Except everything in the Vanity Fair cover is basically true, while the New Yorker cover was attempting to point out the outrageous claims of the (not so) far right.

I agree with this other Kevin's sentiment's of the 24th that there's an essential distinction between these two covers, but am dubious about Ben's intimation that the VF cover is somehow more acceptable because of its fidelity to reality. Mocking the McCains' various infirmities may cheer and amuse some of us, but such meanspirited gutter-play must be strenuously avoided if progressives want to maintain the moral high ground--and not only to win the crucial upcoming election.

While the NYer's cover was stuffed full of as many bigoted/meanspirited cheap shots as possible in the course of satirizing those who sincerely believe the Obamas to be a militant black Muslim couple bent on destroying our democracy, this faux VF cover includes two deeply-cheap cheap shots (Cindy's pill habit and John's age--neither of which, yes, is distinct from reality in the way the NYer's Obamas' affectations clearly are) and one very sincere shot that is not at all cheap: the burning of the Constitution. However much you may dislike Obama, he won't be burning the flag any time soon. The Bush administration and the Republican presidential candidate who has recently chosen to embrace its policies, in contrast, have less reverence for the Constitution than they have for Obama. The "joke" of placing the Constitution in a lit fireplace is of an entirely different satirical register than the pills, the walker, Barack's burning flag, Michelle's AK-47, and all the rest of it: the incineration of the Constitution is based on a verifiable reality, and indicting McCain for it is unquestionably fair.

But pills, bandages, walker: had VF actually run this cover, these insensitive and (in most contexts) irrelevant potshots would have justly attracted the repulsion of conservatives and progressives alike.