Last April, former TNR Senior Editor Jonathan Chait asked a piercing question: “Why Does the Weekly Standard Hate Hippies So Much?” Chait’s pictorial tour of hippies on the cover of the right-wing magazine did little to stop the epidemic. In fact, The Weekly Standard may have taken it as a challenge: In the last six months alone, the magazine has had no less than five covers depicting liberals in long-haired hippie glory.
Sandals? Check. Unkempt hair? Check. Sunglasses? Check. Rolling Stones t-shirt? Check.
Poor George Harrison. The Weekly Standard apparently had a bone to pick with the long-deceased Beatle in their November 2011 issue.
The magazine caricatured the Solyndra saga as President Obama carelessly dumping a load of money on a hippie wearing—once again—sunglasses and flip flops.
In the imagination of Weekly Standard editors, cultural studies professors aren’t just infecting the impressionable minds of America’s youth with the terminology of “hegemony” and “Otherness”—they’re also preaching the scandalous aesthetic of socks-and-sandals.
To be fair, this cover does come somewhat closer to relevance, depicting hipsters with large-framed glasses and cups of coffee. The guy on the left still has The Weekly Standard’s trademark hippie flip-flops, though.