The week began with us wondering if a handshake is inflammatory.
We were discussing the cover, which Art Director Zeke Barbaro had originally designed for our Election issue – a let s get to work, cautiously optimistic illustration of totems of democracy being rebuilt. Regular readers will recall that we landed instead on an apocalyptic image for that first cover in November – a picture of ruin that anticipated Trump and his faithfuls apparent determination to reduce America to rubble.
Leading up to the inauguration, we dusted off Zeke s discarded cover, thinking,
now – now is the time we get to be cautiously optimistic! And then rioters laid waste to the U.S. Capitol, egged on by the president, his allies, and a political machine that s been piping toxic lies about a stolen election into the air ducts for months. They shattered glass, ransacked offices, smeared shit on the walls. As repair work began on the Capitol building, our cover s figurative concept –