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Although the cover of Vanity Fair portraying an elderly handicapped McCain with his pill-hoarding wife inside the Oval office never did make it to print, the magazine made this image available online as an open reaction to the now infamous cover of The New Yorker depicting Barack Obama and his wife in a negative light. The odd thing about this entire ordeal is that both Vanity Fair and The New Yorker are properties of CondeNast, essentially meaning that at the cost of satiric political commentary, we can all rest assured that Mr. Si Newhouse and family (who own Advance Publications which in turn runs the Conde Empire) have profited generously through magazine cover sales, while the rest of us sit here wondering what exactly is the point of this meaningless contrivance. In a recent story in the New York Times, Mr. Si Newhouse openly admits that he holds no political allegiance nor does he care for much of the happenings in Washington. I find this highly disturbing and ethically irresponsible.

Perhaps one can wash his hands and declare his neutrality, yet if one works in the media and finds himself in an executive role, I firmly believe that there is an immense amount of responsibility that goes along with this. What The New Yorker did was tasteless and is far from satire. For the majority of Americans, the idea of an African American/Black president is still a concept many have a hard time grasping and it does no good to push such radically extreme and outright harmful images into the public sphere without much forethought except to reinforce preexisting negative stereotypes.

Vanity Fair’s small jab is nothing more than office antics within the Conde building. We need real dialogue here and if satire is something either of these supposed esteemed magazines are striving for, let’s have a real character study of who these people are and allow the public to come to a conclusion on their own based on factual arguments. Enough of this media circus. Suffice it to say, the elephant and the ass has officially left the building.

via Rickey Y. Kim, 5 August 2008 1:27am | |