What Is It About Barack Obama...

...that makes magazine editors want to put him on the cover without obscuring even a square millimeter of his face with cover lines?

While Rolling Stone let Obama's saintly visage speak entirely for itself -- you know, because the halo thing had already been done -- Time relegated the text to a partial flap.

Drudge notes that it's Obama's seventh appearance on Time's cover this year, versus two for John McCain. I'm guessing that will become three when the Republican convention comes around.

Update, 3:46 p.m.: It turns out last time Time published a cover line-free cover was July 2006, to mark the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Also, it's worth noting that of those seven Obama covers this year, four have been with someone else (Hillary Clinton twice, McCain once, and Obama's mother once).