Time's Obama cover: Propaganda?

"There is little surprise that Time decided to name Obama its Person of the Year, and the magazine takes its usual pains to make the world-historical case for its choice," writes Boston.com. "But the image the magazine chose for its cover strives for little such distance: Time is decorated, quite literally, with an Obama campaign poster."

Time's editor, Rick Stengel, says: "Our cover portrait is by the street artist Shepard Fairey, whose roots are in the skateboarding world and whose early poster of then Senator Obama became the great populist image of the campaign. With this cover, Fairey has now created a new iconic image of the President-elect -- a rich, multilayered poster that echoes but then expands on his original."