Kate Middleton, 'Newsweek''s favorite cover girl. (Getty Images)

Today's  cover of Newsweek, with a digitally-aged Lady Di hobnobbing with Kate Middleton, raised our eyebrows--and not merely for the suggestion that, had she lived, Diana would have been "Tweeting from Davos" (wouldn't she have delegated telling her story to a Twitter-age Andrew Morton?). Why, in our unscientific count, it was the fourth time in Tina Brown's fifteen issues as editor in which Kate Middleton has been featured on the cover!

Ms. Middleton was pictured, alone, in the "Kate the Great" pre-wedding cover story; with her new husband in a post-wedding regular issue (the cover story then as this week was written by Tina Brown) and commemorative issue; and now walking with Diana in this week's installment of Ms. Brown's beautiful, dark, regal fantasy. (We're leaving out the international cover in which Ms. Middleton and Prince William were depicted as "Fantasy Britain" vs. a riot-torn "Real Britain"; the American cover that week depicted the Olsen twins, with a much sunnier spin on Kate and Wills in the cover line "Can Kate & Will Save Britain?")

With four covers to her name, Ms. Middleton is more popular at Tina Brown's Newsweek even than crazy weather (three covers), the Clintons (two covers), or stock photography of white people and their problems (two covers). Only three covers thus far in Ms. Brown's tenure do not depict Kate Middleton, a weather pattern, a Clinton, or a stock photo of a white person: those covers depict Gabrielle Giffords, the aforementioned Olsen twins, and Mitt Romney.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_