Read All About It!

Illustration by Gordon Studer

Yes, I know--it's all about selling magazines. Still, are there no limits? A photo of the surviving one of the two misguided, despicable, anti-American brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings occupies the latest cover of Rolling Stone, set to hit newsstands this Friday. In a glamor shot suitable for framing, which it surely will be by the legions of innocent teenyboppers who will all swoon, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev looks downright adorable and more than a little bit like dead rocker Jim Morrison. Okay, he's handsome-- let's admit it. No matter; he is evil and thus it is unseemly to glorify him in any way, as this surely does.

Here's a better idea: If the editors at the once-popular magazine are hoping to get people talking about them again, they should print gory pictures of the mutated limbs blown off the perfectly nice people who were out for a day of fun when they ran afoul of this month's cover boy. Now that would get tongues wagging! And inside, they could write about the victims themselves, who are still trying to scrape their lives together after that horrific event. Of course that would be responsible journalism, and that's a thing of the past.