One of the most iconic magazines is facing backlash for featuring an accused murderer and terrorist on its cover. Rolling Stone magazine revealed a glam shot Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the sole-surviving Boston bombing suspect, on its August issue. The cover reads, "The Bomber: How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster." CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Stop & Shop grocery chain and Tedeschi’s Food Shops have decided to boycott the issue. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino wrote a letter to Rolling Stone, accusing it of rewarding a “terrorist with celebrity treatment.” The magazine’s editors defended themselves in a statement, saying that Tsarnaev is young like many of their readers and they wanted to examine the complexities of this issue to understand how tragedies like this happen. Michelle Malkin reacted on Hannity, wondering if Rolling Stone is going to put the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan, on the cover next so we can understand “his humanity and complexity.” She went on to say that Rolling Stone is "prime real estate" for celebrities and featuring an accused terrorist on the cover “celebrifies” him. “I really just want to throw up, […] not just looking at the cover, but the actual article itself,” she said. “[…] Really this just serves the purposes of Al Qaeda propagandists.” Malkin charged, “There is a significant portion of America that has a sociopath fetish. […] We have to inculcate good values, decency and humanity. And these have to trump things like getting eyeballs for your magazine.”
Posted on: Thu, 18 Jul 2013 18:39:05 +0000