Nice Ayn Rand Cover, National Review!

Wait, this feels kind of familiar….

Read NR's August 2010 piece on "The Greatly Ghastly Rand" here, our March 2005 Cathy Young classic here, and Brian Doherty's December 2009 "She's Back!" article here. And for an entertaining story about how Ayn Rand almost sued Reason way back when, check out this Reason.tv interview with Reason Enterprises co-founder Manny Klausner:

Comments

[Pip]

Ya suing?

[BakedPenguin]

Kind of ironic that they would rip off a cover of someone who was a huge defender of intellectual property.

[Tulpa]

Reason is not a huge defender of intellectual property by any stretch of the imagination.

[BakedPenguin]

The person on the cover wasn't a Reason writer.

[Tulpa]

It's Reason's cover, not Ayn Rand's cover.

[Coeus]

Just like stealing a car, right Tulpa?

[Pro Libertate]

I'm imagining the picture you would've posted with this comment, once, not long ago.

[People Power Hour]

Don't worry, BP...I understood what you meant.

[-]

The "ripoff" came from the postage stamp.

[BakedPenguin]

Did the USPS sue?

[Pro Libertate]

The USPS doesn't sue. It simply takes your property through eminent domain.

[BakedPenguin]

It was blighted, anyway.

And I'm surprised. I thought they went with the "Vegas" Ayn Rand.

[Pro Libertate]

I voted for the Vegas Rand (just as I did with Elvis). It was more real. Yeah, she was fat and covered with rhinestones, but in many ways, she was at the top of her game then.

[BakedPenguinRectum]

Did BakedPenguin's rectum sue?

[Pro Libertate]

I wonder what Rand would think of liberaltarians? She didn't like libertarians, but I've always seen that as internecine fighting.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Imitation is the sincerest form of fuck you.

[Spiny Norman]

Wait, this feels kind of familiar....

And they both look suspiciously like the postage stamp.

[Pro Libertate]

Dinsdale?

[Episiarch]

"Doug was born in February 1929 and Dinsdale two weeks later; and again a week after that."

[no one]

Even the police began to sit up and take notice.

[-]

Why didn't I think of that?

[Spiny Norman]

I claim originality by virtue of not hitting the refresh button fast enough.

[-]

No prob. Everybody knows it's from the stamp. Don't they?

[Spiny Norman]

They sure do now!

[Colonel_Angus]

Interestingly, the stamp and the cover images have little resemblance to Rand.

[People Power Hour]

Scarily, the stamp Rand almost looks like (((shudder))) Rachel Maddow at a quick glance. Damn it, man!

[Drax the Destroyer]

It's okay to steal form Postal workers, they are already dead inside.

[Drax Needs More Sleep]

From...goddamnit.

[Episiarch]

When is the Ayn Rand S&M porn coming out? Someone has to do it. I'm sure there must be some Objectivist porn actors/actresses out there.

[Xenocles]

Pornography is contrary to Objectivity dogma. Although she said it should not be banned, Rand thought it was "unspeakably disgusting."

[prolefeed]

I'm pretty sure virtually every male adult Objectivist has watched pr0n.

[stupid republican]

and my soul has now been crushed, now im a communist you doosh!

[prolefeed]

When is the Ayn Rand S&M porn coming out?

It already has, in the "rape" scene in The Fountainhead.

[Warty]

Your daily tax outrage, courtesy of Drudge. It's a pretty good outrage today; get it while it's hot.

[Fletch]

Who is going to pay?

The "rightwingers" will all have their servers in Delaware, and the Lef-twits will ignore it, because the "law" only applys to them all-powerful corporations, or something.

[Tristan Band]

I purchased this issue. Nice article, but I consider all this is fucking stupid.

Wake me up when the stupid is gone.

[-]

You'll be sleeping a long, long time.

[Government of Wolves]

Tristan Brand - The Once and Future King.

Or not. We are libertarians, so no kings.

[hmm]

NR ripped off Reason who ripped off the stamp.

For a magazine called reason that just isn't reasonable.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Try licking the back of either the Reason or the Review cover. It pales in comparison to the experience the USPS offers.

[hmm]

My pages stick together for a reason, that includes the ones that don't mention mosques.

[Ken Shultz]

How do you just up and steal something like that?

What's next? An issue with a Google Maps photo of your house on the cover?

[NR]

Fuck, that's already been done?

[BakedPenguin]

I got that issue. It had a picture of my mailing address.

[BakedPenguinRectum]

Still miss old cellblock D?

[BakedPenguin]

D+. Try harder.

[BakedPenguinRectum]

No thanks, that works for me.

[Ken Shultz]

I'm guessing it must have been the same artist...

Just a guess!

But my guess is that the same artist that did the Reason cover told the guys at NR, I know what would work!

Otherwise it's wholesale theft!

If Reason didn't buy the exclusive rights to the artwork? And just depended on the common decency of the kind of people that run the National Review?

If I can sell the same piece of art twice, and I'm the artist, why wouldn't I want to do that?

And what over the last ten years would give anybody the impression that the National Review has any common decency?

If it wasn't the same artist? Somebody owes that guy a check. And if Reason commissioned the art? Somebody owes Reason a check.

[-]

I'm guessing you haven't read the thread.

[BakedPenguin]

Ken, look upthread. I'd forgotten about the postage stamp, too.

[Pro Libertate]

I hear it's some sort of stamp.

[affenkopf]

So does the NR article contain any reference to sending people to gas chambers?

[-]

Yes. How could they resist? The train tunnel catastrophe is a metaphor for Nazi gas chambers, sorta. That's as far as I got.

[Jeffersonian]

Chambers' review doesn't, I think, hold up as well as Rand's novel now that we're living through a very AS period.

[-]

The review is notable as an example of how far Rand's detractors were (and are) willing to go in order to smear both the work in question and its creator. There's a malicious intent that obliterates the boundaries of honest literary criticism. It's a personal attack, and as such it forfeits any right to be taken seriously as a legitimate book review. Was it Chambers' former communist sympathies or his conversion to Christianity that led him to so willful a misrepresentation of the novel's theme? Who knows? And 50+ years later, who cares? Atlas Shrugged remains an influential best-seller, and Chambers is all but forgotten.

[Colin]

Buckley used to do a pretty mean imitation of her.

[-]

Rand got the last laugh. How many people still read Buckley?

[Jeffersonian]

I read "Saving the Queen" recently. Not a bad novel, really.

[Auld lang]

I remember only Buckley's fantasy of having sex with the queen.

[affenkopf]

No Rand imitation beats Rothbard's play (also isn't it great to see people smoking on stage?)

[Alex]

It was an awesome cover when you guys did it, definitely sucks they'd just up and steal it from you. Good luck bro's Salary Calculator

[-]

Do you also sell Chinese shoes? I need some Chinese shoes.

[sloopyinca]

I think they have every right to make a cover similar to yours as long as it's not the same artwork being used. There is such a thing as intellectual property, but does that extend to likeness rights when the likeness is a painting or a picture of a public place.

If so, Reason's July 2009 cover could be scrutinized in the same manner by the creators of Pokemon, Transformers and Kim Possible (or possible e-surance, but who the hell knows the difference).

I'm just sayin...

[sloopyinca]

Or even worse, Reason. Your January, February and December 1968 albums look like dead ringers for the Beatles white album.

Upon further review, you may have a lawsuit against the British band since that album came out in November of same year.

I've changed my stance here. This kind of intellectual theft is wrong, and would appreciate any potential finder's fee regarding a cash settlement in the matter of reason, inc vs apple records.

[Matt Welch]

Oh, they've got every "right" in the world, and if they don't, they should. Just having a larf!

[sloopyinca]

So were we, Matt. I just can't figure what this whole cover thing could possibly have to do with a mosque.

[Google Maps]

The Reason cover of my house gave me the idea for google maps!

[Richard]

Our Daughter Isn't a Selfish Brat; Your Son Just Hasn't Read
Atlas Shrugged

[ARLAUSKAS]

RE:...NATIONAL REVIEW:..A.RAND ;..ARTICLE."?".."D+"
JASON LEE STEORTS
.."..YET ANOTHER 'HOMOSEXUAL' INSISTING ON INTERPRETING MS.RAND'S 'HETEROSEXUAL' EPISTEMOLOGICAL-RATIONAL;..THRU AN ASS-BACKWARDS..'QUEER'..DISTURBED.."LENS"."