This week’s New Yorker cover featuring Anthony Weiner straddling the Empire State Building taking a selfie is earning well-deserved praise from across the media landscape, as even liberal and mainstream publications pile on the embattled, “perpetually horny” Democrat.
Weiner’s recent sexting scandal, and revelations that he had a “controlling” online and over-the-phone relationship with 23-year old Sydney Leathers while using the alias “Carlos Danger,” has earned the New York City mayoral candidate some front-page mockery from America’s most vaunted middlebrow newsweekly.
“With a topic like Anthony Weiner, how can you find anything broad or funny that he hasn’t already personally breached?” said artist John Cuneo, who created the cover, in the issue’s Culture Desk. “Free association made me think of the Empire State Building, and then King Kong, the iconic image of him straddling it.”
“And then Weiner sexting, his head tilted and looking a certain way — I just stumbled upon the image as I was sketching. But all I could think about while working on this piece was, ‘Will Weiner still be in the race by the time it runs?,'” Cuneo wrote.
“The New Yorker’s Anthony Weiner cover needs little introduction — it’s just that good,” wrote The Huffington Post. “Tabloids, including the New York Post, ran Anthony Weiner-related front pages throughout the week, but the New Yorker probably just won the week’s unofficial (but totally official) Carlos Danger cover competition.”
“Is Weiner really going to be upset The New Yorker used the Empire State Building as a stand-in for his junk?” Slate.com tweeted. Hollywood.com wrote that the cover is reminiscent of past “favorite political sex scandal parodies.”
So remember, folks: if you find yourself in a Starbucks in a few months flipping through some pretentious magazine filled with David Remnick-penned Obama apologisms and esoteric editorial cartoons, just remember that it was funny once.
Weiner, meanwhile, currently trails City Council speaker Christine Quinn in the New York mayoral race by nine points among registered Democrats. The New York Times editorial board has called for Weiner to drop out of the race.
