COMMENTARY | It would appear Newsweek has done it again -- gone and got conservatives all annoyed at their obvious bias in portraying one of the right's political leaders. In a cover photo captioned "Queen of Rage," Newsweek put tea party leader and presidential contender Michele Bachmann front and center on the cover of their weekly magazine.
But there is a certain manic, wild-eyed intensity to the photo, and editor Tina Brown and the magazine are being accused of intentionally trying to make Bachmann look like the spokesperson for the lunatic fringe, with some, like Dylan Stableford at "The Cutline," asking if the magazine intentionally chose the photo to make the Congresswoman appear "crazy."
Apparently, all those taking issue with the wild-eyed photo have never seen Rep. Bachmann during a speech or interview. The wild-eyed look is a constant, which is amply displayed in Newsweek's posting of the session outtakes of Christopher Buck, the freelance photographer who shot the photos (not to mention in hundreds of photos and videos of the Minnesota congresswoman easily found online). Still, it seems that there were other, less "intense," shots in the series.
The cover photo (along with the caption) does nothing to present the tea party leader in a favorable light. Besides the title "Queen of Rage," there is the subtitle teaser: "Michele Bachmann on God, the Tea Party, and the Evils of Government." Added to the Charles Manson-like smiling visage is that the cover story will reveal the political and religious views (both of which are seen by some as extreme) of the subject, mingled with the connotations of "rage," which is something done with angry intensity, a quick and violent action or reaction, and something that spreads uncontrollably and rapidly.
All of which describes Bachmann's brand of black-and-white reductionist politics and her rapid rise in the polls since the early June Republican debate in New Hampshire.
Conservatives were quick to defend Bachmann, though. "Under the editorial control of Tina Brown, the rice paper magazine barely struggles against its bias towards conservative women to view them with anything other than contempt," Dana Loesch wrote on Andrew Breitbart's BigJournalism.com.
Conservative pundit Michelle Malkin wrote: "You've resorted to recycling bottom-of-the-barrel moonbat photo cliches about conservative female public figures and their enraged 'crazy eyes?' Really?"
Even the National Organization for Women took issue, calling the photo "sexist," claiming such imagery would not have depicted a male with the caption "King of Rage."
But sexism aside, Bachmann has been all the rage (the quick, epidemic type) in Republican politics, vaulting from single-digit poll numbers into second-place contention in many national polls (among declared candidates) as well as to the top of several Iowa polls. She and her campaign have as yet not addressed the perceived slight to her image.
Brown addressed the issue in a statement to Yahoo! News' "The Cutline": " Michele Bachmann's intensity is galvanizing voters in Iowa right now. Newsweek's cover captures that."
Or it sought to capture -- or intentionally present -- the fine line between "intensity" and the "rage" of political madness.
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