Subtle, Time Magazine, Really F'ing Subtle

My mom gave me a subscription to Time magazine this year. I didn't ask for it, mind you, I think she got it for free and just has it delivered to me. Normally, I find Time to be a bit light on substance, even on rather pedestrian subjects, such as this one.

They have some interesting articles that are short enough for the bathroom, and I like that one page they have with a random assortment of statistics, numbers, and interesting quotes of the week. Sometimes, though, I find their covers a bit much. Like this one.

While I agree that al-Zarqawi was a pretty evil person, we KILLED him. We aren't bowling here. We shot a f'ing missile into a bunker and KILLED him. I think that just putting a cross over his mug perpetuates the simplistic outlook that many of us harbor over the war on terror: "Hey maybe if we just get all the main bad guys, it'll all go away. Here's one, check him off, yee haa!" I also just find it crude and disrespectful, not of Zarqawi himself, but just of life in general. Killing people should be considered a necessarily evil...not something to put on a "to do" list and then cross off.

But this week's takes the cake.

That's right, "What War With Iran Would Look Like." What the hell kind of cover is this? What would a war "look like?!?!" That's an awful casual reference to war...like "hey, how does this war look on me? Do you think it will deter further terrorist acts or does it just make my hips look big?" I can understand how one nutball journalist might think this is a good cover for a magazine. But the entire publication? What are we trying to do here? All subjects should be open for discussion, but plainly asking what war with Iran would "look like" right under a picture of Ahmadinejad is incredibly brazen and, I would posit, irresponsible. The parenthetical ("and how to avoid it") is not sufficient to take the punch out of the hawkish question.

Maybe Time is now run by the boss of the Daily Bugle from Spiderman, you know that guy who makes covers that depict Spiderman in a menacing light just to sell papers? That guy?