I’ve tried to let this issue rest, but I can’t resist commenting on this — I saw it on Salon (but now I can’t find the link).
So David Horsey, an editorial cartoonist in Seattle did this comic, defending the New Yorker Obama-as-terrorist cover. I think it makes the case for condemning the cover (as bad satire, not as an enemy of all that is good, you understand).
Without the National Review logo, I’d view this comic as a ham-fisted liberal attack on McCain, simply showing him as an aged, warmongering, constitution-burning etc. etc. By placing the National Review logo on there, Horsey thinks he’s signaling to the reader that the satiric intent here is obviously to mock the liberal’s VIEW of McCain.
So, to make the analogy complete, he implies that it is the New Yorker logo that makes it clear to any sane reader that the Obama-terrorist cartoon is not satirizing Obama himself, but rather the right wing view of him. So, really, The New Yorker logo is as integral to understanding the intent of the Obama cartoon as The National Review logo is to the McCain cartoon? Blitt and The New Yorker meant to include the logo as part of the "message" of the cartoon, and would agree the cartoon doesn’t work without it? And is The New Yorker logo really the universal symbol for "here’s the left-wing, liberal view of things?"
Frankly, it’s hard to see Horsey’s imaginary McCain cover as anything but mocking McCain himself (again, inartfully). Even though it was Horsey’s idea to signal the satirical target as critics of McCain by slapping the National Review logo on it, even with it there, I can’t see the cartoon that way, even if I squint. It just looks like an unambiguous shot at McCain.