Today, Newsweek magazine released this week’s cover via Twitter: a hopey, changey Barack Obama staring into the future, his head swirled with a rainbow halo. The bold font title: “THE FIRST GAY PRESIDENT.” And the cover story is written by none other than Andrew Sullivan, famed Trig Palin truther (he believes the bizarre conspiracy theory that Trig Palin is actually Bristol Palin’s son rather than Sarah Palin’s). The last time we saw Sullivan writing a cover story for Newsweek, he was asking “Why Are Obama’s Critics So Dumb?”
It’s beyond parody. Sullivan, who is gay, is the most ardent backer of President Obama imaginable; he largely switched parties because of the gay marriage issue. Sullivan is a personal favorite blogger of the White House. Now, he’s portraying Obama as a religious figure, bathed in the glow of the same-sex marriage agenda. This despite the fact that Obama was forced into his embrace of same-sex marriage by Joe Biden; despite the fact that the Democrat Party will not put same-sex marriage in its national platform; despite the fact that Obama still has not signed an executive order on nondiscrimination. Obama himself wants same-sex marriage to be a states’ rights issue, supposedly. There have been zero policy implications from Obama’s statement, yet he is being feted as the Abraham Lincoln of gay rights. In truth, Obama’s same-sex marriage embrace was a cynical ploy to separate himself from Mitt Romney while doing nothing about the issue, all in order to raise money from his most leftist supporters.
The Newsweek cover is obviously a take-off on the old line about Bill Clinton being the “first black president,” but it’s also an unintended backhanded in-kind contribution to the Romney campaign. In the liberal press’ desperate gushing over Obama’s same-sex marriage stance, they’ve alienated more than half the country – every state that has ever held a referendum on same-sex marriage has voted it down. The most polarizing president in history by every measurable statistic has polarized the country yet again – yet Newsweek insists on portraying Obama as a holy figure for embracing an anti-Biblical position, thereby also alienating every religious person in the country.
The cover is deeply arrogant, of course. We have no idea what a full-scale embrace of same-sex marriage would mean for society; portraying Obama as a halo-ridden angel for overturning thousands of years of marital precedent is simply absurd. It’s a radical change, by definition, with Obama and his allies tampering with the very fabric of our society – but by Newsweek‘s lights, it’s obviously a net plus. Obama thinks so too, which is why he termed his embrace of same-sex marriage an “evolution,” suggesting that his opponents were unevolved.
No wonder Tina Brown’s Newsweek has become a punch line. Its political coverage is a joke.