Rolling Stone magazine is drawing fire for putting Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on its cover, in a glam shot that critics say continues to blur the line between fame and infamy.
The picture, which accompanies a story titled “Jahar’s World,” shows the accused murderer with his long, curly hair tousled and the hint of a goatee, reminiscent of the magazine’s iconic shots of rock and roll royalty like The Doors’ Jim Morrison. The cover could send a dangerous message to Tsarnaev’s warped supporters, said one critic.
“If they want to become famous, kill somebody,” Northeastern University criminologist Jack Levin told MyFoxBoston.com.
The issue, which hits newsstands Friday, depicts an unsmiling Tsarnaev, 19, above a boldface headline, “The Bomber.” The story, which features interviews from childhood friends, teachers and law enforcement agents, promises to reveal how a “popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam, and became a monster.”
In a blog posting late Tuesday, Rolling Stone detailed “five revelations” in the story by contributing editor Janet Reitman, including Tsarnaev’s increasing devotion to Islam while still in high school, as well as his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s possible mental illness, which the boys’ mother decided would be better treated by Islam than by a psychiatrist.
“Around 2008, Jahar’s older brother Tamerlan confided to his mother that he felt like ‘two people’ were inside him,” the blog posting reads. “She confided this to a close friend who felt he might need a psychiatrist, but Zubeidat believed that religion would be the cure for her son’s inner demons and growing mental instability, and pushed him deeper into Islam.”
Rolling Stone has not commented publicly on the decision to put Tsarnaev on the cover, which recently featured actor Johnny Depp and singers Rihanna and Justin Bieber.
Supporters of Tsarnaev, who believe in the face of overwhelming evidence that he’s innocent of the charges against him, appeared last week during his federal court appearance in Boston. Some wore T-shirts with phrases like “Free the Lion,” while others held “Free Jahar” signs outside Boston’s John Joseph Moakley federal courthouse on Wednesday.
“Give Dzhokhar back his life,” one protester reportedly said.
“If you really cared about the victims you would be more interested in the truth,” said another Tsarnaev supporter.
The Rolling Stone cover quickly drew a negative reaction on social media, as “Boycott Rolling Stone” quickly became a trending Twitter topic in Boston.
“Very rarely does something make me so mad I have a negative tweet, but #BoycottRollingStone,” one user posted early Wednesday. “Absolutely unacceptable.”
Many other Twitter users indicated they would never purchase another Rolling Stone magazine.
“Way to glorify a madman,” another posting read.
Federal authorities allege that the Tsarnaev brothers planted two bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15. The explosions killed three people and injured more than 260 others.
Four days later, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who survived a shootout with police during which Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed, was captured following a daylong manhunt in the Boston suburb of Watertown.
Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty last week to 30 …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
