Everyone was so confused by Portfolio's November Dov Charney cover, which featured the splayed-leg American Apparel founder instead of the financial doom that the mag was built to address.

It seemed like an irrelevant and generally poor cover choice, and newsstand sales are saying: yes, it was! Reports the New York Observer, "The November issue sold 19,000 copies on the newsstand, the same as Portfolio's previous two issues in October and September, where Toll Brothers CEO Bob Toll and Jeff Zucker were on the cover."

In other words, the pandering (or whatever it was?) attempt didn't work. Now what? The mag lost $20 million last year—if a photo of a Canadian Jewish hustler lying on a couch doesn't move magazines, what will? Fully-splayed, half-naked women?

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