The New Rolling Stone Cover Offends the Senses!

[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.