Latest Diversion from FOX&Friends: Teen Heartthrob Terrorist

That sly old fox Rupert Murdoch and his overpaid minions have done it again. They’ve managed to distract viewers from the real news at hand (if only for a few days) and direct their collective focus on a magazine cover. Oh, the genius of it all!

In this case, the gang from FOX&Friends -- and then later, the entire FOX network -- have been carrying on about the latest cover of Rolling Stone. And too many other news outlets, organizations, and reporters have been following their lead. Too many professionals who should have known better are blithely going along with the usual “faux news.” What’s all the fuss about? It’s just not who got on the cover, it’s how good he looks. Brace yourselves. The latest cover boy isn’t a rock star, he’s a terrorist.

Hello, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Remember those evil Boston Marathon Bombers who killed three people and injured over 260 more last April 15th? This guy is the little brother who survived a bullet to his throat. You’d never know that from his cover pic because he sure cleaned up good, no argument here. You could even say he looks handsome in that Calvin Klein Supermodel/Chanel Bleu spokesman kind of way.

Talk about your smooth acne-free complexion, effortlessly tousled curls, heavy lidded eyes -- OK, you get it. This bad boy’s looking good, real good. That’s why there’s such a foxy uproar: this terrorist looks better than he has any right to look. Than he’s supposed to look. Than we want him to look.

Villains aren’t supposed to be this photogenic.

Think back to that horrible day in Boston. Think of the heinous crimes Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan inflicted on both spectators and participants of the marathon. What should have been a joyous day of goodwill soon turned into a nightmare of bloody terror. Shame on them to infinity and beyond.


Big brother Tamerlan won’t stand trial, however, because he’s dead. He was mortally wounded by police, then run over as his brother tried to flee the deadly gun battle in a stolen vehicle.

Since the surviving brother committed his crimes in America, he’ll be given a fair trial. Of course, he’ll ultimately be punished for what he did. But whatever the verdict is, he’ll still receive more justice than his victims will ever get. So again, shame, shame, shame on him.

But he still takes a good picture.

Dzhokhar is one of those guys who can’t take a bad picture. He doesn’t look evil at all. He looks like one of those spry dudes in the Axe TV commercials. You know, the one with the chocolate body wash that drives all the chicks crazy? He’s the guy who smells too good for his own good.

He’s the young, attractive nineteen-year-old with his whole life ahead of him: that’s why he made the cover of Rolling Stone.

That was the whole point of showing the infamous terrorist at his most attractive self: revealing the contradiction between the visual and the real. The editors and writers at the magazine wanted to vividly show the contrast between physical appearance and outward behavior. The featured article about Tsarnaev examined how a seemingly nice, likable teen could become a terrorist. How could such a friendly, easy-going, intelligent, well-liked, well-educated star athlete like Dzhokhar become a terrorist?

How does something like this happen? So a photo of Dzhokhar as a nice, clean-cut young man got on the cover. To use a photo that showed him as a bloody, filthy, ugly mess wouldn’t have made sense in the context of the lead story.

When it comes to terrorists, though, you should never judge a book by its cover, anyway. Physical appearances do not accurately reflect or determine actual behaviors.
A swarthy, sinister-looking man might really be an All-American hero with a Purple Heart. And yet, someone like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev -- youthful, handsome, and looking so non-threatening -- might be the mastermind of a terrorist network. There’s no proven way to accurately and consistently gauge one’s soul by looking at one’s face.

Of course, FOX&Friends would have viewers think otherwise. They’re not even considering how they judge all kinds of books by their covers on a daily basis. They’re focusing their ire on Rolling Stone now. And the pervasive message they’re launching isn’t very fair or balanced:
How dare this alternative magazine that’s diametrically opposed to all the fluff we at FOX call news feature an attractive -- not a sinister-looking -- terrorist on its cover?

What’s wrong with Rolling Stone?

Don’t they know terrorists are supposed to look TERRIFYING? Don’t they know evil-doers are supposed to look-- well -- EVIL?

No doubt I’m paraphrasing the way FOX has conveyed this latest message. But I’m not manipulating its content. FOX has created a big brouhaha about Rolling Stone’s cover because it featured an attractive terrorist. The network didn’t stir up this issue because it was a legitimate news story, worthy of analysis or even commentary. They created this controversy because they knew it would appeal to the worst fears and prejudices of faithful FOX followers.

For most FOX viewers, evil means “ethnic,” and terrorist means dark-skinned with lots of facial and body hair. So Dzhokhar Tsarnaev doesn’t fit the stereotype they have in their collective mind’s eye. He’s too fair, too hairless, too American-looking. Wait a minute. He can’t look like us, the good, Christian white people! He’s supposed to be a Muslim. If he looks too much like us, we won’t be able to spot the enemy. We won’t know who the bad guys are because they’ll look too much like the good guys.

(Note to self: Bad guys don’t always wear black hats and sneer at babies.)

Then again, the on-air “talent” at FOX has never been known for appealing to the better angels of America’s nature. They serve their ratingmasters and money gods by spewing gossip, innuendo, and misinformation as news.

More often than not, these overpaid foxies can actually read their contrived copy with a straight face. Except Steve Doocy, the commentator who always looks and sounds like C3PO with a perpetual snuggie. No wonder I never pay any attention to him when he starts his pre-ordained criticisms. For me, Doocy has never had any on-air reliability or credibility. Neither do most of his colleagues on that network. Unfortunately, too many Americans do pay attention to him and his friends. They actually believe that news is somehow involved because the station is called FOX News.

A lot of viewers don’t seem to understand that this latest piece of “breaking news” is just op-ed commentary from the higher-ups: another diversion disguised as “controversy.”

This latest brouhaha was created to distract attention away from real news. The intense focus on this current non-issue was done to keep viewers from thinking about the real issue at hand: the killing of Trayvon Martin and acquittal of his killer George Zimmerman. So the teen heartthrob terrorist was merely a diversion, that was all. And yet, the irony here is unmistakable.

Once again, another book was judged by its cover, and this time, FOX News was fine with it. No, Trayvon Martin wasn’t a terrorist. He didn’t commit any crimes. He was an African-American teenager who went to the store and never came back. On the other hand, George Zimmerman was a trigger-happy neighborhood watcher with a gun who stalked and confronted an unarmed teen, then tried to make a citizen’s arrest. When Trayvon stood his ground, a physical altercation ensued, and he was shot.

No one at FOX complained too loudly about Zimmerman’s actions because all those “experts” upheld a traditional clothing stereotype: BLACK MALE + HOODIE = GANGSTA UP TO NO GOOD. Poor Trayvon didn’t even get a “Stop, or I’ll shoot!” warning. None of the foxies even mentioned that in their discussions, though. No mention about how this unarmed teenager didn’t stand a chance, as long as the adult with the gun “felt” threatened.

Other news commentators on other networks were bringing up these points. An actual discussion on racial inequality was emerging from the airwaves. Then FOX started kvetching about that terrorist being on the cover of Rolling Stone...As though the staff there had given him a new perm and total beauty makeover.

If FOX&Friends hadn’t made such a big stink about it, no one in the media would have thought anything about it -- and it would never have been “news” in the first place.

Look, bad people can look good; good people can look butt-ugly. And people can’t help but notice this visual reality. Because so many women find their own destinies determined by their physical appearance, they instinctively understand this truth. They act and react on it, too.

If you’re a movie buff, you’ll know that Paul Henreid (the other man in “Casablanca”) also played Nazis in his early Hollywood days. Although he’d left Europe because of his anti-fascist, anti-Hitler views, he ended up being cast as pro-Hitler fascists. Like Conrad Veidt and Peter Lorre, he’d fled from the bad guys, then found himself making a living playing bad guys.

After he starred in “Mad Men of Europe” and “Night Train to Munich,” the studio started getting some unexpected fan mail. Women from all over were writing in to find out more about “that cute Nazi.”

That cute Nazi?

Yes, Virginia, Nazis can be cute. That doesn’t mean cute people are nice people. That doesn’t mean your dad would want you to marry one of Hitler’s terrorists. Or Tony Soprano. Or Billy the Kid. It just means some people (i.e. some women) are so fascinated -- maybe obsessed -- with bad guys that they’ve created an unrealistic, romantic fantasy about them.

It also means that, according to our cultural standards of attractiveness, Herr Henreid looked kind of sexy in a Nazi uniform.

So what’s the problem? There is no problem. Only that FOX News has struck again...

As Mel, the soldier, in “Doonesbury” observes, watching FOX not only makes you stupider, it’s also “like getting your news from the town drunk.”

Now if only FOX viewers could get smarter than Garry Trudeau’s cartoon characters...then they would stop watching FOX News, and the world would be a much better place.