This image was lost some time after publication.

Now in the pantheon of Wired's top-selling issues at the newsstand: Julia Allison, the face of famous nobodies who are clearly not nobodies as they are on the cover of Wired. "Allison outsold a host of genuine celebrities," goes Portfolio's blog, "including Sarah Silverman (Feb. 2008), Rupert Murdoch (July 2006), John Stewart (Sept. 2005) and Steven Spielberg, twice (June 2002 and June 2005)." If that vindicates the cover-friendly Allison, it also vindicates the cover lies of publishers — among whom it's hardly news that airbrushed pretty always wins.