Rolling Stone's self-righteous reasoning doesn't convince.
The magazine has a dreamy and flattering photo on its cover of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, along with a tease to a story purporting to show how the young man turned into a "monster."
And as a result of the photo, plenty of people are upset. So, Rolling Stone released an editor's note saying that while "our hearts go out to the victims" of the bombing, "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," etc.
But that's a complete dodge.
The real fact is that the cover of Rolling Stone has many functions, as the editors well know. And only one of those functions is "examining the complexities" of terrorism or anything else.
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Another, more powerful and more-deeply rooted function is to serve as a reward. Which the editors also know.
In pop culture, to win a spot on the cover of Rolling Stone is to have arrived. It was that way in 1972, when Dr. Hook sang about "the thrill that'll getcha when you get your picture
on the cover of the Rollin' Stone."
It's still that way in 2013, when a cover shot confirms youth-culture celebrity as potently as a People magazine cover portrait does on the mass market.
That's the point Boston Mayor Thomas Menino makes in his letter to Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone's longtime publisher. "Your Aug. 3 cover rewards a terrorist with celebrity treatment," Menino writes.
"It is ill-conceived at best and reaffirms a terrible message that destruction gains fame for killers and their 'causes.'"
It's the point renowned art director George Lois makes in an interview with New York magazine.
"I can't believe anybody with half a brain doesn't look at that thing and immediately go, 'What!?'" says Lois, the man responsible for many of Esquire magazine's most famous covers.
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"The cover of Rolling Stone says: This is an important person to our culture, in some way -- a terrific person or an emerging talent or a cultural icon.
"If you put a big X on his face, it wouldn't be a good cover, but you've got to do something to show that you think he's despicable. Maybe have a devil's tongue or horns. I'm not saying I would do that, but you better do something."
And it's the point Rolling Stone's editors would have accepted -- and acted upon, maybe with one of Lois' cover ideas -- if their hearts truly "go out to the victims" as claimed.
-- Tom Dennis for the Herald
