Week 3 EOC: Rolling Stone Magazine

The major strength and weakness that Rolling Stone Magazine has, that makes them stand out compared to other news sources such as Times or Newsweek, is that they are known as a pop culture “Zine”. When I hear Rolling Stone, I first think of that old band with a similar name, and then music news. With a quick look at their website, Rolling Stone seems to embrace this mentality and caters towards music enthusiasts. Music enthusiast are probably their biggest demographic and whenever they step out of that niche market, I can see that there would be some back lash.

When I first saw the cover photo I thought it would be some musician that I’d never heard of yet, but then I read “THE BOMBER” and I instantly felt a shiver run down my spine. Now this cover story on the Boston Marathon bomber, was a major opportunity to do something different than what everyone else, CNN, MSNBC, etc. was doing. Trying to understand how and why an everyday normal kid, would do something so horrible out of nowhere. "I knew this kid, and he was a good kid...And, apparently, he's also a monster." –Peter Payack. Even the people who knew the guy had no idea why he would commit such a terrible act on other human beings. This tragedy quite literally shook the shaky foundation that National Security currently stands on in the United States and why this would offend most of us is obvious. With a “selfie” picture of the terrorist, humanizing the monster that destroyed lives and changed hundreds with permanent injuries, at first this article seemed to be in bad taste. Like the aspartame in diet soda, it takes getting used to before you can continue putting it into your system. Once I got into the article the message of the cover became even clearer. Dzhokhar “Jahar” Tsarnaev, had a difficult background. His family came from a war torn town in Chechnya, they moved here in 2002, shortly after 9/11, and grew up in a country that, typically, doesn’t like people of the Muslim faith. Despite all of these factors, he was a normal kid. “Jahar had a talent for moving between social groups and always seemed able to empathize with just about anyone's problems.” He became a typical American boy. Although the article made it seem that his heavy use of marijuana may have led to his paranoia of the American government and brought him to a mindset becoming a terrorist, but I don’t think that was the intention. The threat was not that he smokes pot and all stoners are potential radical terrorist that will go murdering people, if they have a “Jihad”, but the threat is that it is nearly impossible to tell who is a terrorist. A relatively normal young man, who was well liked, handsome, and social, became the monster that haunts the nightmares of many people today. Promoting paranoia is threatening, but establishing empathy for murderers may have been the controversial move that made this such a big issue in the first place.