Commentary: Reaction to the Controversial Rolling Stone Cover Featuring Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

A tidal wave of controversy erupted early this morning when it was revealed that the Marathon Bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone for their August issue. Mostly having a reputation for being a music magazine, this decision to feature this cruel monster on the cover and glorify him like a 70's teen idol is wrong and morally reprehensible on all counts.

I've actually never been a fan of Rolling Stone to begin with, and I think it's completely gutless for the editorial staff of Rolling Stone to decide in their morning meeting that the mastermind of the Marathon Bombings would be granted prime real estate square on the cover of a magazine usually reserved for musicians, actors, and prominent figures in the entertainment industry. How anyone could defend putting this monster on the cover is beyond comprehension, and I must respectfully disagree with one Hilary Hughes, writer for Vanyaland who says that putting him on the cover elevates awareness of what happened on April 15th on a national level, but doesn't everyone know what happened on that day and do we need a visual reminder of the mastermind behind this senseless bombing? How a magazine largely known for putting musicians on the cover decided to put a killer on the cover and make him look like Jim Morrison is gutless and disrespectful to all of the victim's families and everyone that was injured on that horrific day.

Rolling Stone is going to get some serious heat over this cover choice that's for sure, and I think they really need to reconsider their edgy cover choice and think about the people that were affected greatly by this tragedy, Bostonians like myself who are proud, passionate, and all have different points of view when it relates to certain topics, but for subjects like this we can all agree that is definitely not a way to promote awareness about a calamity in which innocent people were killed.