Kind of a fat-lipped John Denver circa 1972, no?

"The good news is that an ugly convention fight is highly preventable. The one advantage of a scenario that's...

Could have sworn that was Boy George's keyboardist.

Seriously, TNR could do with MUCH more visually interesting content: slide shows, art, architecture, photos uploaded by your readers, etc. This would help position TNR closer to The New Yorker and further from those church bulletins The Nation and National Review.

Speaking of church bulletins, it helps to see TNR putting a little distance between itself and its heartthrob, even if it's via visual gags. The Obamacrush tendency is getting out of control around these parts, makes TNR a lot less interesting than it used to be.

Frankly, I didn't see it. I thought it must be Noam, since it headed his big piece. I thought, Wow, not only is this guy a really good writer, he's also very cute in a Fire Island or Ptown sort of way.

Dear editors --

What do the words" hysterical blindness" mean to you?

Touch-typingly yours,

Dan

It freaks me out. Kinda of a Crying Game thing.

Ack, indeed.  It looks like something Bill the Cat would have hawked up.

By the way, whatever happened to the wonderful Berkely Breathed?   His Opus cartoon now slumming on Salon.com is a shadow of a once glorious satirical wit.  Ah, well, probably just my bias, I always thought that Milo and Oliver were the best characters of the old strip.

It reminds me of that SNL skit (Spade in America) when David Spade dressed up like Teri Hatcher.

I would ask Nancy to add John McCain's countenance to the mix. Then there would be three-one: McClintainobama, Obaimton, and Clinobacain.

As this thing grinds on their common denominator dawns migraine-like into conscious awareness, like the skull of a horrified saber-toothed cat blobbing up slo-mo through the obsidian surface of the La Brea tar pit: the task before them, any of them, is too great.

They are flawed, all three. McCain, when he should be soaring, shuffles in pallid whiteface. Obama and Clinton, like Carly's couple, cling and claw, and drown in Drudge's debris.

Imagine any of them staring down any of a dozen major challenges, foreign or domestic, that await. I don't think it's quite dawned on most folks how much George W. Bush has ham-fistedly fucked things up or, through neglect, allowed the dry rot to gut our society's economic, environmental, and strategic underpinnings.  So the final horror awaits: the shit will hit the fan, whichever of our final trio survives won't be up to the task, and as a result Bush's legacy will rise as surely as methane from a cow's asshole.

kgrant, I think that poor Berke's creative juices dried up in the late 80s, and he's not had the good sense that Bill Watterson had.

It's not just an arresting image but a very elegant, beautiful photo (seriously). More top-notch, beautiful photography, pls.

I'm glad this magazine has a relatively small and well-educated readership.  To the Gen-Pop, this will only serve to feminize our prospective nominee (a la Kerry)...

I prefer BARillary. Try to say it 10 times fast.

Imagine the scene. You're out for the evening, and this fine specimen of androgeny sidles up to you at the bar.

Hi, I'm Barillary Obinton, what's your name? Could I buy you a drink? I noticed you from across the room. How would you like to come over to my place and... resolve whether mandates are a necessary part of health care reform?

Why is Annie Lennox on the cover of TNR?

www.imdb.com/.../nm0005142

It's creepy as H-E-double hockey sticks, as Mitt Romney would say.

Nicely rendered, but when I first saw it I had to wonder what it was supposed to signify. For those of us who see the two as diametrically opposed it comes across as nonsensical. The possibility of bringing them together in this way puts me in mind rather of that old Star Trek episode... what was it? Ah, here it is:

Episode Title: 'The Alternative Factor'

Synopsis: "The crew meets two nearly-identical men named Lazarus, one from their universe and one from an antimatter universe with the potential to destroy both universes should they come together. Kirk must work with the Lazarus not of his own universe to trap the other, a madman, in a void between the universes with his twin, thus keeping everyone else safe."

( www.treknation.com/.../the_alternative_factor.shtml )

But I'll bet Andrew Sullivan is making a pin-up out of it . . .

is it just me, or does the obama aspect dominate. i just don't see much of Hillary there at all.

I was going to send an e-mail along the lines of "Extremely Disturbing", but now I'm more interested in this freak of nature's chances against McCain in the general election.  Since race and sex are fairly ambiguous, it could attract voters from all demographics in some sort of strange Rorschach test:

"I'm voting for it because, like me, it is a strong, half-Asian woman."

"As a Latino man, I will vote for someone with more Mexican heritage than Bill Richardson."

"Blond hair or not, one-quarter black is still blacker than McCain."

"It's about time we had a transsexual in the White House.  For years we have been an under-represented minority!"

Blackie, the eyes are by far the most important feature of any face. The artist selected BHO's eyes, their shape color and most important of all, expression. This android looks serene, dreamy, young, naive. Not qualities that come to mind when looking into HRC's eyes.

This face has more than a touch of Kato Kaelin. Good choice for the position of West Wing Towel Boy.

Hillary + Barack = ???

I'm having an  "uncanny valley" response to the cover. It's almost human, but something- maybe its androgyny or the proportion of the mouth to the eyes- makes me uneasy.

As you say, an arresting image. Well done.

To me, it's an androgynous Hawaiian Kevin Spacey.

It's cool, but it makes me think of the freaky porn that a former friend downloaded onto my computer when I lent it to him, which was definitely uncool.

Upon seeing the photo, my imagination led me to think that the issue of TNR would have a story about Obama hiring Michael Jackson as an advisor and life consultant.

Commenter John Gould draws my attention to this illustration, which accompanies a Huffington Post item

Frequenters of their local zoos are advised to hold their noses and enter the Amphibian house. Though