Excerpt: "A month after editor-in-chief Tina Brown Photoshopped the late Princess Diana walking alongside Kate Middleton onto the cover of Newsweek, sparking outrage among fans, Brown is drawing the ire of the Tea Party for selecting a photo of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) for Newsweek's cover that makes the 2012 Republican hopeful look, well, crazy."
The 'Crazy Bachmann' Newsweek cover. (photo: Chris Buck/Newsweek)
The "Crazy Bachmann" Newsweek Cover Flap
10 August 11
Did Newsweek choose Michele Bachmann cover photo to make her 'look crazy'?
nother Newsweek cover controversy is brewing - and once again, it involves women.
A month after editor-in-chief Tina Brown Photoshopped the late Princess Diana walking alongside Kate Middleton onto the cover of Newsweek, sparking outrage among fans, Brown is drawing the ire of the tea party for selecting a photo of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) for Newsweek's cover that makes the 2012 Republican hopeful look, well, crazy.
The photo of Bachmann, shot in Washington on Aug. 1 by photographer Chris Buck, accompanies a cover story by Lois Romano entitled "The Queen of Rage." (Newsweek tweeted the cover image late Sunday with the #QueenOfRage hashtag.)
Reached via e-mail, Alice Stewart, Bachmann's press secretary, declined to comment. "We are focused on meeting with the people of Iowa in advance of the Straw Poll," she wrote in an email to The Cutline. And Bachmann brushed off a question about the cover from a voter in Iowa.
Conservative media pundits, though, were more than happy to respond.
"Under the editorial control of Tina Brown, the rice paper magazine barely struggles against its bias towards conservative women to view them with anything other than contempt," Dana Loesch wrote on Andrew Breitbart's BigJournalism.com.
It's not the first time that Newsweek has drawn the ire of conservatives - and women - over a candidate's cover photo. In 2008, Newsweek published an extreme close-up of Sarah Palin on its cover, sparking criticism.
"Memo to conservative women," Ed Morrissey wrote on HotAir.com. "When approached by Newsweek or Time for a cover story, always bring your own photographer."
In 2009, Newsweek published an old photo of Palin in running shorts - alongside the coverline "How do you solve a problem like Sarah Palin?" - prompting more outrage among conservatives. (Palin herself denounced the selection of the photo - from a Runner's World shoot - in a note to her Facebook fans: "The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now.")
But critics charge that the newsweekly is using more than just its cover image to editorialize about Bachmann and the basis of her popular appeal. An interior image - featuring Bachmann at a campaign stop and also taken by Buck - was shot from an angle that shows the conservative candidate with devil horn.
"Newsweek needs to be ashamed for propagating one of the typical female stereotypes used to denigrate women," a commenter on Newsweek.com wrote. "If you don't like Bachmann's positions, say so. But to slot her in the typical witch, bitch, nut, or slut memes hurts all women!"
A spokesman for Newsweek declined to comment on the controversy.
Brown defended her decision to Photoshop the image of the late Princess Diana onto the July 4 cover. "We wanted to bring the memory of Diana alive in a vivid image that transcends time," Brown said then in a statement to The Cutline, "and reflected my piece." Newsweek's newsstand sales are up roughly 30 percent since its redesign under Brown debuted in March.
The Newsweek Bachmann cover controversy also recalls a 2008 incident in which The Atlantic apologized to Arizona senator and presidential hopeful John McCain for hiring a freelance photographer - Jill Greenberg - who used a strobe light to create shadows on his face during a cover shoot. "He had no idea he was being lit from below," Greenberg told Photo District News after The Atlantic issue was published.
Greenberg created her own Photoshopped images from the McCain shoot for her personal website, including one of an ape defecating on McCain's head.
"She has, in fact, disgraced herself, and we are appalled by the manipulated images of John McCain she has created for her Web site," the Atlantic wrote in an editor's note. "Obviously, we will not work with her again."
UPDATE: "Michele Bachmann's intensity is galvanizing voters in Iowa right now," Brown said in a statement to The Cutline. "Newsweek's cover captures that."
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Comments
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Are you subscriber and do you buy Newsweek for its cover photos or its content?
Should you be attempting to influence its editorail staff to output stories that are pleasing to you or to any sector of the public that is not buying the magazine?
The owners of teh magazine are in business to make money and surely will do anything that might persuade a potential buyer to part with funds.
The money behind the Tea Party know these folks are a wild card. They are not true independents because when the money men want the TP to fall in line - just like a dog, they feed them. In this case money is used instead of dog biscuits to get the correct performance. The money men don't have to spend as much as long as we keep them in the media spotlight.
The Tea Party is there for a distraction. Period. Nobody expects them to win except the "baa baa lamb" followers - certainly not the leaders. Wise up Olbermann, Stewart, Maddow - use something else to get a laugh.
Screw the right-wing blogosphere. Bachmann is dumb enough to pose for such a portrait, apparently not check the shots before the whole shoot was done, allow the photog to leave with this shot in his camera...where was her publicist, her handlers?
We've got much, much bigger fish to fry right now than worrying about this lunatic's cover pic that makes her look like a...lunatic! Truth in advertising.
(insert Psycho music and Omen music at the same time)
She looks like she less than five minutes removed from SHOCK TREATMENT THERAPY, ready to be fitted for a straight-jacket, and escorted to her padded cell. FRIGTENING!!
Based on the look in those "scary eyes"of hers, and her TV appearances, is she viewing a "hyno-prompter" if such a device has been invented? Because she sure does act like someone under hypnosis with that gazing stare into the camera; SPOOKY!!!
should not be crying "gender prejudice".
She is what she is.
If Bachmann and the GOP don't like what has happened then get out of politics because as the Tea Party made the Nation very aware during the Budget Debacle "Politics is a Contact Sport".
Besides, she is crazy.
Matthews interviewed her she had that same
catatonic expression on her face and
answered all of his questions with the same
answer. If she isn't loony, she is getting
there on the fast track.
Planters should have an assembly line in every building....
You know what they say, the camera never lies. Unless this was photoshopped, and experts can tell if it was, then what does this photo tell you? Really, just look at her face! What is she thinking? The things she says are crazy enough, but how many things that are in her head is she not saying?
Take Obama, for example. He hardly ever expresses his anger or sadness or disappointment in words, but you can see it in photos. But have you ever seen a photo where he looks crazy? I haven't.
Whack jobs doth vex us!
BHP
What's even scarier, Ben, is that SOME MEN ACTUALLY THINK she's hot! YUCKY!!!
AT LAST SOMEONE TOLD THE TRUTH
Bachmann does that wild wide-eyed stare looking into the faces of people at her whistle-stops; she does it periodically in interviews, most notably when she was talking with Chris Matthews about wanting people to investigate what she believes are anti-American politicians. The extended video is on YouTube. She squints first, then does the wild wide-eyed thing, especially when she's looking straight into the camera. It's one of her quirks.
She can't help being ugly and looking cross-eyed. It's how she was born. Caribou Barbie is the same, but she hides it behind glasses. Dumbya also has that cross-eyed look (cartoonists exploited it). Their eyes are too close together in their heads, and it's just how they were born to look. They can't help it.
The picture is accurate. Bat$h!t Crazy Bachmann LOOKS crazy because she IS crazy!
Teahadists need to stop clutching their pearls and staggering to their fainting couches. They need to deal with reality for once. If it were a Democrat with a bad picture on the front cover, they'd laugh and point, not criticize....
JOLLY GOOD SHOW; HEAR-HEAR!
Great, funny comments! But re: no one outside of Dist 6 knows WHY they keep on voting for her,
maybe they don't. Anyone ever ask what type of voting machines are in use in Dist 6? Are they touch screen DRE machines, the type that are manufactured & maintained by Republican-friendly corporations, who program them and have sole proprietary rights to their hard drives? In these cases - and they account for about 2/3's of all machines now in use in the U.S. - the BOElection's do not even have the right to examine the hard drives. If Bachmann is scary, THIS is scarier - and more objectifiably true and provable.
C R A Z Y !
C R A Z Y !"
Crazy looks, as crazy is.
Hitler was always frowning and had a serious look in his eyes. Bachmann has a strange gleam in her eyes.
Bachman's staff was not given the right to pick and choose pictures for publication in the magazine. The photographer took hundreds of pictures and the magazine chose the least flattering ones they could find. To argue that she posed for this picture so publication of it is fair, is just plain silly -- everyone on this list has had at least a few unfelicitous photos taken of oneself that one would not want to share even with best friends for a joke.
No, the conclusion that the magazine was intentionally trying to smear Bachman is impossible to avoid. But the bigger question is, should smears be allowed? I would argue that smears such as this, which don't include any overt or implicit lies, must be tolerated as an expression of free speech.
Now it is up to individual Americans whether they will be convinced of Bachman's fitness for office by a nasty photo or by the content of her policies. Personally, I'll ignore the photo and consider her policies.... And I won't buy any magazine that indulges in such petty and superficial smearing.
From a Reader Who Definitely Will Not Be Voting for Bachman
Lee Nason
New Bedford, Massachusetts
Bad on them, then. Any candidate worth h** salt controls everything s/he can.
Keeping in mind that Newsweek had decide to put Ms. Bachmann on its cover weeks or even months ago and therefore absolutely had to have a photo to use, whether or not "the conclusion that the magazine was intentionally trying to smear Bachman is impossible to avoid" depends on whether or not Newsweek recognized that the photos were, shall we say "sub-par" and requested a reshoot and if it did so, whether or not Ms. Bachman made herself available for that reshoot. As far as I know this information has not been made public.
We simply do not yet have enough information to know how this photo came to be on the cover of Newsweek and chances are we never will
What's all the fuss about? She IS "crazy". Anyone who votes for her is as crazy as she is. I'd rather see Ahmedinejad (president of Iran for those who may not know) president of the USA than Michelle Bachmann. Whenever I see her on TV I feel like puking.
Aygen
Istanbul, Turkey
Michele: If you don't like the political heat stay in the damn kitchen or go make babies.
PS I'm a feminist, I just don't like YOU
Make sure you include photos FOX or Murdock have chosen. Everytime they try this crap someone needs to throw it back in their faces. Some of the images of Obama on some of them have not nice.
A lot of so called liberal papers have chosen photos of liberals that were not nice.
I've met the man; I see no bubbles except in thd blather coming from the corporate media.
Considering the meanness, the ignorance and the violence that underpins this image, it's actually flattering. The primitive chimera, animated into substance.
Chancellor Herr Adolph Hitler was on the cover of Time magazine in the early 1930's. There were no recorded complaints from his Nazi Party stalwarts. I have never read the inside story.
Actually, Howard Dean had (has) a kinda crazy look in his eyes at times - not the vacuuous crazy look of Bachmann - but one that looks like he's just about to reach out and slap the snot out of some Teathuglican. I've always liked that about Howard. More than enough Mr. Nice guy already, dealing with these ignorant clowns. We need to match their "you better back down 'cause I'm crazy" act with one of our own that says, "Oh yeah? You want some crazy? Try ME, M-F!"
Only in America, folks!
Think about it. Her faith demands that she do as her husband says. He says he needs to spend his days with gay men and she should find tax dodges so that he can earn a living wallowing in his private pool of gay testoterone.
Yes, but that Dean yell was isolated out of a loud gathering where it was appropriate and made to seem like it occurred in a vacuum.
Ms. Bachman has no religious morals. I must have a bad memory of my youthful bible studies; I cannot seem to remember Jesus being the prince of hate & exclusion. She is to Christians what Bin-Laden was to Muslims, an extremist who twists, spins, & mutilates her religion to fit her alternate views of reality. Out of the mouths of any Tea Bagger comes hate filled rhetoric such as equating President Obama as Hitler, but when one of theirs is picked on they cry & scream that it just isn't fair. Dry your eyes & wake up & smell the tea dear.
The crocodile tears that Republicans shed at the moral indignities aimed at them by "Libtards" are amusing to the point of making me ill.
She's a fanatical, crazed, misinformed, right wing Tea Party candidate who uses lies and misinformation to help the worst elements in our currently disturbed right wing dominated society to take over.
What I find so interesting and repugnant at the same time is this... what the hell was the whole 'women's lib' thing for if we as women were going to behave so viciously towards each other?? Somehow, I don't think the founders had this type of debauchery in mind while they were fighting so hard for our rights.
So what, you don't agree with Bachman's or Palin's views or agendas, I get that. I don't happen to agree with yours, BUT, when you take away the political partisans, when you strip away the differences in our social views, you're both left standing as women. Women who fought and clawed their way through male dominated corporations, who valiantly tried to balance a career and being a mother, while attempting to push down that ominous feeling that you're failing at both.. who both feel guilty because somehow neither of you figured out how to be at your child's soccer game and the important meeting you can't miss.. being a woman is hard enough, have you become so masochistic that you just won't be happy until you destroy one of your own??
BTW, it wouldn't seem either Bachmann or Palin had much time to mull over motherhood; they both have had professional lives outside the home for decades and the wherewithal to hire nannies and the best daycare facilities for their children, things they'd like to deny to poorer mothers. If you care as much about women as you claim, you might note that conservative women are working very hard to give women fewer rights and less control over their personal lives and bodies. The kind of society Republicans like Bachmann and Palin desire will destroy the lives of millions of American women, and not through a few photos or magazine criticisms, but by the force of law.
Anyone up to that?
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