THE WEEK AFTER the fist bump, one valid response would have been to follow up with another pro-
vocative image. John Mavroudis sent a suggestion for self-censorship (below, right). Art Spiegelman, who had
provided a spirited defense of Barry Blitt’s image on the radio, proposed his own version of a follow-up cover,
this time targeting Bush and McCain (below, left). Since many critics had said that “The Politics of Fear”
would have been less offensive if it had run with a caption or a title on the cover to explain itself, Spiegelman
ripped off what would have been the unpublishable part of his image and engineered a trompe l’oeil to reveal
its title, “‘Straight’ Talk Express”—also, incidentally, the name of McCain’s campaign bus.

WHEN “POLITICS OF FEAR” was first published, Jon Stewart immediately demonstrated the point
the image was making. He broadcast a montage of all the TV clips that implied that Obama might be a
Muslim: They came not only from Fox, but also from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, virtually every reputable
news source. Jake Chessum, the photographer who staged this shot of Colbert and Stewart for a December
Entertainment Weekly cover (opposite), was kind enough to send a print of the image, which now sits,
proudly framed, in my office.

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