Fuck Rolling Stone Magazine

In a desperate effort to publicize their irrelevant, once-edgy-but-now-utterly-mainstream magazine, Rolling Stone have put alleged Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar (in the magazine they use the teeny-bopper Twitter corruption of his name: Jahar) Tsarnaev on the cover of their upcoming magazine. But it wasn't just any picture. It's a glamorizing, softly lit, almost angelic image of the terrorist. It makes him look like a Disney Channel heartthrob, not a heartless sociopath. They tried to make him look as sexy as possible. As much like a rock-star as possible.

Someone should send a copy of Rolling Stone with sexy Dzhokhar on the cover, to every inmate of that supermax prison in Colorado. Include a note that says "Coming soon to a shower near you."

How edgy of you, Rolling Stone, how very bold. And how brave of you to be so bold. They've released a statement defending of the freedom of the press and touting the merits of journalistic integrity. That's why you made Dzhokhar look as pretty as possible on the cover. Because of all your integrity.

If you truly want to discuss his descent from popular teenager to terrorist, why not have two contrasting images: one like this one, and one of him walking along Boylston Street with a bomb slung over his backpack. Or maybe a picture of him juxtaposed with a picture of the carnage he created.

The Telegraph in Britain figured that out.

That would be journalism. That would be provocative and it would elicit thought. Not merely sensationalist and shocking, in order to generate profit.

And if you were truly brave and truly wanted to push the boundaries of freedom of the press, then you'd have a monthly comic strip featuring the prophet Mohammed (illustrations of Mohammed piss many Muslims off), printed alongside the personal mailing addresses of the magazine's staff. That's brave. This is cowardly. This is just a crude attempt to generate controversy and get people to talk about a magazine they probably assumed wasn't on the shelf anymore.

But if you want to go down this road, you can't do this just once. If Taylor Swift or Jay-Z is on the cover of next month's edition, I'll be very disappointed. You want to be edgy, you want to push the envelope, you must do it ALL THE TIME. You bought the ticket, you take the ride.

Suggestions for future Rolling Stone covers:
Adam Lanza
Aaron Hernandez
Osama bin Laden
Major Nidal Malik Hasan
Joseph Stalin
Muammar Gaddafi
Joseph Kony (remember how much people hated him, then forgot about him)
Timothy McVeigh
James Holmes
Lee Harvey Oswald

And I want the pictures to be as sexy as possible. That's the main thing. The type of thing teenage girls tape to the inside of their lockers. When Rolling Stone put Charles Manson on their cover, he wasn't portrayed as sexy. More crazy than anything else.

Anyway, fuck you, Rolling Stone. You're not journalists, you're just trying to pump some relevancy into your outdated, uninteresting rag. You're not trying to tell a story, controversy be damned. You're trying to make money off pain and suffering, by glamorizing someone who killed innocent people as thoughtlessly and as callously as you turn the page of your shit magazine.