The above image accompanies Matt Taibbi's June 26 Rolling Stone article, "Full Metal McCain." Unlike this week's New Yorker cover, which lampooned the dark imaginings of right-wing rubes in red states, this cartoon actually lampoons the candidate in question. Whereas the New Yorker cover made light of the smears directed at Barack Obama -- that he's a crypto-Muslim terrorist with Angela Davis for a wife who will burn the American flag in the Oval Office fireplace when elected president -- the Rolling Stone image propagates the smears directed at John McCain -- that he's an unhinged warmonger rendered mentally unfit because of his experience in Vietnam, a meme that's been repeated by a number of high-profile Obama surrogates over the past few months. And whereas the New Yorker cover was, in my opinion, funny (even if so many liberals seem incapable of laughing at their own jokes), the above cartoon is genuinely offensive for ridiculing the wartime service and years of torture endured by McCain.
Anyways, I won't hold my breath waiting for the righteous outrage about Rolling Stone's smearing John McCain.
--James Kirchick