Keepin’ It Classy, Newsweak Dubs Bachmann the ‘Queen of Rage,’ Uses Crazy-Eyes Cover Photo
Here’s the photo and headline, both of which speak for themselves.
Note the glassy eyes, the vacant and vaguely insane smile, and the edgy headline. It’s all such a ham handed slam on Bachmann it barely deserves comment. The article certainly doesn’t deserve anyone’s time. Her haters will hate her, while her supporters won’t be dissuaded by such foolery. Those in the middle probably don’t ever read Newsweak in the first place. Nobody else reads it, that’s for sure.
Pro tip for you photo editors at Newsweak: It’s not difficult at all to find a more flattering image of Michele Bachmann to use, if you want to portray her in anything resembling a fair light. Here’s one.
And here’s another.
It’s not tough to find flattering images of someone who is as attractive as Bachmann is. By putting Zombie Michele on their cover, Newsweak’s editors may be chortling that they got one over on her but they’re wrong. They’ve just made themselves look biased and silly. I mean, this is the sort of thing we blogs do, with the photos of “Stretch” Pelosi and George Soros as Dr. Evil — but we’re honest about ourselves and the photos are used for a laugh or for effect. Newsweak thinks they’re smarter and no one will catch onto the bias, displayed with all the subtlety here of a Joker prank.
It’s also not difficult to write a headline for Bachmann other than “The Queen of Rage,” which is both inaccurate and unfair to her. I’ve met her and seen her speak in public more than once; rage isn’t her schtick. She’s serious, she’s passionate, and contrary to most caricatures of her, she’s knowledgeable. But she’s not enraged. If she were a liberal, you can bet that Newsweak would have portrayed her as the strong mother of five who is also a lioness in Washington. But she’s a conservative, so it’s fair in their minds to portray her as nutso and full of rage.
We get it, Newsweak: You’re threatened by attractive, conservative women.
But what else should we expect of a bottom-rate rag that sold for a dollar and is currently owned by former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman’s husband? That was a year ago, and there are no signs that Newsweak has become any more viable since. They’re trying to be outrageous to make waves and sell magazines. Hopefully that unfair cover will scare people off at the newsstand, not to Bachmann, but to the unskilled hacks at Newsweak. This particular treatment was so over the line that even the National Organization of (Liberal) Women felt compelled to defend Bachmann. They must have hated doing that so much, it’s almost worth the zombie cover.
Update: Right, Newsweak is now part of the Daily Beast’s operation. I’d forgotten about that. Honestly, I’d pretty much forgotten about Newsweak until this episode.
Pathetic, just pathetic. Wasn’t it Newstweak (or was it Time) that darkened OJ’s complexion for a cover shot of (and at) him during his trial? Now that everyone and his sister can Photoshop the ham out of a ham sandwich, you’d think these photo editors would be ashamed to do this. Why not make her eyes bloodshot, implying a serious alcohol problem? Or turn her hair gray, suggesting she’s at death’s door? Or both? If they’ll stoop to this, they’ll stoop to anything. Yuck.
Why not go all the way? They could add Dracula fangs with dripping blood or horns on the back of her head.
And BTW, did you notice which former member of Congress got her name on the cover? Why, none other than Jane Harmon. What an amazing coincidence that of all past and present members of Congress, they slime Bachmann and put Harmon’s name on the cover after Harmon’s husband bought the damn thing. There’s real professionalism for you.
Mr Harman, he dead.
But before he died, he contributed Newsweek to a joint venture with Tina Brown’s Daily Beast, which is bankrolled by Barry Diller. I think you’re seeing the influence of the old (and I mean very old) Queen of Buzz on Newsweek’s editors. I suspect they’re sitting around meetings thinking up ways to impress Tina. There’s a tabloid People magazine sensibility descending upon Newsweek. “How can we shock and outrage the commoners?” If they really wanted to do that I suggest putting on the cover a photo of Tina as she rolls out of bed. Now that would be a fright.
I have seen this pic before. I do not know for which event it was originally taken. In that context then, it did not look so bad, because she was looking at something.
To be fair, sometimes she does look like this on TV. She may be avoiding looking at the lights because of her migraines. I dunno.
Still, traditionally, one does not take the most unflattering of someone’s photos and use them for your magazine cover. It is rude, and it is bad for sales. That little juvenile “joke” probably cost the mag some serious coin. Do not offend your readers. You lose customers that way. Liberals know nothing of customers, though.
Our credit rating has been downgraded for the first time in almost a century. The stock market is in free fall. And worst of all 34 Brave US Servicemen including 20 Navy SEALS have been killed. But THIS is the cover of Newsweek. Yep liberal bias is a right wing myth.
This is just plain cheap, and mean.
I am a commercial photographer, and I often photograph executives in these types of portrait settings as part of a larger advertising or corporate campaign.
The picture shown is what everyone calls an “out-take”. When we do a portrait session, we inevitably get a couple shots, out of the several dozen we shoot, that catch someone so completely out of synch that they look dorky, or psycho, or deformed, or disheveled. We all get a good laugh out of these.
We will show the subject these out-takes as we are photographing her, and she will always scream and laugh and yell, “You delete that one right now!”
Of course, we laugh, too, and tease, “Oh, no. That’s the one we’re going to publish! Ha ha ha…”
It’s all very fun, and it loosens everyone up so we can more easily accomplish our initial goal: to capture that one natural instant where the subject looks her best, and her true personality, if not her soul, shows in the picture. That’s the way a professional, who cares about his craft, acts.
But when you use an out-take, and don’t care that it depicts someone completely unnaturally, and publish it just to make that person look bad, you are being small, and mean, and sneaky, and weak. And you don’t care about your craft as much as you do about your angry political prejudices.
This wasn’t some Paparazzo snapshot that caught someone at a bad moment. This was a highly planned and produced photo shoot, where the photographer and/or editor sifted through the good pictures until they found a bad one. Very clever. I’m sure you’re very proud of yourselves.