Harper's bizarre cover

While I continue to struggle with how to express my contempt for Newsweek and its apologists, I will for now settle for passing along a tidbit I picked up in Michelle Malkin's May 18 column. The item is a splendid example of how the mainstream media are not only biased, but increasingly clueless as well.

Malkin pointed out the March cover of liberal rag Harper's Magazine, which had a photo of seven military recruits under the headline "AWOL in America: When Desertion is the Only Option." One tiny problem with this cover is that none of the seven is a deserter.

Incredibly, Harper's doesn't see any problem with this whatsoever. In an interview with the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, Harper's flak Giulia Melucci justified this outrage thusly: "We are decorating pages."

And that's from the magazine's vice president for public relations. I can only wonder what we would hear from the Harper's editors who don't have highly specialized training in dealing with the public in a thoughtful, diplomatic manner.

An interesting tidbit that Malkin doesn't mention, but that the blog The Daily Whim does, is that the photo isn't even Harper's own, but a stock photo it bought from a photo agency. Ha! The great Harper's used a stock photo on its cover?! But wait, there's more! The Harper's version of the photo was manipulated to show one of the recruits disappearing (cleh-vur!) even though altering the agency's photos is a violation of said agency's rules.

Yeah, that Harper's is a real class act.

Now, when was the last time I heard about a shamelessly deceptive photo on a magazine cover? Oh, I remember; it was when Martha Stewart got out of prison, and a magazine cover had a photo of Stewart with her own head but someone else's better-looking body. What was the name of that magazine again? Oh, wait, it's coming to me ... it was Newsweek! Fancy that!