Time magazine cover of Osama bin Laden in Times Square looks odd

The windows of the building match Osama bin Laden's eyes, giving him a Roger McGuinn square-hippy-glasses look.
Photo by John McNab. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Shart Tsung

So they can’t release pictures of his body but they allow a humungous sign with his face exed out in Time Square? How easy is it to smell the bullshit nowadays?

Also, very bad taste. We don’t celebrate death in this country, just violence.
Ryan

Ummmm… wasn’t he shot in the eye? Makes it even more gruesome.
whisper dog

Reminds me of the video that accompanies that numbers station recording that always creeps me out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McFRonD-sjg
John Goldsmith

Strikingly similar from yesterday’s The Independent:

http://yfrog.com/z/h2v4mxej
j0phus

Does this seem like we are keeping track of the death of our enemies on a big sign at our doorstep? It kind of makes us look like savages.
- Mister44
  
  “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
  
  Above: not savages.
  
  These guys:
  
  http://www.historycommons.org/events-images/a140_blackwater_massacre_2050081722-13250.jpg (graphic pic!)
  
  http://www.exohuman.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/killteam.jpg (on trial for murdering civilians)
  
  Savages
  - Jake0748
    
    Sorry, but giant picture of dead guy we just killed (yes, he deserved it), in the middle of New York City, while maybe not savage, is still ugly and unnecessary.
EH

Oh exploitable!
Pavlo

Inappropriate and in bad taste.
Jesse M.

Bin Laden looks like an emoticon!
Jake0748

I thought the Time magazine cover was very lame. I mean were all their artists and editors on vacation?
And then to blow up this stupid cover “art” to side-of-building size… makes me sad.

Really? We can’t do better than this?
scifijazznik

In case you needed proof the people who occupy the building are not creative types….

Oh the fun to be had in those eyeball offices.
nehoccramcire

Thanks for the advice for my morning commute, and which crossroads of the world to avoid. Yechhhh.
MacBookHeir

It’s probably the most heartless and poorly-designed magazine covers I’ve seen – and that’s including all the gruesome Nixon and Kissinger Newsweek hatchet designs from the early 70s. This TIME design doesn’t even work as powerful primitive propaganda
Infinite Decay

Jake0748 & MacBookHeir:
It’s an homage to the same style cover that Time first ran in 1945 with the death of Hitler. (Which they reused for Saddam Hussein, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and now Osama bin Laden.)
- Jake0748
  
  Fine, but that doesn’t make it any less crude and ugly.
- MacBookHeir
  
  Thanks for the tip RE the original cover(s) – Who would have known TIME had used the same motif for other covers? I have to say that the Hitler version doesn’t do anything for me either, then again post-Modern art criticism had yet to take off and flourish in 1945
Jack

The biggest problem with that Time magazine cover is the fact it has been used before: Once for Hitler and THREE TIMES IN THE PAST 10 YEARS!

So Saddam Hussein, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden are all worthy of that big-red â€œXâ€ treatment? Really?

Saddam Hussein & Abu Musab al-Zarqawi should not have gotten that treatment. In the long runâ€”heck right nowâ€”it reflects the psychotic nature of the Bush presidencyâ€™s obsessed desire to find a â€œvillainâ€ when they couldnâ€™t find Osama bin Laden. And Time played right into the whole flawed concept. Osama bin Laden was the only one other than Hitler who deserved that treatment.

And having that cover in Times Square makes all the sense in the world: The WTC site is now a new rallying point for folks who are happy that Osama bin Laden is dead. Did the same exuberance exist for Saddam Hussein & Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? Nope.
marco antonio

Unfortunately this is not showing Americans in the best light to the rest of the world. Americans are coming across as an immature, vindictive, savage bunch fond of public executions – just like in the middle ages or the Wild West.

Just wait for the ‘gruesome’ photos of Bin Laden to be released, it’s going to be a grotesque feeding frenzy out there.
Jack

Oh, and for those who care, check out the reaction this YouTuber gets when he tries to start a â€œU.S.A.! U.S.A.!â€ chant on the L train:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jox5vMFASLA
- MacBookHeir
  
  “Oh, and for those who care”
  
  I don’t know if you’ve ever commuted daily via subway train,
  but I think the non-response to the chant has more to do
  with wanting to be left alone rather than any lack of patriotism
  or desire to participate. Whenever I was on my morning train I just
  wanted to read my book
Jack

Oh, I have commuted on NYC subways since I was a wee little lad; even on my own at 11! So I know what you mean. But I wanted to just place a bit of perspective on all of this. For example, this sign in Times Square is probably not like that 24/7. No idea what the cycling is, but there is no way that ad space would be dominated by that image for more than a few moments a day.

NYC is a mixed city. But 911 affected us. Itâ€™s complicated.
Louis Kid

I don’t get the point of showing trophees like this, it’s so puerile. Definetely not the kind of attitude that we need to slow all those conflicts.

By the way, the confrontation with the Nasdaq logo is kind of frightning.
Matt Cornell

In this case, it’s also an accidental reference to the claim that OBL was shot “in the eyes.” Both Stewart & Colbert were very keen on this idea, repeating it often. Also, it shows up here:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/05/03/article-0-0BE0624D00000578-769_306x464.jpg
Andrew Katz

I for one am now incapable of seeing a picture of OBL without hearing “Americuh, FUCK YEAH!” playing on repeat in my head: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcmuPc8_SWQ

(warning: don’t read the comments)
Anonymous

Basically the sanitized and mass marketed version of a head on a spike.
travtastic

Do we get to drink his blood?