Magazines are no strangers to shying away from the norm, and are often known to be ruthless in publishing disputable material. Stirring up controversy in pursuit of seems to be the holy grail of life: money. Time after time, magazine covers display eye-catching but controversial figures, ideas and subjects. Magazines like Time, The New Yorker and the Rolling Stone have come under fire many times: from Time naming Adolph Hitler as the Time’s Person of the Year for 1938, the New Yorker depicting Barack Obama dressed as Osama bin Laden in a 2008 cover, to recently, the Rolling Stone using one of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s self-taken pictures as its cover, after seemingly editing it a little to feature the alleged Boston bomber in a softer light.
For the folks who don’t know about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, he was arrested due to his connection to the April 15, 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon which purportedly killed 3 individuals and injured over 260 people (the numbers are still unclear as different news outlets report different numbers of casualties and victims). He was on the run but was found soon on April 19, 2013, due to an injury resulting from scuffling with police, that left him holed up in a boat…while the same scuffle led to the death of his brother and another bombing suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. About a week ago, Tsarnaev appeared in court and pleaded not guilty to each of the 30 charges that were placed against him, one of which includes using a weapon of mass destruction to kill, a charge that carries high penalties such as death itself.
Anyways, when Tsarnaev graced the cover of the August issue of Rolling Stone, absolute outrage ensued, especially in the seemingly ‘free’ and ‘anonymous’ environment that the Internet provides and enriches. The Rolling Stone Facebook page was dropping likes every time I refreshed the page, and each of their posts were swamped with comments from Facebook users that seemed to run along the lines of “Rolling Stone supporting terrorism, being un-American, and being a/an [insert obscenity here].” There is a strong divide between the group that vehemently protests the cover vs. the group that either doesn’t care, doesn’t know about the Boston Marathon bombing incident or supports the cover.
Well, either way, both parties were trading insults (for we all know that calling each other idiots over the Internet really makes a difference in another person’s manner/thoughts). However, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill Internet fight for chain stores like CVS/Pharmacy and Walgreens are banning the copies off of their shelves before they are even sent out.
In my opinion, people are becoming extremely involved and expediting precious time and energy over a magazine cover that was obviously meant to cause controversy. By spewing outrage on any number of social media outlets, one is just playing into the magazine’s hands like putty, for any amount of buzz generates more revenue for the magazine as more people are exposed to it and its influence and audience increases as more people are looking forward to obtaining a copy of the issue, just to see what all the fuss is about, and possibly looking forward to future issues with the same juicy morsel of controversy tied to it. The caption under Tsarnaev’s picture reads: “The Bomber: How a popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam and became a monster.” The heading should be obvious as to the point of this cover: to make seemingly sane individuals become offended and insane with rage, and feed their inherent curiosity about Tsarnaev by researching him, condemning him (and adding on whatever drove him, his religion a convenient answer) through all manners of social networking sites.
Seeing most of the major news outlets broadcast the cover and give their respective comments on it, I can only imagine the top executives of the Rolling Stone hierarchy cackling in glee. I personally think that this cover is an obvious ruse and that people should remain calm (after all, what goes on the Internet never really leaves it), but blogging about this cover seems a tad bit ironic. Anyways, what are your opinions on this whole Rolling Stone/Dzhokhar Tsarnaev controversy?
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/17/us/gallery/controversial-covers/?hpt=hp_c2
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/10/boston-marathon-explosions-dzhokhar-tsarnaev
Very interesting… I actually thought of that too!
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