On Wednesday afternoon, when I drafted this blog post for Saturday publication, the Courier News website was running a poll in the carousel of its home page. The question was, “Is Newsweek’s cover shot of Sarah Palin Sexist?” At 2:40 PM that day, the responses were split 50/50.
Newsweek’s editor Jon Meacham – a Pulitzer Prize winning author – appropriated the cover photo of Palin from Runner’s World magazine without its permission, taking it completely out of its original context and salting it with the provocative statement, “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?” I didn’t know that “Sarah” was a problem. Did you? I can think of a lot more significant troubles facing this country than little ‘ole Sarah from Alaska.
Such media myopia brings to mind the unanswered question of why it is that some middle-age guys in the Fourth Estate – intelligent ones at that – have such a problem with females who look good and who strike such a decisive public impression.
In his Top of the Week essay accompanying the cover shot, Meacham exposes his insecurities as he discusses the potential threat of “Palinism,” calling her “… an heir to the Goldwater tradition.” It’s a very weak comparison. It was President Lyndon Baines Johnson, not Goldwater, who made a mess out of the Vietnam War by escalating it beyond control, a folly which cost him his second term in office.
Anyway, let’s get serious and reduce this thing to its essence: Which image is more likely to draw your attention more than once on the cover of Newsweek, that of Sarah Palin or that of suspiciously botoxed Nancy Pelosi? Crafty Jon Meacham knew which one would be most likely to boost circulation.
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