10 magazine covers that created news

Barack and Michelle Obama as radicals

• Release a magazine cover with a presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in Muslim garb, and adorn his wife in militant underground attire and armed with an AK-47, and there’s sure to be a seismic reaction. And did we mention the burning US flag? When the presidential hopeful happens to be Barack Obama, drawn here on the cover of The New Yorker in the midst of a so-called “terrorist fist jab” with his wife Michelle, attempts at fun-natured satire are sure to be lost on the involved parties.

Is God Dead

•When Time posed the question on its cover in 1966, it was the first time the magazine had ever used just type on its cover without an associated photo. The story, which concluded that religion was dead, included the opinions of Christian theologians including Gabriel Vahanian, whose book The Death of God helped spark the radical movement. It received heavy backlash from readers.

Entertainment Weekly

Dixie Chicks get inked up with neoconservative slogans

• When Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines told a concert crowd in 2003 that she was “ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas”, the comment cost the group half of their concert audience attendance in the US. “At that moment, on the eve of war, I had a lot of questions that I felt were unanswered,” Maines told ABC. “The wording I used, the way I said it, that was disrespectful. Am I sorry that I asked questions and that I don’t just follow? No.” Despite little radio play leading up to the release of Taking the Long Way, the disc landed at No 1 atop Billboard, going gold in its first week.

Entertainment Weekly

‘Twilight’ vampire not hot-blooded enough

• When author Stephenie Meyer wrote that “Twilight” hero Edward, the 17-going-on-108-year-old vampire, is supposed to be dazzlingly, blindingly beautiful, we’re pretty sure she didn’t mean in a rosy-lipped female kind of way. Pity then poor Robert Pattison, an actor whose one only claim to fame thus far is his small role as Harry Potter rival Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The backlash was immediate.

Vanity Fair

Demi Moore with a men’s suit painted on her body

• Demi Moore posed nude while pregnant. It was the photo that spawned all manner of celebrity mom to bare all along with their...