Calm down about a magazine neither of us read

In the past I've criticized Rolling Stone magazine's far-left journalism. I won't be doing that today. Instead, honor forces me to defend a publication I dislike.

It seems that absolutely everyone is freaking out that the next cover will show a flattering image of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon bombing "suspect" who looks an awful lot like Jon Snow.

The popular narrative is that this glamorizes Tsarnaev and makes him look like a celebrity. A popular comparison is to one of the issue's featuring Jim Morrison:

As you can see, both men have faces, hair, and the Rolling Stone logo. Case closed.

This whole freak-out is ridiculous. The article in question is about the Tsarnaev's corruption and downfall, from a popular, kind young man into a murderous terrorist. The article is summed up on the cover as "How a popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam and became a monster."

I know people like to think of society's enemies as ugly cartoon villains, but like it or not Tsarnaev has an attractive face. This only adds to the contrast between the person he was and the person he became when he surrendered his morality to radical Islam.

The sad truth is, people who commit acts of evil often think what they are doing is not only morally permissible, but morally required. People could benefit from a well-written article explaining how a normal kid became a violent brute.

Compare that to the on-air conversation between NPR host Robin Young and her nephew Zolan, a former friend of Tsarnaev, who can't seem to fathom how someone who went to a diverse high school could become a monster. They go out of their way to remind listeners several times that the student body was extremely diverse at that school. My interpretation is that they think a non-diverse school can't teach student to respect other people and will be plagued by anti-immigrant bullies who drive their victims to murder, as if only victims of oppression become terrorists. Otherwise, what was the point of bringing up the high school diversity level multiple times?

No one batted an eye over that, but when an entertainment magazine that branches out into news puts his photo on the cover, suddenly it's an outrage. It doesn't seem to matter that the photo corresponds to a news story.

The picture doesn't look much different from the other pre-arrest photos of Tsarnaev that have been printed on magazine and newspaper covers since the attack happened in March. In fact, this same picture was used on the cover of the New York Times on May 5. Would people still object if the words "Rolling Stone" were replaced with "TIME"?

Now if Rolling Stone had set up a modeling shoot with Tsarnaev and given him a makeover, that would be something to scream about. Short of that, when you write about a handsome terrorist why should you dredge the archives to find a photo that looks ugly