Posted on 11/06/2003 7:35:10 PM PST by aculeus
ROTFL
Seriously, though, would it be supererogatory to maintain that Tina writes better than Maureen Dowd?
I would tend to file that under the heading of "damning with faith praise", myself - you might as well congratulate her for walking upright while you're at it ;)
In which alternate universe?
'Valor' will do, Michael.
Are there any 'writers' left who can write?
:^)
Probably the same one in which Baba WaWaa is "America's mother confesssor."
L
When a grown-up editor [Tina Brown] can actually ask a writer [Andrew Sullivan] about what's "hot" in the questions of eternal life, the fate of the soul, and the meaning of existence, you have to wonder if, deep inside her, that's all she actually sees.
And that empty center was the quintessential vision of her magazine. I say "magazine" in the singular because she only ever really produced one. The formulas at Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and Talk were variations on a theme. The core was the cult of celebrity--any celebrity--to sell magazines. From hiring Roseanne to oversee a special issue of The New Yorker to publishing Chelsea Clinton's banal musings about Sept. 11 in Talk, the principle was exactly the same.
Above all, celebrities of any kind were never criticized. Whether it was fawning profiles of Hollywood starlets at Vanity Fair or deferential treatment of the latest "hot" media mogul in The New Yorker, Ms. Brown was fanatical about political safety. When Bill Clinton became president, her first instinct was to hire Sidney Blumenthal, the most pro-Clinton writer on the planet, and one of his first tasks was to wangle her an invite to the inauguration.
That's why her magazines tilted, insofar as they tilted anywhere, to the left--not because Ms. Brown is or was a liberal (her politics, if she has any, remain a complete mystery), but because the people in Hollywood and Manhattan upon whom she relied for money and contacts and favors were all liberals. I was trying to think recently of any article that Tina Brown published that was brave, that took on a powerful individual who could actually do her harm. I came up with nothing.
I will venture that it sucks less.
I have a confession to make. I really like The New Yorker. I have read it off and on since I was in college, long before I realized it was a liberal magazine.
Let me rephrase that. A very liberal magazine.
That said, it remains the case that it consistantly prints the most interesting articles of any magazine I've ever read. They even print things by conservatives once in a while (like every three months, and it's a weekly magazine). And the cartoons. Once in a while they print one that's kind of stupid, but most of the time they are marvels of humor. Sometimes they leave me shaking my head in wonder at how they (their cartoonists) are able to continue to capture that subtle New Yorker humor, the main characteristic of which I would describe as "timelessness." Example: a recent cartoon that showed a teenager getting ready to drive off to college, with Dad leaning in the window and saying "Don't forget to click 'send'".
Since Tina Brown left, the ideological breadth of the articles has expanded, and the ever-present republican-bashing is less heavy-handed and artless.
Oh, yes. The most noticable change is the removal of the little "erotica" items that began to show up when Ms. Brown took over. Those of you who follow The New Yorker will know of what I speak here; those who know the magazine only be reputation probably wouldn't believe it, and the era is over now. While Tina Brown was editrix, The New Yorker began to put these little porno pictures in. Sometimes they were photographs, sometimes drawings. Usually they were very small. Mostly they were nude women, but surprisingly sexual. They were sort of high-brow porno, of a sort that Ms. Brown probably found "edgy" or some such.
Anyway, they are quite gone now, and I am delighted. Well, mostly delighted, anyway.
(steely)
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