The WTF of the Week

"The John McCain Sarah Palin Newsweek Cover is a Total Bore!" blared Mark Pasetsky's site "Cover Awards - The Media Industry's Guilty Pleasure" of the August 29 shot of the presidential nominee and his cohort.

And if it was a pendulum swing that Pasetsky and the public desired - it was a 180 degrees that he and we got. The September 8, 2008 Newsweek to hit the stands sported a VP nominee Palin touting - a baby? An American flag? The femur of a T-Rex? None of the above...a rifle.

Pasetsky goes on to say that magazines like Newsweek and TIME should be ashamed having resorted to producing the exact same covers in consecutive weeks for each side of the party to avoid criticism and seem unbiased. Without strapping on a bustle and attempting to evoke the fairness doctrine, is it too off base to mention, perhaps, equal coverage? It seems like a dated concept with TIME drinking Pepsi and Newsweek drinking Coca-Cola and the public drinking campaign Kool-aid, but some might relish in the bland portrayal of candidates not as icons but as intellectuals.

According to PNDPulse and Photo District News the Palin photo was a cutout of a six-year-old Alaska Stock photo shot by Judy Patrick in June 2002. (http://www.pdnpulse.com/2008/09/newsweeks-palin.html) Newsweek made no effort to conceal the usage of a borrowed photo from the past. But for a publication so capable of acquiring their own shots, the editorial intentions are somewhat unclear. The photo was interpreted by some as sexy. Is America supposed to fear Sarah Palin or feel safe under a mother who fears no moose?

Whether a voter wants Palin in the bleachers, in the bedroom or on the ballot, guns are a fringe issue. Her stance may be a telltale indicator of her character, but gun control at large would take constitutional reform.

In the September 8, 2008 Newsweek article Assistant Managing Editor Kathy Deveny writes, "If I'm really honest with myself, I'm mostly just happy that there's another woman on the national political stage. I think it's good for my 8-year-old daughter, who has called Hillary Clinton her idol. She doesn't love Hillary because of her health-care policy or pro-choice stance: she loves Hillary because she thinks girls rule. The more powerful women there are on the national stage, the better it is for all women, because this is a game of numbers."


Muddied as it may be whether the shot was pejorative, a nod of approval or just a memo from the circulations department saying to increase sales at all costs is apparently a null point. Palin could have been holding a missile and would still win the votes of the Lisa Frank club.

The issue is Newsweek missed the issue.

In this campaign cultural diversity rides in the backseat no matter if one is a conservative liberal or a liberal conservative. Case in point, if the nation's publications are going to pull peripheral dog-and-pony shows to the core, let the pendulum swing another 180 degrees. Mothers with 8-year-old daughters might be quick to turn the "Girls Rule" cheek to a "Boys Drool" shriek if Newsweek published a cover with Barack Obama holding a gun.