Suppose that context may have something to do with it. For one thing, the original of that photo or ones like it have already been all over the media without this particular kind of controversy. And you have to wonder whether or not the police photographer, who is after all a professional photographer, may have some insight into images that isn’t necessarily obvious to a blasé observer (their production, meaning, interpretation, and impacts). Why just assume that he doesn’t, for instance, understand the purpose of the rules he broke? Or that he (or others) just can’t understand the relation of books to covers? 

How would that photo have been handled on the covers of other publications, and would the reaction have been the same? Maybe not. On The New Yorker maybe some sly, cocktail hour cartoon comment on hipster irony. The WSJ: a small black and white faux engraving. And so on. The possibilities are endless. The Rolling Stone blew it up, cropped, masked, adjusted its tone, and gave it an in-your-face setting that also gets used to showcase rock stars.

I understand that scientist types may not be very passionate about art, but for all that’s been written about it over the centuries, there must be something interesting left to say about a given image and its implications by those specially trained in analysis.

And how many people have been conned out of their savings by sociopaths who happen to also have been born with good looks or a good voice or various communicative skills?

Re. Carolyn H at #4: “Don’t judge a soul by its face.” Exactly. Perfect. Instant contagious meme. (And atheists can also use that one, by way of the word “soul” being a metaphor for “mind and character.”)

If that’s who I think it is, his brother was president of the Massachusetts Senate when I lived there. People seemed to accept that that’s just how things were: two brothers each reaching the top of his chosen field.

It’s been like that for a long time. People in English-speaking cultures want to be able to look at a face and say that yes, that person is a criminal (or an upstanding citizen–it works both ways). Nor do I think it’s limited to the West: there was a minor scandal at the Beijing Olympics over a child singer who had the look the organizers wanted lip synching over a recording by a child who had the voice they wanted, but not the looks.

OTOH, you could say that RS was intentionally pushing buttons to promote sales, partly by glamorizing Tsarnaev. There are a couple of questionable tendencies in certain segments of pop culture; to glamorize jerks, gangsters, criminals and also to go over the top in terms of editorial bad taste in order to be edgy (as in some fashion layouts).

Frankly I find the stir interesting for its amplification in an age when there’s so much visual cacophany that response tends to be indifferent to any one piece of noise.