There Can Only Be One (Except For Magazine Covers Combining The Faces Of Presidential Candidates)

Everything old is new again! Or, put another way, it's always fun to smoosh peoples' faces together for comic and/or dramatic effect.. It's been done with celebrities to imagine what their babies would look like for ages, and, in the case of newsweeklies, this week on the cover of Time which combines the faces of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and boldly declares "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE." That cover has something in common with the New Republic, which declared "WE HAVE TO CHOOSE ONE" over a photo of what might call a Hillary-Barack hybrid. It also has something in common with Newsweek, which went with the half-and-half version of the smoosh to convey the electoral tumult of the 2000 election between George Bush and Al Gore. They're all striking covers in their own way, and I think conclusively prove that Barack and Hillary are a better looking pair than George and Al (of the three covers, Time's is most dramatic and aesthetically pleasing; Newsweek's is most garish, thus best reflecting the grotesque funhouse quality of that process; and TNR's is the one most likely to creep you out.

TNR cover from Mark Pasetsky's Cover Awards.

Comments

[rbdc]

Hunh. Yesterday, I was flipping through the channels on my TV, when I saw some talking heads on Fox (honestly, I was flipping; I wouldn't linger there) discussing whether Time should apologize to vets for the previous week's cover making a "smoosh" of the famous Iwo Jima flag-raising photo and a tree.

Well, now this week, a new "smooshy" cover -- but how accurate? I mean a cross between Hillary and Obama should be more like the product of sexual reproduction (after all, we are talking about a male and a female here). I know that raises all those pesky issues related to genetics like chance, dominance and recessivity, independent assortment, linkage and polygenic inheritance, but in the end, the product should be more of a blend, I think more like the TNR cover. Anyhow, next week, while I'm channel surfing, I wonder if I'll find those same talking heads on Fox debating whether or not Time should apologize to Gregor Mendel.