CarnalNation

Time Magazine has released their "Top 10 Everything of 2009" list, and it features covers ranging from New York's depiction of Bernie Madoff as the Joker to, um, a cover of Texas Monthly with a cowboy hat on it. Coming in at #7 on the list is The Advocate's Porn Panic!, a funny photo which accompanies a story about the recession's effect on the porn industry.  It's a really clever image.  (Its appearance on the list is also a little bit sad, though, since The Advocate basically stopped existing last month and no other mainstream gay publication would ever release a cover this celebrity-free.)  Unfortunately, Time writer Arthur Hochstein's comments about the image are not so clever:

He wonders, for instance, whether the cover intentionally pays homage to Munch's The Scream, as if art directors at major national magazines might not be aware that this image resembles what is basically the most famous painting ever.  He also makes a bad pun about "hard times." 

Fine, whatever.  People don't really read lists like this for the commentary.  They just want to complain about the ordering and about what got left out.  However, the real kicker about the commentary is the last of Hochstein's five sentences:  "It pushes the boundaries of taste, but not for its target audience." 

Meaning... what, exactly?  That Advocate readers have no taste?  That people who read staid LGBT magazines are all porn-crazy maniacs?  That every homosexual in America owns at least one blow-up doll?  I'd like to hear someone explain this, because really, I can't figure it out.

Other magazines on the list include not one but two yawn-inducing New Yorker covers.  On the bright side, they at least had the sense to also include that really awesome Linda Evangelista photo from the October issue of W.