When the week’s New Yorker arrived with the caricature on the cover of Barack and Michelle Obama in Muslim and Commie guerrilla garb respectively, fist-bumping in an Oval Office where Osama bin Laden’s picture hangs over the mantle, Obama’s campaign released a statement.

The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.

It is, indeed, a tasteless and offensive attack — on conservatives.

The New Yorker is right about one thing: If you’re a subscriber, you probably get the satire the magazine intended, even if the image itself has all the subtlety of a Michael Bay movie. The problem is not that the typically literate New Yorker reader won’t understand that the magazine isn’t earnestly portraying Obama as a member of al-Qaeda. The problem is that liberal media types think this caricature of Obama actually exists in the heads of “right-wing critics.” Engage most real-life “right wing critics” for a few minutes and you’ll realize the contention is laughable, but instead of a reality check, The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum does The New Yorker one better, making this observation: “If artist Barry Blitt had some real cojones, he would have drawn the same cover but shown it as a gigantic word bubble coming out of John McCain’s mouth — implying, you see, that this is how McCain wants the world to view Obama. But he didn’t. Because that would have been unfair.”

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Too bad Drum was being sarcastic, because “that would have been unfair” is exactly right. Remember when John McCain upbraided a radio host who referred to Obama by his unfortunate middle name at a McCain campaign event? How about when the North Carolina GOP ran ads using footage of Jeremiah Wright, and McCain told the state party to put a sock in it? Did Drum not notice that the McCain campaign immediately released a statement condemning the New Yorker cover? Can Drum produce any evidence that shows that the New Yorker cover is “how McCain wants the world to view Obama”? Drum doesn’t — and can’t — point to a single thing that John McCain has said or done that to support this conclusion.

In fairness to Drum, you should read his swift condemnation of the caricature in Rolling Stone last month that had a screaming McCain inside a tiger cage being poked with sharp sticks by Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George W. Bush dressed as north Vietnamese in black pajamas. Wait, Drum didn’t write a post condemning Rolling Stone?

Well, at least the Obama campaign issued that statement taking Rolling Stone to task for the tasteless McCain illustration. It was particularly brave of the campaign, when one considers that the magazine’s coverage of Obama couldn’t be any more fawning if it were bylined by Bambi. What’s that you say? Obama’s campaign didn’t release a statement condemning Rolling Stone for their “tasteless and offensive” McCain caricature?