Rolling Stone puts Boston bombing suspect on cover

Byrnzie

cincybearcat wrote:

There has to be a time when we stop glorifying these people.

So the next time someone calls me a monster i should feel glorified?

Cool! :thumbup:

cincybearcat

Byrnzie wrote:

cincybearcat wrote:

There has to be a time when we stop glorifying these people.

So the next time someone calls me a monster i should feel glorified?

Cool! :thumbup:

Only if they include your picture and your real name!!!

pjl44

Byrnzie wrote:

His picture was all over the newspapers and t.v and internet news media too. Where was all your outrage over that?

There has been, but it was more around the Newtown kid. CNN's round-the-clock coverage, interviewing people who knew him; they were acting as his biographer. Then you have Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil setting up shop and broadcasting shows from the town like it's the Super Bowl.

Up until this point I had way more issue with how the manhunt was handled than how the brothers were covered. For me this is still small peanuts compared to the tragedy porn that mass shootings have turned into. Just one more log on the fire.

pjl44

Byrnzie wrote:

Maybe I was hallucinating, but every copy of the magazine I've read over the past 10 or so years has featured a section relating to politics and/or current affairs. Therefore, the piece on the Boston bombings doesn't seem to be out of the ordinary.

This is true, but how many of the people who are complaining actually read Rolling Stone regularly? Most people aren't reading these periodicals, so I suspect they have preconceived notions about their content based on years of seeing their covers at checkout lines, newsstands, etc. There is/would be less furor about this picture in the New York Times or hypothetically appearing on Time because of those preconceived notions. Consider who was on the cover of Rolling Stone the issues leading up to this one:

Johnny Depp
Danny McBride/Seth Rogen/James Franco/Jonah Hill
Daft Punk
Rolling Stones
Bruno Mars
Louis C.K.
Jon Hamm
Mumford & Sons
Billie Joe Armstrong
Lena Dunham

While they have done some outstanding investigative reporting the last several years, they are seen as a pop culture magazine. And most of that is their own doing because they choose their covers. There are substantially more people who just see the cover of the magazine than actually pick it up and read it.

My point here is not to debate right, wrong, etc. about their decision go go with the cover they did. Just trying to explain why I think people are reacting how they are without leaping right to "the masses are asses."

Godfather.

Byrnzie wrote:

cincybearcat wrote:

There has to be a time when we stop glorifying these people.

So the next time someone calls me a monster i should feel glorified?

Cool! :thumbup:

you monster !


Godfather.

chadwick

Tom K wrote:

If Eddie Vedder liked Rolling Stone magazine.. would you like it too?

i honestly feel this is so much the case with a lot of things ed likes & dislikes as well as many other rockers. frig that noise, have a brain & choose your own way.

if ed only did not ripe his ass with the magazine at a venue fulla people but rather praised the magazine, 14,000 fans woulda instantly bought a copy with many thousands to follow suit

hedonist

I say with honesty (and perhaps a bit of indignance) that Mr. Vedder's yay or nay on most anything, nor the yays or nays of any other musician, celebrity, dipshit in the public eye, etc., have directly dictated my personal stance.

One can think little of Rolling Stone - or any publication - and not be a puppet.

I AM MINE

Its Evolution Baby

The cover should have been his mug shot or something. They did make him look like a Rock Star on the cover. I THINK that's some kind of ironic point they are trying to make but like I said earlier it failed.

I still think the outrage is a little thick. I mean do you all remember the Mag covers after 9/11?

kenny olav

If Rolling Stone's point with this cover was to make people uncomfortable with their idea of what a terrorist should look like... is it really worth putting people who were so recently victimized by this terror through this discomfort? While we should try to get into the mind of the bomber, I'm sure that can be done without promoting a glamorous pop star image on the cover of a magazine where 99% of the time a pop star is what you see, particularly in the past 10-15 years, starting when Rolling Stone began to promote pop acts such as the Backstreet Boys that have no artistic integrity. Maybe the article is useful journalism, but the cover suggests they are more concerned with grabbing the potential reader with a sexually alluring image - he looks like Jim Morrison in that picture for fuck's sake. You can say it's a brilliant attack on popular sensibilities of what a terrorist should look like... but why not consider the senses of the victims of the terrorist attack? Are we saying that people shouldn't be sensitive to the victims? Does journalistic shock value trump all sensitivities? I say fuck no. That kind of journalism is worth absolutely nothing to me.

musicismylife78

the manson issue is wildly different. No one looks at the Boston bomber as a hero. In 1969 Manson was viewed as a hero by the counterculture. I believe that very RS issue has the quote from Jerry Rubin about Manson being "our cherubic face". Joni Mitchell wrote a song in favor of him. Neil young sent him a motorcycle and even wrote from mansons perspective in Revolution Blues. Around that time you had the Weathermen bubbling up and SDS's ranks breaking. With a "lets do the same old protest" and then "lets cause the revolution" being warring factions in the antiwar movement. One of the more famous was a SDS ballroom convention with huge posters on the wall with bullets attached to the names of Nixon, Agnew, Reagan and Tate. Speeches were given where where hand signals representing forks and knives and statements like "they killed them with forks and knives, dig it" were made.

Clearly RS isnt advocating this. And clearly youth culture doesnt view the Boston Bomber in the way our parents generation viewed Manson. The guy isnt viewed as a symbol for a youth culture.

Yeah RS is profiting off the tragedy, but so did Newsweek, Time, the nightly news, Fox, CNN, ABC, etc... You dont have to put that guy on the cover to profit off and exploit the tragedy. RS is a scapegoat for the larger media apparatus and for society at large. We are obsessed with violence, crime, war and death.

We should treat all media outlets the same. They all are peddlers of garbage. They dont care about the victims or the tragedies. They care about ratings. Doing something about this cover photo does nothing to address the larger issues and topics at play here

musicismylife78

kenny olav wrote:

If Rolling Stone's point with this cover was to make people uncomfortable with their idea of what a terrorist should look like... is it really worth putting people who were so recently victimized by this terror through this discomfort? While we should try to get into the mind of the bomber, I'm sure that can be done without promoting a glamorous pop star image on the cover of a magazine where 99% of the time a pop star is what you see, particularly in the past 10-15 years, starting when Rolling Stone began to promote pop acts such as the Backstreet Boys that have no artistic integrity. Maybe the article is useful journalism, but the cover suggests they are more concerned with grabbing the potential reader with a sexually alluring image - he looks like Jim Morrison in that picture for fuck's sake. You can say it's a brilliant attack on popular sensibilities of what a terrorist should look like... but why not consider the senses of the victims of the terrorist attack? Are we saying that people shouldn't be sensitive to the victims? Does journalistic shock value trump all sensitivities? I say fuck no. That kind of journalism is worth absolutely nothing to me.

All that may be true, and it probably is, but im not sure how this differs from the nightly news, or ABC, or Fox, or the Washington Post, or Time. They all do this. Its all about image, selling issues and copies, its all about ads and revenue. All about dressing up violence.

In a way our society does view killers and murderers and violence as pop or as mere images to prop up ratings. And in many ways it only leads to heightened anxiety. You know that nice couple who are muslim and have turbans and burkas, well THEY have to be planning something. They have to hate america. And that guy over there he has to be evil because the media tells us most people are and crime and robbery is increasing. It taps into the anxiety of the times. People are already on edge. Makes sense that if all you see on tv, or read about, is about death and violence, that you'd fear your neighbors

South of Seattle

Yeah, it's no different than (insert major media channel) putting up pictures of Trayvon or Zimmerman on the cover or homepage of a website.

Plus RS is fairly political. Matt Taibbi anyone?

ajedigecko

Byrnzie looks similiar to one of the following.

A. Mike mccready
B. brad pitt
C. Rush limbaigh
D. Al sharpton

Bronx Bombers

A police officer who was there the night Dzhokar Tsarnaev was captured has decided to counter the "normalcy" of Rolling Stone's contorversial cover by releasing photos showing the bomber how many would apparently prefer to see him: bloody, covered in dirt, with the red circle of a laser target trained on his forehead. "This guy is evil," Sean Murphy, a tactical officer for the Massachusetts State Police told Boston magazine. "This is the real Boston bomber. Not someone fluffed and buffed for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine."

http://news.yahoo.com/photos-show-momen ... 19966.html

chadwick

ajedigecko wrote:

Byrnzie looks similiar to one of the following.

A. Mike mccready
B. brad pitt
C. Rush limbaigh
D. Al sharpton

um....

d. al sharpton ?

musicismylife78

Byrnzie wrote:

Thirty Bills Unpaid wrote:

Many, including myself, are not necessarily outraged as much as we are shaking our heads at the RS's tactic for selling their magazine. We expect Time and Macleans's to do pieces such as this, but to me... given the genre the RS dedicates itself to... this is no different than Sports Illustrated doing the story.

If people wish to shake their head at RS's obvious and cheap attempt at generating a buzz for themselves... then they are free to do it and not really out of line. Take shots at them all you want, but to argue that the RS covering the Boston Murderer is not a reach for the magazine would be weak. Should we expect a Ariel Castro cover next month? Even though it was still not really the material they typically cover, Charles Manson at least hung out with the Beach Boys, drew a vision from the White Album and recorded music. It wasn't as much a stretch as a punk bomber that needs to be erased from the earth- not glorified.

Maybe I was hallucinating, but every copy of the magazine I've read over the past 10 or so years has featured a section relating to politics and/or current affairs. Therefore, the piece on the Boston bombings doesn't seem to be out of the ordinary.

RS started out as a political magazine, a voice for the counterculture. They've obviously gone through various incarnations and revamps. The 90's were a new era and they changed. Same for the 2000's. But yeah the political aspect of the magazine has always been there. Matt Taibbi. They always do, or used to do pretty interesting article on the culture and drugs and war and all that stuff, even as recently as a decade or so ago. I remember reading some interesting articles in there about school shootings. Jann Wenner and company started RS as a voice of the counterculture. its always been left wing. I think their articles have always been unfairly overlooked. Some interesting stuff in there

ajedigecko

chadwick wrote:

ajedigecko wrote:

Byrnzie looks similiar to one of the following.

A. Mike mccready
B. brad pitt
C. Rush limbaigh
D. Al sharpton

um....

d. al sharpton ?

musicismylife78

and the manson thing was, RS and the hippie culture blatantly viewed Manson, at least initially as a hero. So in that respect, I think RS put Manson on the cover as a tribute. Interestingly though the Joni Mitchell demand to free him from prison and Neil's motorcylcle gift to manson happened YEARS later. mid 70's.

The Boston bomber I dont think is viewed by RS editors or the culture at large as anything remotely resembling a hero.

Byrnzie

Its Evolution Baby wrote:

The cover should have been his mug shot or something. They did make him look like a Rock Star on the cover. I THINK that's some kind of ironic point they are trying to make but like I said earlier it failed.

You make it sound like they got him in for a photo-shoot. The picture they used was his Twitter profile picture.

supergrass

The uproar over this cover is absurd. His photo has appeared on hundreds of newspapers across the country. Time ran smiling school photos of the Columbine killers and nary a whine was heard, not to mention a cover shot of the killing spree. Most people are only upset about it because they were told they should be or because they have a perception of what Rolling Stone should be.

Beyond that, the story is a portrait of a killer and it's certainly worth trying to understand those who are committing these heinous crimes. It's clearly not glorifying a kid they call "a monster."

This reaction is why our political system is broken: "You view the world differently than me, so you're stupid." If you don't like the image or the story, don't buy the magazine. Don't buy it ever again if you feel that way. But don't pass judgment on what Rolling Stone has the right to publish simply because you think it's in bad taste.