Capitalizing, Prognosticating, Reflecting: The Sports Illustrated Global Warming Cover

Lately, it’s hard to know who’s not trying to dramatize and capitalize on global warming.

Still, I’m taken by how much this cover also references the Katrina disaster.  So it’s Florida, a wealthy athlete and a baseball setting.  Given the searing imprint the hurricane made on the national psyche, it’s as much a black man captured by rising water in an empty stadium.  (Taken that way, the reflection in the water is particularly eerie.)

Given his connection to Katrina, baseball, and GWD (“global warming denial”), associations to “W” are also never far way — no matter how hard he tries to revise the picture.  I’d say SI pulled its punches though.  You’ll notice, the flood seems to have left the megabuck field level seats intact.

(h/t: Baily W.)

(photo Illustration: Christopher Hercik and Si Imaging.  March 12, 2007.  Cover. Sports Illustrated.  Article link.)