The New Rolling Stone Cover Offends the Senses!

[last1standing]

And that's a good thing.

Personally, I think this cover may be the best representation of the Boston Marathon bombing, yet. I haven't read the inside story in Rolling Stone but the front cover seems to be asking important questions that few seem to want to have to answer.

What drove a popular, handsome kid with a bright future to throw it all away with an act of inhumanity? That question can be extrapolated into why thousands of young people all over the world are turning to extremist acts against the United States and other Western Democracies.

So what makes these people hate us? Is it our freedoms or something more tangible such as over 200 years of manipulating and exploiting the people of other nations for our own profits?

What made this kid, and so many others, turn from promise to despair? Was it evil or empathy? Mental illness or a stand against oppression?

Unless we answer these questions and find a way to respond to the answers we find, we'll see many more Tsarnaevs. Censoring the cover of a magazine will do nothing to stop that.

[ejpoeta]

1. thank you. that is so right. i have been trying to say this to

many threads the past couple of days. People don't want to hear it. If they really want to do something about terrorists, we need to figure out WHY and how this is happening and how we can prevent the person from becoming a terrorist. He looks just like anyone else. Maybe people don't want to see that. It could be anyone. It's a very frightening prospect.

[last1standing]

6. "It could be anyone."

That's exactly right and I think that's what's pissing people off more than anything else. We usually react this way when looking in a mirror because we see the nasty things about ourselves that we'd prefer to ignore.

What is it they say about pimples? Pop one and five more show up. I think so long as we continue to 'pop' these human blemishes instead of treating the root of the problem, often our own habits, we will always have to live with the scars.

[Mojorabbit]

15. + 100 nt

[Bluenorthwest]

2. The Boston Globe, April 19

" His younger brother, a well-liked wrestling team captain and National Honor Society member in high school, is currently enrolled as a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, living in a dorm on campus and studying to be a marine biologist.

“If someone were to ask me what this kid is like, I would say that he had a heart of gold,” said Larry Aaronson, who taught the younger suspect at the public Cambridge Rindge & Latin School. “He was as gracious as possible … This is all surreal to me.”

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/04/19/relatives-marathon-bombing-suspects-worried-that-older-brother-was-corrupting-sweet-younger-sibling/UCYHkiP9nfsjAtMjJPWJJL/story.html

[last1standing]

7. He grew up in the US with so many advantages.

The stereotypical 'good kid' with a bright future. What made him give all that up?

And why are so few interested in answering that question?

[Javaman]

9. Because the answers...

might frighten people.

no one wants to reflect on our screwed up so society and how a seemingly, "normal" kid fell down the crazy hole. Because that would mean certain sectors of society would, you know, actually have to talk to their children and get to know them.

Given the amount of various mass shootings by what authorities like to profile as "troubled kids", this particular instance shows a "normal" kid aka "a good looking kid", taking a massive wrong turn into terrorism.

No one in the mouth breathing public wants to entertain the fact that even "good looking" kids can get completely fucked up.

My personal take on this whole thing is this: me being the younger brother to a handsome dynamic older brother who "got all the girls" and me being the nerd dweeb doing all I could just to not be made fun of while I was growing up, idolized my brother and followed his lead. If he told me to do something, I did it. Not out of desperate robotic need to obey, but because he was the cool guy that I so wanted to be. And there was nothing he could tell me, at certain point in my life, that I thought anything he said was wrong.

And this is what I feel happened here with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not absolving him of anything, I just think he was an easy mark for his crazy ass older brother.

[last1standing]

11. Maybe that's it. I don't know.

But while it could explain Dzhokhar's particular situation, what accounts for the thousands of similar kids throughout the world who end up doing the same thing? What accounts for John Walker Lindh or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold? What made Adam Lanza walk into a school and murder 20 little children and six adults?

When will we, as a nation, ask ourselves what turns kids into monsters?

[BrotherIvan]

12. JMYHO, the answer is: Modern Life

People ask all the time, why does America breed so many serial killers and mass murderers (which I think these brothers actually are, not political terrorists)? I think it is the isolation, the emptiness, our humanness that is not being fed.

I am not trying to hearken back to some golden age, but we are living in a world that was not built for the human body, let alone for the human psyche. We live in a world of machines and streets because that is what commerce requires. We sit at desks for hours at a time, under constant stress--and our horrific health shows the outcome. We have no community as people move away for jobs, families are so overworked there is no free time, everyone is so busy except from all the crazy modern demands that they only have energy to sink in front of the television and consume the most depressing, soul-draining trash ever broadcast. We have more conversation with people over the internet, whom we may share ideas with, but we cannot share other things such as non-verbal cues, touch, and basic good energy or vibes. I don't know one person in mid-life who is not dealing with intense loneliness and a sense that there is a better way somehow. We live in a cultural wasteland in a sense because we no longer acknowledge that people need things beyond the material.

Teenagers have no coming of age rituals. They have no guidance or role models beyond rock stars and athletes. And they have no future. No wonder they are willing to give it all up for a moment of glory or fame.

Our sense of community has been shattered by capitalism, by our revering money above all else. The pursuit of more money and more things has made us robotic consumers, always hungry for the next thing that will fill our empty hearts. I don't watch television so I'm always astounded to see commercials that tell moms if they give their kids Sunny D or Jiffy peanut butter, their kids will love them. Or teen girls, if you shop at Target, you'll have friends. Those messages used to be subtle; they're not any more. Why do you think the churches have been so successful and have regained such a foothold on people's lives? Because they offer the one thing no one else is bothering to do: community.

I know what I'm saying may seem simplistic. And I know that some will want to beat me up and tell me all the wonderful things they do in their community. That's great. But look around, travel to a city. Look around the internet, do you think all those people on facebook with a million friends and a million posts spend more time alone on their computer or engaging in positive ways with their friends? There is no longer a path, a prescription for life now that the American Dream is shattered. There is nothing more to life than make lots of money and if you're very lucky, be famous. Well, that was what the Boston bombers and most mass murderers chose. This kid, without cutting an album made the cover of Rolling Stone. A whole lot better than a minimum wage job and crushing student loans don't you think?

So while my ramblings may annoy some, I've spent so much time writing them, I'll just post them anyway.

[Javaman]

14. Possibly but...

The bombings in Boston are not the first of that kind in that city by "disenfranchised" people.

Given the fact that the anarchist bombings of the early 1900's were predominately by people who came from close knit multi-generational families discounts your basic premise.

Plus, the term anarchist back then was vastly different to what people define it as now.

And perhaps the bombers of the early 1900's were lacking a sense of identity in a new country. That is very possible, given the fact that there is enough evidence to support concept concerning the older brother. Who at times, made mention of not fitting in to American society. Where as the younger brother appeared to have absolutely no problem and was by all accounts an American 19 year old in every sense of the term.

[Javaman]

13. what turns kids into monsters?

I think each case is individualistic. I don't think there is one single cause.

As with most people, everyone has their unique issues and things that set them off.

I think given what I have read about the older brother, he's sounds like he was a nutcase of the first order and was a big influence upon the younger brother.

There is a lot more to the older brother/younger brother dynamic that can go into in a few brief sentences but I think in this case, it seems to have played a big role.

And the other thing, the younger brother could have followed along out of fear of his older brother, especially if it turns out that the older brother did kill those other people in that bizarre pot killing.

[House of Roberts]

3. The same picture was on the front page

of the Sunday May 5 New York Times.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. And yet Larry O'Donnell did not attack them

Why is that?

[Orrex]

8. Probably because the event was just two weeks past at that point

A case can be made that it's less immediate now and therefore appears more sensationalistic and exploitive when used as a cover story. YMMV.

[Scuba]

5. Yeah, remember the uproar from that?

Me neither.

[noamnety]

10. Deep down, I think a lot of people want the media to be biased.

There are a lot of folks who were outraged that the media didn't run with a photo of Trayvon that showed him shirtless (to fit some kind of stereotype). Not that the media normally picks a shirtless photo of someone, but it didn't matter - he was black and he had a tattoo, and they view it as dishonest that the media didn't make an effort to pick a more stereotypy picture of him, instead of one that shows him as a normal person. (If you point out that it was a tattoo of his grandma's name, it doesn't matter, the point is they should have tried to find a threatening photo of him.)

Here, there's the unfortunate problem that attractive people can do evil things. And that doesn't fit our narrative, where pretty people are the ones with good hearts, and you can tell if somebody's bad because they're ugly or overweight. Even here on a liberal site, it's routine to call out republicans for their looks - and then declare it's relevant or acceptable because they are evil. It doesn't matter than it promotes a system of discrimination where more attractive people are offered more and better paid jobs.

We want the media to promote the idea that everyone's a hero with beautiful photoshopped features, or a villain, and you can tell from looking and prejudging them who is who. We don't want redeeming qualities in our villains, we want the media to dehumanize them for us. That's why they are pissed at Rolling Stone, they didn't fulfill their societal obligation in dehumanizing the guy.