The New Yorker ran a cover brutally attacking redneck stereotypes about Senator Obama and his wife. Considerations of fairness would seem to dictate that they just as viciously attack some absurd stereotypes about Senator McCain and his (current) wife.
So, what did they hit, and what false rumors about McCain could they hit just as hard? Obama's a Muslim! His wife is a terrorist! What equally false and ridiculous rumors are circulating about the McCains?
McCain is an adulterer and his wife steals drugs!
Oh, wait. That's not going to work. They need false rumors, not true ones.
What made that cover work, at least for the discerning readers who are their intended audience, was the sheer absurdity of the stereotypes they were lampooning. If they try to do the same thing for true allegations about McCain as they did for false ones about Obama, they'll just be doing a second pro-Democrat cover, not achieving balance.
How 'bout that 'fro they put on Michelle? It exists only in the mind of the dullest of the dull. Surely the left must have some corresponding stereotype about Cindy's appearance?
Uh oh. That's not going to work either. Cindy McCain really does look like one of the Stepford Wives. Remember, we're looking for balance here. We need to exaggerate a false image, not call attention to a true one. Sure, a good artist could make the second Mrs. McCain look like even more of a zombie than she does in real life. But again, that just gives us a second pro-left hit piece. Calling attention to a false impression of one candidate's wife and to a true one about the other's is not balance.
The only thing I've been able to think of that even comes close is the Manchurian Candidate thing: The Vietnamese brainwashed McCain so they could run him for president and take over our country. I'm visualizing the Oval Office, a figure near the top holding the strings that are working the McCain puppet. A really good artist could probably make that figure both look stereotypically Vietnamese and at the same time bear a strong resemblance to Dick Cheney. For maximum effect, the puppetmaster should be holding up a cue card for McCain to read aloud: "I hate gooks!"
What do we do with Cindy here? Well, the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers comes to mind. We make her one of the pod people. She'll fit right in.
Sigh. It's not going to work. The people we're trying to parody here don't actually exist. Nobody really believes McCain is the Manchurian Candidate, and nobody is going to believe that his wife is a pod person, no matter how much they agree that she looks like one. The thing that made that New Yorker cover work is that, astonishing as it may seem to anyone who possesses three or more interconnected neurons, a substantial number of people really do believe that Obama is a Muslim. Making fools of those fools works because they exist.