re a republican,” no one in the media sees it necessary to make a big deal about Cindy McCain’s former drug addiction, or the fact that she’s a second generation rich girl. These things aren’t relevant because she would only be first lady, but it was relevant that Teresa Heinz Kerry was a Ketchup mogul…and it was relevant that Elizabeth Edwards had terminal cancer. In the current climate of world reporting, nothing else is held back…why these things?
We can continue arguing about this, but I hope you realize that VF would not have run the cover, except in reaction to the blatant partisan swipe at Obama.
23. July 2008 at :
Josh, while I know that the New Yorker cover is a play on the myths about Obama, there are still enough people out there who believe the hype and the lies that are still circulating, that it just adds fuel to the fire of speculation. I agree that the VF cover doesn’t add anything new, but it acts as a counterpoint to the ridiculousness of the myths and rumors about Obama nevertheless. Although, in an albeit more true and malicious manner.
23. July 2008 at :
Now that the New Yorker has led to educating some people about what irony is, maybe those folks will think the vanity fair cover intends to debunk the images of mccain seen here. But cindy did use drugs (i see it, on balance, as bad), McCain is wicked ol and not looking very spry lately. He does seem to feel our civil liberties get in the way. So, there’s no humor in any of that. The mag is perpetuating truths or half truths, not debunking out and out stereotypes.
More important to me is that we are in very bad financial shape and military shape and mccain is a waffling moron party boy who admits to knowing nothing about economic policy and probably should have been prosecuted for corruption (Keating Five, anyone?). Then there is the very serious issue of just how compliant he was in captivity. This stinks of the swift boat BS, but I’d still like to know just how much of a hero he’s supposed to be, since he’s been running on that for his entire political life.
More serious is that McCain did quite a lot in his power to avoid finding out about POWs left behind when we pulled out.
This, I have serious trouble with.
23. July 2008 at :
Here’s what McCain says happened. It certainly sounds unpleasant.
You’d think a man who endured that, assuming he still had his wits, would oppose torture. Of course, McCain did (2005):
“We’ve sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists. We have no grief for them, but what we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people, no matter how evil or bad they are,” McCain said. “I think that this will help us enormously in winning the war for the hearts and minds of people throughout the world in the war on terror.”
But that was before he didn’t.
23. July 2008 at :
Scott, I agree with you, the New Yorker cover spread a lot of untruths about Obama. Even McCain denounced it. That’s part of my problem with VF. How is it their place to pick a fight with McCain, after McCain came to the aid of Obama? This is what he gets for doing the right thing? Geez.
24. July 2008 at :
You boys are just a scream! These men are both running for president at a time when our country is in a drastic economic situation. The magazine in question has been trying to be in the forefront of political commentary for quite a long time now and has as yet to succeed. As to The New Yorker, is is in the forefront of political commentary, and when they fuck up it isn’t for a lack of trying to make a salient point.
As to the current leadership of the Republican Party, in trying to win this election, if they could, they would accuse Obama of being the reincarnation of Attila the Hun. They are desperate to get on the board here, but they are so out of wind as a party that they are going to lose this one big. Don’t count them out however, they have some very brilliant thinkers on their side, its just that none of their ruling elite has listened to their intelligencia for such a long time.
As Ron Fauchaux pointed out in “Campaign Ads: Deja Vu all over again”:
“Throughout our nation’s history, vicious attacks have dogged presidential politics.
When President John Quincy Adams used his own money to buy a chess set and a billiard table, political enemies charged that he had installed “gaming tables and gambling furniture” in the executive mansion.
Detractors also said Adams pimped for Czar Alexander while minister to Russia.
In the 1828 election, when Andrew Jackson challenged Adams for re-election, the “Hero of the Battle of New Orleans” was called a bigamist, slave-trading drunk and blood-thirsty murderer who enjoyed killing. Jackson’s mother was called a “common prostitute” and his wife an immoral adulteress.
Attacks on presidential aspirant Abraham Lincoln were equally personal and mean, employing epithets like “ignoramus,” “despot,” “fiend,” “buffoon” and “butcher” against him. One newspaper said he looked like a horrid wretch, “fit evidently for petty treason.”
So, my point is that the way the current candidates are being treated is mild compared to previous campaigns. Not that it isn’t horrid, but it is the American way of politics.