After buying concert tickets at some point last year I got a free subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. It was only supposed to last three months, but they kept sending me issues each week for about a year, accompanied by cards saying, "don't let the issues stop, renew now, pretty please," or the like. I never did, even though it was dirt cheap, because it seemed to me that RS had lost touch with the national consciousness. From putting laughably unhip teen stars on the cover to its six-months-too-late coverage to its "every album gets at least three stars" critical reviews, RS certainly was no longer the cultural force I remembered from my youth. But I had no idea just how out of touch RS really was until today. Putting the Boston bomber on the cover might be the dumbest, lamest attempt to regain publicity and relevance I've ever seen. Forget that it's horribly insensitive -- as I taught my six-year-old, "no duh." It's also stupid. People aren't going to buy that issue on newsstands and a lot of people are boycotting the magazine and cancelling their subscriptions. Wow, did RS misread its audience. I guess there really IS such a thing as bad PR. "New Coke" may have been a better business decision than this -- which is saying something. (For those of you born after 1985, just Google it.)