Stop Me Before I Vote Again

This thumbnail doesn't do it justice -- the image, at full scale and lovingly calibrated color, was disturbing in the extreme. I originally thought it was some kind of Animatronic or computer-generated image of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Kept the mag away from the kids, of course -- don't want to give 'em nightmares.

The cover was (as usual) a lot more interesting than the interminable, tedious, inside-baseball story (by Matt Bai) inside the legendarily vapid advertising supplement. Indeed, it was such a grisly visual hatchet-job that the Times took the unusual step of printing a photo retraction:

The cover photograph in The Times Magazine on Sunday rendered colors incorrectly for the jacket, shirt and tie worn by Mark Warner, the former Virginia governor who is a possible candidate for the presidency. The jacket was charcoal, not maroon; the shirt was light blue, not pink; the tie was dark blue with stripes, not maroon.

I guess the Bai article was really just a pretext for the photo, given the low literacy level of the Magazine's readership. It was pretty hard to tell what Matt's point was. But after reading through it a couple of times -- the sacrifices I make for this blog, let me tell you -- and reducing it at a slow simmer like veal stock, two points come into focus.

1. Warner is the only alternative to Hillary
2. Warner is even worse