Rage-o-Meter: The Rock-Tsarnayev Edition

I simply cannot resist the urge to comment on this, if for no other reason than it gives me the opportunity to use the phrase "TrollingStone magazine." Which I will do now.

Music and culture journalism bastion TrollingStone magazine actually managed to something a little bit punk rock this week, possibly on purpose. Their new cover features a dreamy image of accused Boston bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnayev, using a photo that could just as easily have been snapped at an after-hours dubstep show in Williamsburg. Not that I'd know. The offending image:

Let's leave aside the fact that "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" was a tired phrase 6 years ago, that Magna Carta will someday be viewed as a work of genius (whether we like it or not), and that THE ARCTIC ICE MELT GETS THE SAME AMOUNT OF SPACE AS GUY CLARK JR. Put that all out of your mind for the moment, so we can get back to literally judging this book by its cover.

Just look at him. All smug and self-assured. He really does look like a douchebag from an unadvertised underground bar you'll never be cool enough to get into. How dare RollingStone elevate him like that. Wait, hold on a second. Okay, they do go on to call him "The Bomber," which could be a cool DJ name, but then they say "How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster." Well, that's not very flattering. But still, putting an accused murderer on the cover of one of our most cherished (for some reason) national magazines is not something we would ever tolerate.

Hey, is that Hitler?

Hmm. That's odd, right? Genocidal mass murderer, despotic tyrant, two-time coverboy? Maybe Time just has a weird Hitler hangup. Like how Huffington Post can't stop putting up stories about Ann Coulter. They just have a kind of Hitler fetish. Oh, wait a tic. Here comes Stalin.

That's a lot of Stalins.

Oh, and how appropriate that LIFE put Stalin on the cover, since life is something for which he had no regard. So it's not just Hitler. And it's not just Time. Could there be more examples?

And of course:

It's almost as if these magazines were somehow trying to grab the attention of their readers with provocative images and text in order to get them to purchase and read stories about current events. But does it work? Somehow Time and Newsweek largely (mostly) survived the massive boycotts that surely came as a result of these covers shown here (wait, there were none), and RollingStone will survive its latest attempts to trick people into reading the news. It's unfortunate and unavoidable when journalists offend their readers. Well, mainly its unavoidable.

If I were an editor at RollingStone (side note: I'm available!) I wouldn't lose much sleep over CVS or Walgreens or Wal-Mart or anyone else refusing to carry this issue. I'd thank my lucky stars for the free press and count the Internet traffic that comes rolling in, so to speak. Maybe that's the point. Or maybe it's just punk.

Thursday Morning Monologue - April 5, 2012

Hip, hip, hooray for Thursday, everyone! Two nights ago, I roasted vegetables for for the first time. Beets, cauliflower and brussel sprouts. More than anything else so far, that made me feel like an adult. To counteract it, I'm eating nothing but Pop Rocks and Froot Loops for the rest of the week. Take that, maturity! Speaking of immature...

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a law banning medical marijuana on college campuses, because that's a bigger threat than concealed weapons. And in her defense, hacky-sack and drum circles can get pretty dangerous.

Speaking of dangerous, former Chicago police officer and off-duty railroad detective Howard Morgan is facing 80 years in prison for the attempted murder of four police officers who shot him 28 times during a routine traffic stop. Yeah, you read that right. He got shot 28 times, and is somehow facing charges for attempted murder. Either he's the world's most incompetent murderer, or he's black. Oh, he is black? Right...

Paramount just reached a deal with Youtube to add 500 feature films to the online video site's rental program. And FYI, you will get charged an extra dollar if you forget to hit "Refresh" when you're done viewing. In a related story, the rest of Paramount's films are still available for pirating.

In other film news, Thailand banned a film adaptation of Macbeth recently, on the grounds that it could cause political disunity and that it didn't include enough underage prostitution. "Thailand: The Kingdom of Sane Priorities."


In Russia, an office supply company started selling notebooks with Josef Stalin's picture on the front. Glad to see Stalin's finally made it to the free market!

Two pandas at the Edinbugh Zoo have been put together again to try to mate, after five unsuccessful attempts by zookeepers. Probably the male panda just needs a new wingman.

ALTERNATE PUNCHLINES:

• Looks like pandas get headaches too!
• Maybe she should try hitting on his best panda friend.
• Does Frederick's of Hollywood have a bamboo line?
• Have they tried getting the pandas drunk? It is Scotland, after all.

Yahoo! announced yesterday that they will be cutting 2,000 jobs. Or, as they call it, "clearing out the inbox."

And finally, the FDA confiscated another huge shipment of counterfeit drugs. This time, it was fake Avastin, the popular cancer treatment. Patients grew suspicious when they saw the pill bottles:

That's it! Hope you have a great day, my friends!