BREAKING: Boring Old Newsmagazine Makes Sweet Escape Back To The Future, Sheds No Tears About Cribbing Boring Old Iconography

[disclosure, blah, blah, blah -- Ed.]

Have you seen the first issue of Time after its much-balleyhood redesign?

I won't bore you with discussions of white space and font sizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzze [go here or here if you want to see that kind of stuff]. And, of course, there's no need to digress to discuss the HI-larious cover story, which contains such awesome bits as:

" A generation ago, fresh off the second biggest electoral landslide in American history, Ronald Reagan surveyed the wreckage that had been the opposition and declared victory. Standing before 1,700 true believers at the 1985 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), he proclaimed, "The tide of history is moving irresistibly in our direction. Why? Because the other side is virtually bankrupt of ideas. It has nothing more to say, nothing to add to the debate. It has spent its intellectual capital." "

[and]

" "Compassionate conservatism, for all its virtues, does not even try to address itself to parents. A conservative agenda that did so would not only cement a relationship with these voters, it would also appeal to many with similar worries who do not share the strong cultural predilections that have drawn middle- and lower-middle-class parents to vote for Republicans." [says Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center] "

No, I'm more interested in this surely-not-photoshopped awesome cover image of Ronald Reagan shedding a lone tear.

I think I've seen this iconography somewhere before.

I think it's awesome that the folks at Time wanted to fictionally demonstrate that "Reagan would be sad if he knew his party had no new ideas, had brought the world to the brink of an apocalyptic World War III, and was maybe about to nominate a possibly-closeted-gay liberal as their new standard bearer" in the "a photoshopped picture is worth 1000 10,000 words" kind of way. I wonder where they got this idea from?

Maybe they were inspired by Gwen Stefani shedding a tear after realizing that Fergie had displaced her as the new dance-pop-R&B queen:


[image courtesy gwenstefani.com]

Or maybe they were inspired by Elmo shedding a tear because The Black Parade's dealing-with-cancer theme touched him at the core of his soul:


[image courtesy stereogum.com]

Or maybe they were inspired by Lil Wayne's non-photoshopped non-tears he has never actually shed over anything:


[image courtesy cashmoney-records.com]

Or maybe they were inspired by this widely-distributed 9/11-themed image:


[image courtesy angelfire.com; seriously, who still hosts their site on Angelfire??? -- Ed.]

Or maybe they were inspired by this eTrade Super Bowl commercial from 2001 -- widely considered to be one of the Top Ten Super Bowl Ads of all time:


[video courtesy filefront.com]

[Wouldn't it be not-in-the-"rain-on-your-wedding-day"-kind-but-the-real-kind ironic if this really were the inspiration for the Time cover??? -- Ed.]

Or maybe they were inspired by "the original" -- the classic 1970's-era anti-pollution PSA starring totally non-"Indian" actor Espera De Corti, a/k/a "Iron Eyes Cody" [his parents were Sicilian, but he was born in the United States] [hey, he could run for President if he hadn't died 8 years ago -- Ed.]:


[video courtesy youtube.com]

[seriously, DHMBIB recommends that all readers check out these two videos -- Ed.]

*****

Okay, Time, I know a picture is worth 1000 words -- even if it is completely fake. But the "shedding a single tear" meme jumped the shark a long time ago. And after the eTrade monkey did it, it became a complete joke.

[Sort of like Time magazine, I s'pose -- Ed.]