The Joker’s On Us?

1. Why is this man smiling? Far from a monster, Bernie’s been turned into a clown — making it that much harder to take him, his regulatory enablers, and all the legal gamblers who bankrupted the country more seriously. One more act of media denial we don’t need.

2. Perpetuating the monster joke, this is a total take-off on Grandpa Munster. Yay, photoshop!

3. Is perhaps part of the move here to feminize? In the high finance/high testosterone world that powers New York, maybe NYM thinks Bernie is a wuss for getting caught?

4. The marketing game… Hey, let’s put this out just before the Academy Awards and make a few dollars off Heath (“Oscar“) Ledger’s suicide.

5. And then, if you are trying to deliver a character hit with the Joker, Marco Acevedo has set a high bar.

(illustration: Darrow for NY Magazine. March 2, 2008 cover)