Newsweek finally goes where none have gone before

Are you kidding me? I get that Andrew Sullivan is a man with an agenda and I completely support his right to make his opinions heard. I also understand that Newsweek – like any other publication – is in business to make a profit and that frequently involves pushing the envelope in terms of catching the public’s attention. But at what point is too much simply too much? When is the shark definitively jumped and the daily bread burned past any reasonable definition of being toast? Ladies and gentlemen, this would be that point.

Politico “explains.”

“‘Let the games begin,” Tina Brown said last week after Time Magazine released its controversial breastfeeding cover.

Brown, whose tenure as editor at Newsweek has seen an array of controversial covers, will respond with the above, pegged to Andrew Sullivan’s piece on Obama’s support for same-sex marriage: “The First Gay President.”

The poster that comes from this is going to sell millions. Take that to the bank.

I’m not such a political neophyte as to suggest that this is unique in politics, but the bold faced, brazen machinations and ham handed plotting which have characterized this “evolution” in the President’s position on the subject at hand are rather breathtaking. And I’m not saying that people don’t actually “evolve” in their positions, beliefs or ideology. I know that my own attitudes and beliefs in my twenties were a far cry – in some instances at least – from where I stand in my fifties. Very few of us spring out of the halls of high school fully formed with all of the opinions we’ll hold until the grave.

But these evolutions generally take place over a long period of time, as exposure to new people and different ideas are examined and experimented with. Some are kept, others are rejected. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has gone in the course of less than a decade from full throated support of gay marriage to full opposition on religious grounds, back to full support. Are we really supposed to be buying this?

Apparently Mr. Sullivan thinks so. And Newsweek is more than happy to jump on board with a cover which will probably go down as one of the most ridiculed and satirized efforts in the history of magazine publication. (But I wouldn’t mind a piece of the sales from the poster, though.) Yeesh.

• Bobby Jindal: Paternalistic, big-government liberalism is the biggest loser here
• Chris Christie: “I’ll be here to welcome” Obama when he comes to tour the NJ coast again next week
• MSNBC consensus: Obama’s speech was historic, amazing, “one of the best of his presidency”

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