When Us Weekly slapped Barack and Michelle Obama on the cover, Janice Min saw her newsstand numbers spike: Some 1 million readers picked up the issue, compared to the usual 800,000 copies that it normally moves. Perhaps looking for its own brand of presidential success, People followed suit, putting the entire Obama clan on its cover.

Things did not go as well.

Preliminary scan data from the issue's sales has just come in and we're told People's Obama cover moved just 1.3 million copies on the newsstand, lower than its usual 1.4-1.5 million copies.

Here's one way to look at the math: Based on an average of 1.4 million newsstand copies, People's Obama cover saw a 7.5 percent drop off. Meanwhile, The New Yorker's recent Obama cover moved 75,000 copies, up from its average 43,000 on the newsstand, a 74 percent increase.

That is, in some circles, a smiling Obama family is less preferable than a depiction of the potential First Couple as an extremist Muslim terrorist cell.