Rolling Stone's cover of Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has really pissed a lot of people off. I get why the people of Boston are angry about it, and why others are angry, too. Just a year ago, people would have looked at Tsarnaev and thought he was a decent young man. Several retailers have refused to carry this issue of the magazine, because they feel that featuring Tsarnaev on the cover glamorizes the terrible act that he is now in prison for, whereas others are crying that not selling the magazine is akin to censorship.
In this case, I think Rolling Stone could have done a story on Tsarnaev without the cover. I'm the biggest supporter of anti-censorship and freedom of the press. Right now, a New York Times reporter has been told by an appellant court to reveal his sources, and he has refused to the point that he is willing to go to jail. I'm 100% behind this guy, and I really hope this decision is overturned once it gets to the Supreme Court.
I'm not supporting Tsarnaev on the cover, because unlike the Time magazine cover that featured Charles Manson as Man of the Year back in the '70s, our culture has changed drastically. In previous decades, if you saw a bad man on the cover of a magazine, you automatically assumed that the story inside would be about how bad the guy or his act was. There was a general opinion of distain when a criminal was featured on the cover of a magazine. I know this Rolling Stone article about Tsarnaev will be a well-written account about how a seemingly good, immigrant kid went from run-of-the-mill college student to the murderer who placed a backpack full of explosives behind a child, knowing that child would be killed the moment the backpack detonated.
The problem is that we live in a culture that is now so obsessed with celebrity and reality television that why you are on the cover doesn't matter as the fact that you are on the cover. Ten years ago, Tsarnaev on the cover would have been no big deal, but now, Tsarnaev on the cover means he is being talked about. He has elevated himself from being one of the faceless masses to someone people are talking about, and it doesn't matter that none of the talk is positive. Today's culture, particularly the majority of the 18-28 yr. old population, has been so trained to think that if you are a regular person, you are nothing, that bad publicity is still publicity.
A few years ago, a group of teens were breaking into celebrities' homes and robbing them. When they were finally nabbed, all the ringleader cared about was the fact that the celebrities, whose homes she robbed, knew her name and who she was. It didn't matter that she was facing a heavy prison sentence, she was on television and in magazines.
The brilliant artist, Andy Warhol, once said that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, and thankfully he didn't live long enough to see that day. I imagined when he said that, he might have been thinking that everyone would do something fabulous that would make them famous, even for a fleeting second. I don't think he ever envisioned a time when doing the most vile acts would make one eligible for celebrity status.
The majority of the reality "stars" add nothing to our culture. From the Kardashians to Spencer and Heidi to Courtney and her geriatric hubby to Honey Boo Boo, reality television is the bottom of our cultural barrel. Not only does it glorify the worst traits of human beings, it celebrates them, and makes others think that vile, ignorant and repugnant behavior is the quick way to success and celebrity. Forget talent, creating art, bettering society or doing something meaningful, just be the worst and most negatively outrageous,
and you too, can be on the cover of the magazine.
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