If the political rags had to depend on circulation, they'd have all shut down long, long ago. Which is probably why the magazines rarely have an eye catching cover. Of those currently on the news stands and magazine racks, only
The New Republic has an eye catching cover. The December 30, 2010 issue features the Statue of Liberty from the front and the back being x-rayed to illustrate the issue's theme "The Year We Were Exposed." Umbrella-ed under this theme are Jeffery Rosen's "Why We Suck At Privacy," Noam Scheiber's "The White House In Turmoil" and Paul Kennedy's "Is America Really Declining?"
As you flip through the issue, you notice that
The New Republic is really working on illustrations and the result is an eye-pleasing magazine. Page 17 reminds you why you don't read
The New Republic, David Cole's "Breaking Away." The Georgetown embarrassment is too weak even for
The Nation which is why he shops his glass-half-full on Barack Obama's Constitutional abuses to
The New Republic where studied poses of moderation means never having to say, "I took a stand."
Reminded of that, we flip over to
The Nation whose cover screams "I was stoned all during 5th period when I devised this cover." We say that not because the cover calls for someone (unspecified) to "D.A.R.E. To End The War On Drugs," but because it's the ugliest cover you're ever bound to see on a national magazine. Black, white and red. It's probably the "and red" that will most delight some of the magazine's detractors.
Flipping through the issue, you can almost hear Tom Hanks say, "My mama always told me ugly is as ugly does." This is the ugliest magazine. It's not the fact that it's printed on cheap paper -- though it is printed on cheap paper -- it's the fact that no one has a visual sense or style. Page 9 features Crazy Ass Alexander Cockburn in one of his usual I-got-stewed-and-hit-the-word-processor rants. This one is on WikiLeaks and gives the impression of having been writing while surfing the internet. At one point, he gives a shout-out to Davey D who told him -- after thanksgiving -- about the ICE crackdown on websites -- that's what Rebecca and many other sites were covering in real time but give Davey a break -- or at least a "C" -- rap is a young man's game and Davey D's an old geezer. You keep waiting for him to show up on TV with Wilford Brimley schilling for Mutual Life insurance.
In their thumbnails on why drugs need to be legal, David Cole shows up apparently with a primo stash to whine about restoring "lost liberties" -- b-b-but David, you just told us in
The New Republic things were pretty much peachy keen!
Sasha Abramsky's back from his brief banning. When did that happen? Oh, that's right, Katrina never really liked the walls readers were forcing her to erect. So she's pretty much publishing all the old rejects she couldn't get away with back when the magazine actually sold and readers expected to find a real difference between
The Nation and
The New Republic.
About the time you flip past the eleventh green page (listing all the people who forked over money to keep the underperforming magazine alive for one more year), you realize that while ugly, the magazine does make for nice rolling papers.Which brings you to "Weedmart."
No, it's not a new branch of Wal-Mart. It's the cover story of
Mother Jones which doesn't want to miss out on the contact high. You open the magazine and quickly find Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein's self-congratulating ode to their own stink, "You Can Handle The Truth." The poodles want you to know that the magazine has sold despite "tough stories." Of course, their idea of "tough stories" is really partisan attacks and flee to the international (Haiti). It's not like
Mother Jones does any muckraking in the US anymore. Those days are long, long gone.
Mother Jones does their own version of Jay Leno laughing at people. Maybe some day Clara and Monika will look in the mirror and join the rest of us in laughing at them?
Instead, this week they offer people with beliefs about Social Security cards as the hilarious. We think their ugly color scheme (if something can be bathed in yellow -- page 12 demonstrates -- it can be drowned in it) shows far more crazy than anything average citizens in the US say. We'll laugh at page 18 and flip quickly past with just a "About time you finally came out of the closet."
By the time you're yawning at the Haiti coverage (mainly because
MoJo has already hyped everything before that story to the point that you just don't give a damn anymore), you're realizing that they wasted a great deal of paper to offer you one hour of Air America Radio free-style commentary passed off as 'reporting' and column writing.
Reason has the second best cover this month (January 2011), a police officer waving a cautionary finger while holding a baton and decked out in riot gear. What else do we learn from this libertarian magazine? That they could tutor
MoJo and
The Nation on style and visuals.
As for the articles, Jacob Sullivan -- in one page -- tells you what David Cole couldn't in many about Barack's disregard for the Constitution by focusing on the Guantanamo prisoners, specifically Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. But it's Radley Balko's article, "The War on Cameras" (the cover story, in fact), that will probably catch your attention the most.
Then it was time for
The Progressive who appears to have sought out the person who used to do the (bad) animation for ABC's
Superfriends. The cover is flat and that so much time was spent on it to produce so little to grab the eye really seems to sum up the entire magazine.
Useless would be another word for the magazine (December/January -- a double issue!). Analyzing the mid-terms in "Lessons of November," Matthew Rotschild ("with Ruth Conniff") writes, "The President's post-mortem press conference underscored why he lost public confidence, and why progressives should no longer invest hope in him." That's pretty clear.
This is pretty clear too: "He not only fulfilled a campaign promise. He called the nation to a higher ground." Guess what? That was written by Matthew Rothschild as well. Less than six weeks later. When Matthew's multiple personality disorder is treated, he may have something (consistent) to say. Maybe not.
If yellow is
MoJo's worst crutch when it comes to illustrations,
The Progressive's worst crutch is black. They don't shade, they just put a black background, for example, behind a drawing of barack or make a shodw on a table as a child eats. Why the shadow? Don't think about it -- th e illustrators didn't. Maybe to meet up with the interview subjects? Wendell Berry announces, "If you grow even one plateful of your own food rather than buy it from the food corporations, you're acting radically." Wait -- Sarah Palin's a radical? In the good sense of the term? Who knew?
The entire thing feels and reads like a Whole Foods catalogue but, here's the thing, they tend to give you a catalogue while The Progressive wants you to fork over $4.95 for their 'wisdoms.'
