The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past 40 Years: Mr. Luce's mag does satanism, porn, crack, Pokemon, and more! - Reason Magazine
http://reason.com/news/show/134038.html

They forgot the 2 Aug 82 "Scarlet H" Herpes cover (but, then, Reason would, wouldn't it?) http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19820802,00.html

From William Randolph Hearst's ginned up hysterical stories about marijuana to the "10-cent plague" comic book scare of the 1950s to The New York Times warning of "cocaine-crazed Negroes" raping white women across the Southern countryside, the media has always whipped up anxiety and increased readership via thinly sourced exposes of the next great threat to the American way of life.

As a service to future historians of the long, slow death of the newsweekly, Reason offers this Top 10 list of the most horrifying, silly, irresponsible, or downright ridiculous Time cover panics from the past 40 years.

"...no publication has done a better (by which we mean worse) job of scaring the crap out of post-baby boomer America than Time.." 10. June 19, 1972: The Occult Revival \ 9. April 5, 1976: The Porno Plague \ 8. August 6, 1984: The Population Curse \ 7. September 15, 1986: Drugs: The Enemy Within \ 6. May 7, 1990: Dirty Words \ 5. May 13, 1991: Crack Kids \ 4. July 3, 1995: Cyberporn: On a Screen Near You \ 3. Nov 22, 1999: Pokemon! \ 2. March 19, 2001: The Columbine Effect \ 1. June 7, 2004: Overcoming Obesity in America \