Double Standards

I kind of thought Jamie Kirchick had a good point here but then I looked closer at the cartoon he's criticizing. In his view, Rolling Stone ran a cartoon that "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." But look at the cartoon:

That's not an attack on John McCain at all, and certainly not the kind of attack Kirchick construes it as. The cartoon depicts various obstacles to McCain's political aspirations -- George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama -- as his North Vietnamese captors. I don't find this to be a funny or successful cartoon, but surely nothing that depicts McCain's political adversaries as war criminals can seriously be considered a smear against McCain.

Comments

Kirchick's writing and ideas = garbage

Posted by tinisoli | July 17, 2008 11:37 AM

I do not agree. The inclusion of Bush makes the image into McCain's fantasy. He (McCain) equates obstacles to his success with the Vietnamese captors/torturers. If you just had democrats or liberals, it could be interpreted as an attack on them, but there is no rational basis for joining Obama, Clinton, and Bush as if they had a common purpose, so the representation can only be the product of McCain's fevered brain.

Posted by David Margolies | July 17, 2008 11:39 AM

You mean Kirchick overreacted and misinterpreted? That's just crazy talk!

Posted by Shine | July 17, 2008 11:39 AM

but surely nothing that depicts McCain's political adversaries as war criminals can seriously be considered a smear against McCain.

In Rush Limbaugh's world, Bush, Obama and Clinton aren't being depicted as war criminals, they are being depicted as fraternity hazers, so the cartoon is even less offensive than you think.

Posted by calipygian | July 17, 2008 11:41 AM

"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"

I think that is a smear within a smear itself. Or have I missed all the talk by "high-profile Obama surrogates" ("high-profile"meaning, I presume, they actually appear on TV once in a while) regarding McCain's temperamental unfitness for the office of president?

Posted by brewmn | July 17, 2008 11:43 AM

That's not an attack on John McCain at all

Hmmm...that's too facile a conclusion. I find that the above cartoon plays in the same manner of the New Yorker one. Both are satire, yet use the depiction of fantasy stereotype as their instrument. The discriminating eye can identify their real meaning, but to the uninitiated or the malicious they reinforce doubt and concern.

Posted by dry_fish | July 17, 2008 11:45 AM

Political cartoons are not necessarily a zero-sum game, and in this case I think everyone is arguably being depicted in a negative way.

So, actually, I kinda like it.

Posted by DTM | July 17, 2008 11:46 AM

Here's a big difference between the cartoons, right in the first sentence:

The above image accompanies Matt Taibbi's June 26 Rolling Stone article, "Full Metal McCain."

The New Yorker cover didn't offer the context of an accompanying article. Apparently, there's an article inside the magazine, but no one can know that from the cover. If the New Yorker blurbed its articles on the cover, then there would be a context. Which is exactly what Rolling Stone does.

Posted by Roddy McCorley | July 17, 2008 11:48 AM

I first noticed Kirchick when he had that elegant dismantling of Paul's newsletter history, and it gave me a good opinion of the man. Ever since, though, I know him by his blog entries, which are just laughable. Fortunately the crew at Talkback are quite capable of dismantling him each time, but his off-the-wall comments have become so easy to pick out it's verged into parody.

This seems to be mocking McCain's experience as POW, and mocking Obama, Clinton, and Bush as co-equal torturers. All of it somewhat offensive, as pretty much all political cartoons are to someone. I agree that it's neither funny now successful, but nor is it remotely related to the idea that "he's an unhinged warmonger rendered mentally unfit because of his experience in Vietnam." As for "a meme that's been repeated by a number of high-profile Obama surrogates over the past few months," the TBers request for a single example of same is still awaiting a response.

Posted by Deborah | July 17, 2008 11:52 AM

I know of Kirchick only through links hear and from Andrew Sullivan, and it is impressive how uniformly he has come off as a small minded simpleton in botht the critical links here and the supportive links from Sullivan.

But in this case your analysis is off. There could be a context in which the above cartoon was meant as an attack on Obama and Clinton (and Bush?). But this particular cartoon ran with an article with the subheading, "Haunted by the ghosts of Vietnam, the one-time maverick has transformed himself into just another liberal-bashing fearmonger." The actual article seems to play on less of the "haunted" aspect than on the "just another liberal-bashing fearmonger". But either way it seems hard to not see the cartoon as an attack on McCain.

Not clear it is exactly a comparable cartoon to the New Yorker. Being a prisoner of war is a large part of McCain's biography and there does not seem to be a significant portion of the population who thinks that is a minus for him. While the images in the New Yorker are all nonsenseical as parts of Obama's biography and yet a significant portion of the population claims to believe them.

But kirchick is clearly right that this is an attack on McCain, and not the people around him in the image.

Posted by Lon | July 17, 2008 11:53 AM

I lol'd.

Posted by Sirkowski | July 17, 2008 11:54 AM

I agree that in many ways, this cartoon is similar as the New Yorker cover. IMHO, it's not funny, and it's borderline offensive. But it also wasn't on the cover of Rolling Stone. If it were then The Corner would be screaming from here to Kingdom Come. And Jann Werner isn't condescending to critics by defending it as "satire", at least to my knowledge.

And brewmn is dead on. Who, exactly, are these "high-level" Obama surrogates? This is classic Kirchick garbage, smear within the smear.

Posted by Shine | July 17, 2008 11:56 AM

kirchick is probably the most dishonest writer who is given space on a national platform.
i'm sure it is because of his unique status, and he uses his affirmative-action-enabled platform to spew stuff that is so dishonest that it is truly stunning.
i wonder how his stuff gets past the editors.
i would say that he is an idiot, but i don't believe that.
i think he knows exactly what he is doing and he continues to do it because he is allowed to, and because that is how right-wing hacks conduct themselves.
that is why it was so delicious to have watched matt y take this scumbag to task and render him into the quivering puddle he became in that classic bloggingheads diavlog.
matt's approach to kirchick in that bloggingheads' segment - aggressive confrontation of and the surgical dismantling of each vapid slogan he spouted - is a template for dealing with right-wing blowhards.

Posted by frankie d | July 17, 2008 11:57 AM

*Anything* can and will be considered a smear against John McCain. The election results especially.

Posted by Aleks | July 17, 2008 12:01 PM

Matt, this post raises a question for your assignment desk. Can you confirm whether Jamie Kirchick is a real person? And, if he is, has Marty Peretz figured out how to clone himself?

Posted by Pat | July 17, 2008 12:07 PM

depicts McCain's political adversaries as war criminals

Why would torturers be war criminals?

Posted by Arnold Evans | July 17, 2008 12:15 PM

"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."

Uh... that was a smear launched by Bush surrogates 8 years ago. I've never heard it from Obama's people.

Posted by Njorl | July 17, 2008 12:24 PM

Pat, Jaime is just proof that one of Marty's turds came to life like how Bono was born on "South Park."

Posted by Reality Man | July 17, 2008 12:25 PM

One thing I can say about this post from little Jamie Kirchick was that it went below the Kirchick line in my guessing game.

See, when I read the TNR blog I scroll slowly so I can see how many words of a post I need to read before I figure out that little Jamie wrote it. For this one I had to get all the way past the headline before I knew for sure. The average is three words.

Posted by skeptic | July 17, 2008 12:26 PM

In his view, Rolling Stone ran a cartoon that "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."

If anything, I think this cartoon helps McCain and Republicans because it reminds people of what the communist Vietnamese did to POWs, it reminds people of McCain's POW experience, and it demonizes Hillary and Barack.

Furthermore, I didn't even recognize the caricatures at first, and other people might not, too-- they might look at it quickly and think it's a picture meant to make Vietnamese people look like imps (which also helps the Republicans).

It could be evidence that there is Republican influence at Rolling Stone, just like at The New Yorker.

Is there a double standard because this cartoon didn't get noticed as much? No way. (1) it wasn't on the cover, (2) it didn't include Muslim terrorist images, (3) it didn't direct a racist comparison or a terrorist comparison at McCain, (4) it was in a rock n roll magazine, and people are going to be more likely to interpret humor in a a magazine like that as just being daring than they are to think a questionable image was intended to be racist (so even if the exact same cartoon as appeared on the cover of The New Yorker appeared in Rolling Stone, people would have a little more reason to doubt that it was meant to be racist and to conclude instead that they were just lampooning racism, or being totally ridiculous like South Park.

But the biggest reason is that it wasn't on the cover. Putting it on the cover without any comment to indicate it's a satire is as good as saying "Fuck Barack."

Posted by Swan | July 17, 2008 12:29 PM

War criminals?

We pointedly refused to declare war on anyone during the Vietnam "conflict". It was a police action. When we captured "criminals" from the other side, though we did theoretically treat them as EPWs while in our custody, we, very much against explicit provisions of the Geneva Conventions, turned them over to the the govt of South Vietnam, which did treat them like criminals. Most of them got the death penalty, after cruel and unusual punishment that would meet anyone's idea of torture.

Had the North Vietnamese treated McCain as we treated the "criminals" on their side, they would have executed him for mass murder, after torture that would have made his actual treatment by them seem like Sunday School. Maybe that would have been a war crime. Maybe the much kinder treatment he received at their hands might also count as a war crime -- but only if our treatment of our captives in that "conflict" was also criminal.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | July 17, 2008 12:31 PM

The cartoon probably makes McCain look sympathetic to a lot of people. The Barack cartoon didn't make him look sympathetic to anybody.

Posted by Swan | July 17, 2008 12:33 PM

In Rush Limbaugh's world, Bush, Obama and Clinton aren't being depicted as war criminals, they are being depicted as fraternity hazers

No, you're wrong--the three tormenting McCain in the cartoon are clearly shown as orientals, which makes them war criminals rather than fraternity hazers

Posted by rea | July 17, 2008 12:43 PM

The RS, with accompanying article, was a clear and tasteless attack on McCain. But the obvious reason no one cared was not because of a double standard about McCain but rather due to a double standard for RS and Matt Taibbi, a "gonzo"-style writer who's written such epics as "The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope" (which got his editor at the New York Press fired). The New Yorker, by contrast, is a magazine that takes part in the adult political discourse.

Not knocking Taibbi either -- I'm a longtime fan, I've even got the Exile book, and his recent Hagee report was incredible -- but you can't seriously expect that political actors have an obligation to pay attention or respond to him.

Posted by Other Ezra | July 17, 2008 12:50 PM

Well, it seems to me the cartoon is meant to suggest a red-faced, bug-eyed and hysterical McCain overreaction to poking from domestic political adversaries, as if every ordinary political assault provokes in McCain a psychic repetition of his wartime experiences, and a projection of mortal enemyhood onto those political opponents. I would say this is a further propagation of the undercurrent of suspicions about McCain's personality and character. I also think there is probably some truth in that suspicion, and it is somewhat funny.

I also thought the New Yorker cartoon was rather amusing, and was an effective skewering of the most idiotic and paranoid right-wing anxieties about the Obamas.

But the cartoons are clearly quite different. The Rolling Stone cartoon takes up some widespread suspicions about John McCain, and at least tentatively suggests in a good-humored way that there might be some truth to the suspicions; the New Yorker similarly takes up some suspicions about the Obamas, but only to mock and ridicule those suspicions.

What is not always very funny is all the hair pulling and kvetching and teeth-gnashing on the part of dour netroots commissars, who seem to have lost their capacity for laughter entirely. On the other hand, I'm sure if someone wanted to come up with a cartoon mocking these fussy commentators, we all might find something new to laugh about.

Posted by Dan Kervick | July 17, 2008 1:09 PM

Kirchick is so bad that I don't even reserve the anger I do for the likes of Kaus.

He's not dumb. He's suffering from an extreme case of mid-twenties disease aka know-it-all-ism. Know-it-all-ism is particularly unbearable when you don't have a clue.

Here's to his painful maturing.

Posted by Nick Kaufman | July 17, 2008 2:00 PM

I did a cover that I thought would reflect the center-right view of what false left-wing attacks on McCain would look like.

Granted, it's not really "funny", but it has plenty of the more unfair left-wing critiques of McCain rolled up into one photo.

I called it P.O.W.

Posted by enozinho | July 17, 2008 2:01 PM

The cartoon is satirizing McCain, not his opponents. The suggestion is clearly that his POW experience damaged him so that he cannot tolerate ordinary disagreement and imagines his political opponents as inhuman criminals.

Posted by Gary Sugar | July 17, 2008 2:26 PM

Is he supposed to be Rambo, or the guy from Apocalypse Now?

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | July 17, 2008 2:32 PM

Nicholas, neither. Think the Robert DeNiro character in "The Deer Hunter."

Posted by dry_fish | July 17, 2008 2:39 PM

If this is offensive to anyone, it should be offensive to Asians...

Posted by Gary | July 17, 2008 2:52 PM

I'll second the poster who didn't recognize the characterizations. Political cartoons shouldn't have such exotic stylizations. Obama-as-Oriental-tormentor is too visually strained to work. And I'm not convinced that's George Bush. I think it's Justice Scalia. Or maybe my Dad.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 17, 2008 3:20 PM

I think it's Justice Scalia. Or maybe my Dad.

Your dad looks like an Asian version of Bush? Scary. Could be worse. My dad looks like William Shatner.

Posted by enozinho | July 17, 2008 3:37 PM

Wait a minute, Kirchick was either blatantly dishonest or woefully wrong? I am shocked.

I think I can set the over/under at 8 words for how long it takes me to tell one of the Plank posts is his.

The guy is a perfect amalgam of utter stupidity, dishonesty and the sheer certainty that comes with both.

Posted by McKingford | July 17, 2008 4:12 PM

I really wonder at what point you can just ignore people that you know are stupid, dishonest hacks. Kirchick is basically Malkin with a slightly larger vocabulary and a penis.

I ignore them for the same reason I ignore (other?) white supremacists and the Flat Earth Society. So it puzzles me when you bother to address their piffle, Matt. Of course, you could put up a post lampooning the members of the Flat Earth Society or some skinhead bloggers out there, but that would really just be a waste of everybody's time, wouldn't it?

Posted by jim | July 17, 2008 4:27 PM

Nicholas, neither. Think the Robert DeNiro character in "The Deer Hunter."

I thought of the Christopher Walken charcter who later plays Russian roulette.

Do you really want McCain's finger on the button?

If the New Yorker put that on the cover sans caption, I would die laughing. Obama looks like a badass ninja.

Posted by Peter K. | July 17, 2008 5:10 PM

War criminals? What war criminals?

Surely the unitary Vietnamese executive decided that the Genveva Conventions didn't apply to McCain.

Maybe we should just pardon them all and hope they tell us the truth.

Posted by The Fool | July 17, 2008 5:16 PM

The real questions are: Could Deerhunter McCain sneak up on the radical terrorist Obama's and K-bar them? McCain would defeat Obama in Russian roulette but could he defeat 'fro Michelle?

Posted by Nikanor Chevotarevich | July 17, 2008 8:10 PM

"propagates the smears directed at John McCain -- that he's an unhinged warmonger rendered mentally unfit because of his experience in Vietnam"

This is a smear?

Not that any Obama surrogates have said anything like that, but if they did we would have to describe it as "cogent and correct analysis."

McCain is exactly as described.

He's also not a "war hero", he's a collaborator.

But on reflection, the cover indicates to me a notion that McCain is a temperamental asshole who can't respond rationally to his problems with Obama, Clinton, and his previous problems with Bush. It seems to be just artistic license to represent those problems as McCain being tortured by the individuals involved as he allegedly was in North Vietnam.

Personally I think it would have been more appropriate to represent McCain being waterboarded by these individuals dressed in Muslim garb. It would be more contemporary.

Beyond that - who gives a shit?

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 17, 2008 10:32 PM

"...that he's an unhinged warmonger rendered mentally unfit because of his experience in Vietnam..."

Is there anyone among us who does not so believe?

Posted by Hedley Lamarr | July 18, 2008 11:21 AM