Are you kidding me? I get that Andrew Sullivan is a man with an agenda
and I completely support his right to make his opinions heard. I also
understand that Newsweek – like any other publication – is in business
to make a profit and that frequently involves pushing the envelope in
terms of catching the public’s attention. But at what point is too much
simply too much? When is the shark definitively jumped and the daily
bread burned past any reasonable definition of being toast? Ladies and
gentlemen, this would be that point.Politico “explains.”
“‘Let the games begin,” Tina Brown said last week after Time Magazine released its controversial breastfeeding cover.
Brown, whose tenure as editor at Newsweek has seen an array of
controversial covers, will respond with the above, pegged to Andrew
Sullivan’s piece on Obama’s support for same-sex marriage: “The First
Gay President.”The poster that comes from this is going to sell millions. Take that to the bank.
I’m not such a political neophyte as to suggest that this is unique
in politics, but the bold faced, brazen machinations and ham handed
plotting which have characterized this “evolution” in the President’s
position on the subject at hand are rather breathtaking. And I’m not
saying that people don’t actually “evolve” in their positions, beliefs
or ideology. I know that my own attitudes and beliefs in my twenties
were a far cry – in some instances at least – from where I stand in my
fifties. Very few of us spring out of the halls of high school fully
formed with all of the opinions we’ll hold until the grave.But these evolutions generally take place over a long period of time,
as exposure to new people and different ideas are examined and
experimented with. Some are kept, others are rejected. Barack Obama, on
the other hand, has gone in the course of less than a decade from full
throated support of gay marriage to full opposition on religious
grounds, back to full support. Are we really supposed to be buying this?Apparently Mr. Sullivan thinks so. And Newsweek is more than happy to
jump on board with a cover which will probably go down as one of the
most ridiculed and satirized efforts in the history of magazine
publication. (But I wouldn’t mind a piece of the sales from the poster,
though.) Yeesh.
RELATED: Is Obama the ‘first gay president’ as Newsweek proclaims?
