New Yorker's Hurricane Katrina Cover Wins “Best Magazine Cover Of The Year”...

Eat The Press Rachel Sklar October 25, 2006 12:40 PM

Yesterday, the American Society of Magazine Editors chose the winners for its first-ever magazine cover competition, except there really was no contest: First place was taken easily by this September 19, 2005 New Yorker cover by Barry Blitt, which satisfied the need for Bush administratio comeuppance after the horrific bungling of Hurricane Katrina (I still remember the kind of savage pleasure it gave me when I first saw it). Expertly capitalizing on the anger in the country following that misspun and mismanaged tragedy, it tapped into a sense of righteousness yet remained tragic because of how close to reality it came in depicting rising floodwaters. That's ETP's feeling; ASME said "As the Oval Office is slowly submerged, the reader gets a release that goes beyond the first laugh and unleashes the floodgates of the nation's collective anger." Incredibly, it still applies now as a metaphor for the mismanagement of the Bush administration (July 10, 2001, anyone?). Well, at least they're consistent.

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