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Rolling Stone’s Boston Bomber Cover Flops

Rolling Stone’s Boston Bomber Cover Flops

This isn’t going over so well.

When I was a teenager, I used to wait anxiously for my issue of Tiger Beat to arrive (yes, I’m ashamed to admit that).  I think some folks have it right – this Rolling Stone cover is more like Tiger Beat with a mix of Newsweek desperation.

https://twitter.com/MichaelEHayden/status/357494372608135168

Jim Geraghty nails it.

Apparently there were supposed to be some new revelations in the cover story. If so, they ruined it with the actual cover.

At least the #FreeJahar hashtag will be interesting to read.

UPDATE 7/17 at 3:00 pm ET:  Rolling Stone editors have included the following statement above the full article.

Our hearts go out to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, and our thoughts are always with them and their families. The cover story we are publishing this week falls within the traditions of journalism and Rolling Stone’s long-standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day. The fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is young, and in the same age group as many of our readers, makes it all the more important for us to examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens.   –THE EDITORS

In addition, CVS and Tedeschi Food Shops have each published statements that they have decided not to sell the issue in their stores.

Add Walgreens to that list.

Boston Mayor Tom Menino also penned a stern letter to Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone.

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Comments

Not A Member of Any Organized Political | July 17, 2013 at 11:07 am

But Mandy,

Tiger Beat has more journalistic integrity. lol

Just put Rolling Stone (and all its like) back.

Back on the Shelf.
Back behind the Shelf.
Back on the back of the Shelf.
Back behind more worthy periodicals.

My older child started receiving it, gratis, last year as a college senior. I’d get a collection of them on occasion and will get this, as well. I look forward to burning it.

Hey now, Rolling Stone is just changing its demographics from American-hating Leftists to American-hating Jihadi Teens. Not really much diff.

If the “new revelations” are just the ones in the brief article linked to then I would say they are about as revealing as having found some acquaintance who said “He once had a puppy that he loved so much. I can’t believe he became a murderer.”

    jdkchem in reply to Baker. | July 17, 2013 at 6:14 pm

    Way off topic but . . . for about 2-3 years I lived a few blocks from the now notorious Scott Kimball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Lee_Kimball we used to ride bikes and hang out around a creek near the houses. A few years later when I was old enough to be driving the bastard said I tried to run him over. That was a summer from hell thanks to a future serial killer

Maybe their writer needs to lose a hand in a pressure-coker bomb to get it? After awhile, one wonders if even that would do it.

I’m sure it will be about how he was radicalized by Goldstein.

In other news, chocolate rations have increased to twenty grammes a week.

And I want to give a shout out to NSA Agent Mary Costa. Mary will be monitoring this thread for the next 24 hours. Mary enjoys hiking, cooking and tennis. Likes long walks on the beach at night and is looking for that special someone to share her BDSM dungeon with. Everyone wave to Mary!

OmG that cover is Disgusting.

LibraryGryffon | July 17, 2013 at 11:55 am

I heard about this on the radio this morning. At least one caller said he had contacted several local stores which he normally frequents who carry this and told them that if they didn’t get rid of these issues by tomorrow, he would no longer given them his business.

Another suggested hiding all the issues behind worthier rags so that no-one would see them.

Both sound like reasonable plans of action, and both would hurt Rolling Stone’s bottom line.

    I respectfully disagree with the caller. Do I hope people cancel/boycott and this rag finally collapses? Absolutely. The left wing news-entertainment complex needs to be starved into perdition. But I don’t think we should go after businesses that happen to carry it. This is when boycotts get out of hand and is a tactic we normally see the left use to bully businesses. Boycott the producer of the material directly. Don’t buy/subscribe. The stores will have leftover copies… and that will send enough of a message from their end.

      moonstone716 in reply to rick67. | July 17, 2013 at 3:28 pm

      I like the “hiding it behind others” trick. I find conservative magazines and books hidden all of the time. And I personally have to at least “turn over” any magazine I see with BHO on the cover, lest I throw up all over it.

        Not A Member of Any Organized Political in reply to moonstone716. | July 17, 2013 at 8:17 pm

        “Out of Sight is Out of Mind.”

        Those rack jobbers/marketers sweat blood to get linear-shelf feet on display racks.

        But we the public don’t have to just lay back and take it.

        “Civil” disobedience

The left never passes up an opportunity to sink to new lows.

Betting there’s a Jim Morrison cover that looks eerily similar.

ideas..

    stevewhitemd in reply to Browndog. | July 17, 2013 at 1:10 pm

    That my thought too, more Jim Morrison than Bob Dylan.

    I get that RS might want to do a story about how a kid got corrupted into being a terrorist (the possibility that he was evil to begin with apparently isn’t worth considering). I get that exploring what happened might be instructive for our society.

    But putting a dreamy photo of him on the cover? How much airbrushing did they do to the pic (and you know they did some). What was the photographer, airbrush artist, cover editor, and managing editor thinking?

    Oh, right, I know what they were thinking…

    Henry Hawkins in reply to Browndog. | July 17, 2013 at 5:18 pm

    And here it is. Weasel Zippers posted a side-by-side of RS covers of Morrison and the child killer terrorist:

    http://weaselzippers.us/2013/07/17/sick-rolling-stone-gives-boston-terrorist-the-rock-star-treatment/

If you complain about anything RS does you are a homophobe.

Just look at the picture Jan Wenner put on the cover – isn’t that terrorist just so dreamy?

Now it’s all decided to blow our minds
But our minds won’t really be blown
Like the blow that’ll gitcha when you get your picture
On the cover of the Rollin’ Stone

— Dr Hook

I wonder how many other terrorist and cover-boy wannabes are looking at that cover today and thinking “hey, if I can kill enough people, then someday that could be me”?

After reading the first paragraph, and especially this line:

“When I was a teenager, I used to wait anxiously for my issue of Tiger Beat to arrive (yes, I’m ashamed to admit that).”

I had to go back and do a double check of who the author was. At first I thought it was William Jacobson, in which case, the above fact would have been unforgivably hilarious (or hilariously unforgivable, I haven’t decided which, yet). But seeing as the author is Mandy Nagy, I guess I can understand.

And don’t give me any grief about this post being sexist – Tiger Beat is unabashedly targeted at teen and pre-teen girls.

    Baker in reply to cazinger. | July 17, 2013 at 1:24 pm

    LOL – I did the same thing looking up to see who had posted. I didn’t comment on it but I am glad you did. Plus you addressed it so well. Touche.

theduchessofkitty | July 17, 2013 at 2:03 pm

Fonzie just jumped the shark…

I’m from Massachusetts and keep in touch with some high school classmates via Fb. Most of the time they are li-ber-al and can be quite ugly about it. On this occasion they are cancelling subscriptions and even subscriptions to other magazines by same company. When you’ve angered Massachusetts liberals…

Remember when RS had that dreamy looking photo of Tim McVeigh (he blew up little children too) on the cover?

No, didn’t think so.

RS will make up for it in the next issue by putting a pic of Trayvon Martin on the cover. That should get rave reviews from the left. They do have odd standards.

So in other words, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful?”

Henry Hawkins | July 17, 2013 at 4:23 pm

Rolling Stone’s prime demo (youth, generally) increasingly doesn’t read dead tree magazines. As circulation goes down, so does ad revenue. Few paper-based mags and rags are successfully making the jump to full online and pay walls are generally detested. Paper magazines and newspapers are dying on the vine financially.

Expect all dead tree based publications to make these silly attempts at sales-by-ginning-up-outrage.

I have to admit, that when you said you read tiger beat, I immediately looked at the masthead to see your first name, as those magazines have a reputation of being read by only one sex.

[…] Rolling Stone’s attempt to present Boston Bomber suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a teen idol, one young American woman has an entirely different take on how child-killing […]