LESSON OF ROLLING STONE COVER PICTURE

Rolling Stone cover picture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is not a travesty; it is a warning to the American public. It means that people who only read headlines are easily led astray. The reaction the cover provoked was not the intention of Rolling Stones magazine editors. That was an unexpected phenomenon. The idea that business would not sell the magazine because of the picture of a good-looking young man on the cover speaks to the theme of this post, which is self-deception is not the crime of the editor.

Dzhokhar, or Joe as his friends called him, was a “sleeper”. It clearly proved that a person’s appearance does not tell us who he she is, which is the message carried by the cover story in that magazine. It also should warn us that we cannot glance at a headline and know what the story is all about, which is the error many people make as this story proves. A persons looks like a person looks. They may use hairstyles, cosmetics, jewelry, tattoos, and piercing to add change and call attention to themselves.  They may use a theme in how they alter their appearance thus try to change their appearance to look better or worse but fundimentally they look like the person they are.

Journalists create headline to call attention to their stories. They often uses considerable journalistic license but no matter how clever the headline, you have to read the story to know what it is about just as you have to know what Dzhokhar did to know who the person was. The picture is not the person anymore than the headline is the story—there is a lesson in that especially for the Boston police chief. 

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