What did you do with my RWHN?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I agree with the New Yorker's take:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/07/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-rolling-stone-cover-controversy.html

But just because something sparks outrage doesn't mean that it is outrageous. Menino, on Wednesday, added that the cover, or perhaps the story itself, "should have been about survivors or first responders." There have been many moving and illuminating stories about the victims of the marathon attack, and the people who selflessly came to their aid, but this is not one of them. Instead, the Rolling Stone article is about the still largely mysterious backstory of a young man who transformed, in what appears to be a short amount of time, from a seemingly normal college student into an alleged terrorist. The facts of his life are important, the larger social implications of his biography are important—and so this story has the potential to be a valuable contribution to the public record and to the general understanding of one of the most serious incidents of domestic terrorism in American history. And so, in the plainest terms, Rolling Stone chose to promote an article about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with a photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev—one that other news outlets, including the New York Times and Washington Post, had previously published. It does not appear that the magazine altered the image in any meaningful way. Nor does the photograph convey an editorial opinion about the subject; the accompanying cover text, meanwhile, identifies Tsarnaev as a "monster." It shows him as he looked when he allegedly killed four people and injured hundreds more.

Many commenters on Facebook have complained that the image gives Tsarnaev the "rock star" treatment—that his scruffy facial hair; long, curly hair; T-shirt; and soft-eyed glance straight at the camera all make him look like just another Rolling Stone cover boy, whether Jim Morrison or any of the many longhairs who appeared in the magazine's nineteen-seventies heyday. But these elements are not engineered. What is so troubling about this image, and many of the others that have become available since April, is that Tsarnaev really does look like a rock star. In this way, the photograph on Rolling Stone is of a part with the often unexpected, and unsettling, portrait of Tsarnaev that has emerged over the past few months.

[Cain]

Yeah, I read that same article a couple of days ago, and it's a good one.

Matt Taibbi, a native of Boston and writer for Rolling Stone, also has an article on this:

As to the question of why anyone would ever put a terrorist on a cover of a magazine for any reason beyond the opportunity to slash a red X through his face or depict him in crosshairs, there's an explanation for that. Terrorists are a fact of our modern lives and we need to understand them, because understanding is the key to stopping them.

But in trying to understand someone like a Tsarnaev, there is a delicate line between empathy and sympathy that any journalist has to be careful not to cross. You cannot understand someone without empathy, but you also have to remember at all times who this person is and what he or she did. I think author Janet Reitman did an excellent job of walking that line, but certainly this kind of approach is going to be inherently troubling to some, because it focuses on the criminal and his motivations and not his victims and their suffering.

Which brings us to point No. 2, the idea that the cover photo showed Tsarnaev to be too nice-looking, too much like a sweet little boy.

I can understand why this might upset some people. But the jarringly non-threatening image of Tsarnaev is exactly the point of the whole story. If any of those who are up in arms about this cover had read Janet's piece, they would see that the lesson of this story is that there are no warning signs for terrorism, that even nice, polite, sweet-looking young kids can end up packing pressure-cookers full of shrapnel and tossing them into crowds of strangers.

I expect there will be boycotts, but I wonder about the media figures calling for them. Did they seek to boycott Time after its "Face of Buddhist Terror" cover? How about Newsweek after its "Children of bin Laden" cover?

Or the New York Times after it used exactly the same photo of Tsarnaev? What about all those times that people like Khomeini and Stalin made it to Time's "Man of the Year" cover? On the other hand, there will be critics who will say that Rolling Stone is making money off the despair of the Boston victims, and they will be right. But this will also be true of every media outlet that covered the story. (It's even true of the outlets whose pundits are chewing up airtime bashing this magazine this week). That aspect of journalism is always particularly hard to defend, so I won't try.

However, it's been suggested, by (among others) Boston Mayor Tom Menino, that Rolling Stone expected this controversy and planned to use the image and the notoriety as a way to gain free publicity. I can't speak for everyone at the magazine, but my belief is that this is not true in the slightest – I know people in the office this week are actually in shock and very freaked out. They didn't expect this at all.

[Cain]

It's also worth considering the motives of those in the press and politics for their reasons behind attacking Rolling Stone.  As Taibbi himself says:

One could even go so far as to say that in recent years, when investigative journalism has been so dramatically de-emphasized at the major newspapers and at the big television news networks, Rolling Stone's role as a source of hard-news reporting has been magnified. In other words, we're more than ever a hard news outlet in a business where long-form reporting is becoming more scarce.

Rolling Stone's coverage of such things as the criminal roots of the ongoing financial crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Michael Hastings on McChrystal for example), the intersection of business and politics (Rick Perlstein, among others) has no doubt earned them quite a few enemies in lofty and rarified circles.

The sort of circles where the NYT is favoured because of its less critical attitude and more accomodating attitude towards those in power.

Just putting it out there.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

But Cain, if all of that is true, who can we demonize? What about our outrage? YOU CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME!

[AFK]

Denial that there is a new you and an old you. This has nothing to do with your views on public health but rather your personality and how you interact with us. To say that youre the same guy that you were when i joined isnt true. It seems to of that that is also the general consensus.

Oh, sure, absolutely my interaction has changed, when it became clear that I was being reviled solely because of my position on drug policy.  It spilled into anything else I posted about.  TGRR illustrates that perfectly with his summation of my threads in the PD subforum, or you with my puns.  So yeah, I figured if I'm going to be reviled no matter what, I might as well go all in.

[AFK]

Didn't see this when it came out because I don't read NYT.  But my reaction is the same.  He doesn't deserve that kind of limelight. 

[MMIX]

If we all got what we deserved wouldn't the world  be a strange place . . .

[East Coast Hustle]

Denial that there is a new you and an old you. This has nothing to do with your views on public health but rather your personality and how you interact with us. To say that youre the same guy that you were when i joined isnt true. It seems to of that that is also the general consensus.

Oh, sure, absolutely my interaction has changed, when it became clear that I was being reviled solely because of my position on drug policy.  It spilled into anything else I posted about.  TGRR illustrates that perfectly with his summation of my threads in the PD subforum, or you with my puns.  So yeah, I figured if I'm going to be reviled no matter what, I might as well go all in.

So I ask you again, why are you still here?

[AFK]

I agree with the New Yorker's take:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/07/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-rolling-stone-cover-controversy.html

But just because something sparks outrage doesn't mean that it is outrageous. Menino, on Wednesday, added that the cover, or perhaps the story itself, "should have been about survivors or first responders." There have been many moving and illuminating stories about the victims of the marathon attack, and the people who selflessly came to their aid, but this is not one of them. Instead, the Rolling Stone article is about the still largely mysterious backstory of a young man who transformed, in what appears to be a short amount of time, from a seemingly normal college student into an alleged terrorist. The facts of his life are important, the larger social implications of his biography are important—and so this story has the potential to be a valuable contribution to the public record and to the general understanding of one of the most serious incidents of domestic terrorism in American history. And so, in the plainest terms, Rolling Stone chose to promote an article about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with a photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev—one that other news outlets, including the New York Times and Washington Post, had previously published. It does not appear that the magazine altered the image in any meaningful way. Nor does the photograph convey an editorial opinion about the subject; the accompanying cover text, meanwhile, identifies Tsarnaev as a "monster." It shows him as he looked when he allegedly killed four people and injured hundreds more.

Many commenters on Facebook have complained that the image gives Tsarnaev the "rock star" treatment—that his scruffy facial hair; long, curly hair; T-shirt; and soft-eyed glance straight at the camera all make him look like just another Rolling Stone cover boy, whether Jim Morrison or any of the many longhairs who appeared in the magazine's nineteen-seventies heyday. But these elements are not engineered. What is so troubling about this image, and many of the others that have become available since April, is that Tsarnaev really does look like a rock star. In this way, the photograph on Rolling Stone is of a part with the often unexpected, and unsettling, portrait of Tsarnaev that has emerged over the past few months.

It's bullshit and misses the point.  It isn't "troubling", it's disrespectful and minimizes the pain and tragedy he caused.

"Oh, let's examine the poor dear and see why he went wrong."

[AFK]

Denial that there is a new you and an old you. This has nothing to do with your views on public health but rather your personality and how you interact with us. To say that youre the same guy that you were when i joined isnt true. It seems to of that that is also the general consensus.

Oh, sure, absolutely my interaction has changed, when it became clear that I was being reviled solely because of my position on drug policy.  It spilled into anything else I posted about.  TGRR illustrates that perfectly with his summation of my threads in the PD subforum, or you with my puns.  So yeah, I figured if I'm going to be reviled no matter what, I might as well go all in.

So I ask you again, why are you still here?

My reasons are my own. 

[AFK]

Presently, I'm killing time until my GF gets back home.

[MMIX]

Presently, I'm killing time until my GF gets back home.

We can only hope that she likes it dead, then.

[AFK]

Presently, I'm killing time until my GF gets back home.

We can only hope that she likes it dead, then.

Likes what dead? 

[MMIX]

Time. How can a longtime punster have missed such a simple play on words?

[AFK]

Maybe because it was bad and non-sensical?