re: #61 Charles Johnson

I guess I understand why people are upset at the Rolling Stone cover, but I’m kind of meh about the issue myself. The caption sure isn’t glamorizing him - calls him a “monster.” I can see why people think the photo does, though.

I guess I don’t automatically connect being on the cover of a magazine with being glamorized; I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with putting pictures of people like this on covers. And the article it’s leading into is apparently a really good piece of in-depth journalism. (Haven’t read it yet, just by word of mouth.)

Same, same.

I think the major issue some people must have with that pic of Dzhokhar is that it humanizes him somewhat; people want their bad guys to look the part, to look evil, not to look like a normal human being.

This RS cover makes it that much harder for some people to slap that “monster” label on Dzhokhar (even though RS uses it themselves to describe him), so that we can neatly file him away as a bad guy, out of sight and out of mind as much as possible.

Face it, folks…like it or not, that’s the face of a mad bomber, a killer. They can’t all look like Charlie Manson.