Year: 2005

Anyone who calls himself a journalist had to be embarrased by Dan Rather and the other idiots at CBS News who broadcast that report about the forged documents relating to W’s service (if you can call it that) in the National Guard.

Republicans are absolutely right when they say the people involved were blinded by their own ideology into concocting the story. I mean, if they’d stopped for a minute and thought about it, do they think Karl Rove would have been so stupid as to leave behind any specific evidence of the special treatment W received. C’mon…

Anyway, the CBS people behind the broadcast have now been fired. The only reason Rather hasn’t been is that he’s already resigned.

But, are any of the above-mentioned Republicans upset when their side uses tax dollars to influence the news, as they did in the case of the Department of Education paying TV commentator Armstrong Williams $240,000 to shill for the No Child Left Behind Act?

Hey, at least CBS used their own money to try to blow smoke up our rear ends. And, they admitted their mistake. Any chance of that happening at W’s Education Department? Probably about the same chance of W’s real records from the National Guard coming to light is my guess.

We were vaguely amused by Powerline, the delusional right-wing blog based here in the Twin Cities, that won Time magazine’s “Blog of the Year.” Just when we were getting ready to point out precisely how ridiculous these Big Butt and Ass Rocket guys are (or whatever—why are republicans always so obvious about their latent homosexuality?), Nick Coleman stepped in, and we were glad to hold his coat.

And now, we understand—by way of a wonderful item penned by our good-friend-in-law Mike Mosedale—that TCF bank’s blowhard CEO, Bill Cooper, was so irritated to have his friends and employees technically KO’ed by a heavyweight, that TCF will never advertise in the Strib again while he is in charge. No doubt the TCF board of directors is proud of the personal stand Cooper is taking with their money.

Now that it’s safe for a weakling like us to kick sand in the face of the badly beaten bullies, we have a few talking points of our own. First, being named Time magazine’s Blog of the Year is a little like being elected secretary of the student council. Now, we realize how important it is to the male ego to get and cling to this sort of accolade. We, too, have been known to make hay while the sun shines. We’re just saying that if you rely on Time magazine to be the arbiter of a popularity contest where the only audience appears to be the contestants themselves, you probably have bigger problems you should be dealing with.

Second, the Powerline guys claim they do not blog while they are at work. (We do, by the way. We’re professionals, you know.) But a quick scan of their blog indicates that they have posted almost every hour of the day, with no discernible pattern of dead air that would indicate they are actually away working. Granted, banker’s hours have always been the gold standard for six-figure slacking. Still, we find it hard to believe that they run home every hour in order to post their pulse-quickening updates.

And finally, we wish these rabid NASCAR dads would stop suckling at the paps of our blue-state largesse. If they honestly believed half of what they say, they have no business living among us, the benighted, godless, tax-happy, liberal elite who pay most of the federal govenment’s tab.

Boys, put your money and your butts where your mouths are. We hear there are signs of growth over in South Dakota, and that’s just a stone’s throw from Wyoming. There must be a Log Cabin Republicans chapter out there somewhere with two or three vacant stools. You know, Honest Abe was into butts too!

What with the holidays and all, we’re a little behind in the reading of The Economist. We went years without it, and just started subscribing again when our son, the economics major, mentioned he’d like a subscription for Christmas. His doting mother obliged, and, while she was at it, picked one up for home as well.

We’re glad she did, because it’s the best news magazine weve found. And we wonder why we stopped subscribing to it 7 years or so ago. Think of The Economist as Time or Newsweek, except with better writing and without the long features on why Americans are infatuated with Desperate Housewives. (In case you missed that issue of the other news rags, it’s because we’re congenitally stupid.) Also think of it as extremely intelligent coverage of the rest of the world that you don’t get in the American media unless 150,000 people are carried off by an angry sea.

Although it’s a British magazine, it is global in its scope, and so has a section every week devoted to the U.S. Tucked into a thought provoking feature in the December 18 issue on a revolutionary grading system at an historically African American university is a sidebar headed “Strangers Not Wanted?” The kicker above the headline says, “The mood of Minnesota.”

The story reports on a survey, commissioned by Walter Mondale, on the mood of the Twin Cities suburbs, which notes some not too surprising things such as the suburbanites are willing to pay for good schools and are more socially liberal than their Republican-leaning comrades from rural Minnesota.

But now we get to the “stroppiness,” as The Economist puts it. (If you have to look up stroppiness, as we did, you’ll learn it comes from obstrperous, one of our favorite words.) While rural folk are decidedly “cool” toward Minnesota’s immigrant population, suburbanites are only barely positive–putting new Minnesotans only slightly ahead of the NRA. To be fair, most suburbanites do see immigration as good for the state. More troubling, though, is that twenty percent of suburbanites say that foreign immigration is the “most discouraging” thing about Minnesota.

The Economist wonders if this is a momentary snag in our liberal fabric. Hey, we’re not Mississippi, where murderers of civil rights workers can get away with it for 40 years, but those of us who’ve live here for a while know well that racism, just like the Scandinavian propensity for drinking in secret, is a Minnesota characteristic that becomes every day a little less secret as you get to know us a little bit better.

–Oliver Tuanis

One of the wonderful things about TiVo is that you actually watch less TV. If you eliminate channel surfing from your routine, and you just check the queue of what the machine has recorded for you—based on your explicit instructions to record, say, the beautiful and brilliant and frightening Mary Lahammer every time she tosses those golden locks on TPT—well, then, you watch only what you intend to watch, and you waste less time. You get to watch Mary when it’s convenient for you, and you don’t have to waste your time on commercials (or pledge drives, or Eric Eskola). This gives you more time to read the New York Times, for example.

Then you read Frank Rich, who informs you that the new season of “24” has begun, with two back-to-back nights of double episodes. You check, and discover that your standing orders to TiVo to keep up with “24” whenever and wherever it might air, well, TiVo remembers. So, you have four hours of TV in two days—practically a new personal record! This, of course, is the perfect circuit between high-brow and low-brow: Reading Frank Rich in order to watch Kiefer Sutherland. (This doesn’t hold much water with your wife, by the way.)

We have mixed feelings about the series. It’s emotionally and physically violent, and there are elements of it that are a little like explicit suicide instructions for a depressed nation. (Torture is always justified by noble ends; the most heinous behavior is acceptable because of the urgency of getting the show over in twenty-four hours, through seventeen relentless episodes.) It’s state-of-the-art, cliffhanger TV, and we often find ourselves watching through our fingers.

But there was a very funny moment in the first episode that we wanted to dwell on for just a moment. After the first crisis, there is an emergency debriefing involving a bunch of senior counter-terrorism officers. They are gathered around a conference table. There is a newbie—a funny, fat guy with a lisp—who is clearly just learning the ropes. He is the only one at the table who does not have an open lap-top in front of him. A supervisor scolds him. “Where is your lap-top, Edgar?” He says, “I don’t need it. I’ve memorized everything.” The supervisor scowls, incredulous. “How will you crunch data?” she says. If it weren’t so sad it would be funny, and if it’s not already a cliche, it will be.

For example: Over the holidays, we were comfortably installed at the cabin in northern Wisconsin. We brought the laptop along in case there was an emergency, and in case we were suddenly gripped by an irrational desire to finish some longterm projects gathering virtual dust on the hard drive. We were sitting around the dinner table trying to remember the names of all the James Bond films. We cheated. We plugged in the modem, dialed up AOL, and quickly had all the answers at our fingertips. The conversation continued, and suddenly we were the most informed, interesting, entertaining person in the room.

We realized a long time ago that email and the internet have more or less replaced all of our biological memory banks. In a very short time now, we will not remember our own name or telephone number— it will be on a keychain somewhere. We’re afraid TiVo and Outlook are a lot more reliable than we are.

What were we saying? Begob, where’s my bus? What bus?

First, let’s get the pronunciation right. It’s Read (pronounced “red”), not Read (pronounced “reed”). Get it? Good.

Second, what’s going on here is usually a comment on something I’ve read lately. It could be a book, but more likely, it’s going to be a newspaper or magazine. There are a lot of good ones out there, that don’t have as wide a circulation around here as I’d like. Often, they write news or opinion that’s getting missed by the news sources that have the widest circulation.

But when you consider that the news sources with the biggest numbers are the ones that most closely imitate reality TV instead of reality, you see why a lot of good stories are under-noticed. That said, I’m going to make an exception to my own rule here and start with a story that was widely circulated but that almost nobody cares about.

I finally got around to reading the Newsweek piece from this week on Kerry’s explanation of why he lost.

Kerry says he was proud of himself for almost defeating a “a popular incumbent who had enjoyed a three-year head start on organizing and fund-raising.” From where we sit, Kerry should be ashamed of himself for letting an unpopular president who had started an unpopular war, tortured captives, gave tax cuts only to the wealthiest Americans, dodged military service himself, and executed mentally handicapped prisoners, off the mat.

The article goes on to say “Kerry tacitly acknowledged that he failed to connect with enough voters on a personal level,” saying that he was perhaps too “political.”

That’s sure the truth.

Depending on what you mean by “political.” If one means “saying whatever is most expedient at the time” by political, that was Kerry all the way. The way he should have beat Bush would have been to call him a liar every day, much as the Swift Boaters for Bush did for him.

It wouldn’t have been political in the sense that Kerry understands it, but it would have been the refreshing truth. And, it couldn’t have been any less effective that what he did do, which was nothing that anyone will ever remember.

And, what if he was charged with “going negative?” As a very smart man once told me, “It doesn’t do much good to quote the Marquis de Queensbury rules to someone who is kicking you in the balls.”

I’m looking forward to 2008, when the likely Democratic nominee will actually have a pair. I can hear Hillary now: “I kicked Ken Starr’s ass, and I’m coming for you next, Rove.”

–Oliver Tuanis

In an essay in the Times Book Review yesterday, William Deresiewicz discusses language—English, in particular, and the persistent tension generated by people who are inflexible prigs about “Correct English.” He compares this with “Standard English”—the modern effort to standardize usage to help stabilize the language for the long haul, but allowing for creativity and innovation. His main point is that “the genius of English is an oral one.” Thus, written language that deviates from spoken language is, he says, a sign of something rotten. (Stuffy, disingenuous writing he identifies as a symptom of class anxiety. We’re rather inclined just to call it bad writing.)

We couldn’t help applying his idea to what’s on our pillow at the moment. Melville’s Moby-Dick is dense with antique language, neologisms, solecisms, alternate spellings, and just plain overwritten sections that threaten to send a modern reader to the nearest harbor with a Barnes & Noble and a Starbucks. (Extra credit: How would Ahab have felt about Starbucks? No cheating.)

There are no “problems” in Moby-Dick. There are lots of “problematical and paradoxical predicaments ,” if you follow us. (For example, throughout the novel, Melville uses the construction “ye” as a Quaker affectation meaning “you.” As an article, “ye” is a pseudo-archaic misreading of the word “the.” In old and middle English, “the” was sometimes spelled with the letter thorn, a rune that looks a little like a “y” in handwritten texts, but is still pronounced “th.” Not to confuse the matter too much, but a Quaker would morelikely have said “thee” and “thou” for “you.” A construction like “Ye Olde Candy Shoppe” is just wrong. Oops, now we’re being priggish about it.)

Personally, we think this gassiness gives the book some character. It was written before the standardizers came along, and even if its main point is not to twist the language itself, like, say, James Joyce fifty years later, it certainly feels breezy and free and would, if published today, be considered experimental—not unlike Thomas Pynchon’s last novel.

But we didn’t wish to drag you, dear reader, into an academic discussion about whether language is animal or mineral. We had two small issues with Deresiewicz’s essay. First, the idea that our best novelists have been great by virtue of their ability to write like people speak. He says our “literature is greatest when hueing closest to speech (Chaucer, Wordsworth, Dickens, Joyce). It is no accident that our greatest author was a playwright.” Now there is much to disagree with here, not least of which is that we’re pretty sure people didn’t speak like Dickens wrote—other than in Dickens’ dialogue. And even that conceit is problematic(al). Any writer who has tried to transcribe an interview tape knows that if you wrote exactly the way people speak, it would be unreadable.

More important, we can think of dozens of writers of the finest vintage who don’t write the way people speak. Take two American extremes—Faulkner and Hemingway, the poles of exposition. Faulkner hardly wrote a sentence that can be read in one breath, while Hemingway had the opposite approach, atomizing the language, almost as if one sentence were unaware of the next. Today, Cormac McCarthy is a sort of post-modern incarnation of both. His dialogue is Hemingway, his narrative description is Faulkner, and he is probably the finest living writer of the langage. None of these dudes write the way people speak. (Instead, they write the way people hear, and there is a huge difference.)

And that’s our point, really. The spoken language and the written language are two very different things, with their own assets and liabilities. If that were not the case, poetry would cease to exist, and we’d be working in radio.

Why are editors jerks? We have a lot of theories, but first let’s just say that there are some notable exceptions. Mean editors outnumber nice editors about two to one, in our experience. (Men’s and Women’s magazines: five to one. Literary magazines: one to one.)

Editors tend to believe they are overworked. They also tend to feel underappreciated. Generally, they have a highly developed martyr complex—they are both the ingenuity and the industry of their magazine, though very few people seem to notice. They feel beseiged by writers who are desperate to be published, but who turn out to be unreliable helpmeets. No one ever seems able to execute what the editor has in his mind, but he is too harried or too important to go ahead and do it himself. The result is frequently lots of light and heat and exhaust, and a high rate of turnover on the lower levels of the masthead.

This week, James Truman was put to pasture from Conde Nast. The young, British super-editor had a meteoric rise through the ranks of the world’s greatest magazine company to become its editorial director—a mostly ceremonial, no-receipts expense account, executive position that is the wet-dream of magazine professionals everywhere. (The only perch that is higher and requires even less work: Time’s “editors at large.”)

There is no one we can think of who better fits the stereotype of the editor as frivolous, glacial egotist. Truman became famous for his month-long sabbaticals in the Far East, his month-long sabbaticals in upstate New York, his month-long sabbaticals at Conde Nast Europe. (We exaggerate, slghtly.) He was paid a handsome sum to do not much else besides read magazines and read trends, and try to put the two together in order to help the company make more money. He is most notable, probably, for proposing “Lucky” and “Cargo,” Lucky’s male counterpart. He also got to choose the carpet for Conde Nast’s prestigious new office tower in Times Square. It is not clear whether he ever actually contributed anything to journalism—although he took his leave proposing a never-to-be fine arts magazine, so presumably he still has his pride.

Full disclosure: We have had a lot of wonderful professional colleagues and pen-pals over the years. The exceptions to the rule have been so friendly and forthcoming and supportive that we hesitate to say the following. James Truman was an ass. Not a lot of people were willing to say it, because he was one of the most powerful editors in magazines south of Rockefeller Center.

The problem with a meritocracy like ours is that many people achieve a professional peak (Truman’s was editing Details when Details was so good that it caught the attention and investment of S.I. Newhouse), and then they pretty much coast forever afterward, taking up valuable space. This wouldn’t in itself be a problem, except that these folks tend to be jealous of their expense accounts and private drivers and two-hour martini lunches. They earned this! They stick around long after their expiration dates, and suppress the whole organization, up and down the masthead.

Yes, it is true that Truman once dissed us—privately. Our own fatal flaw is a long memory and an unforgiving nature, along with an occasional, tourettic impulse to sabotage our own advancement. That probably puts us among the mean editors, rather than the nice ones. Sorry about that. We believe we can evolve, and one day use our powers for good.

Last night, we convened the monthly round table at Kieran’s. Owing to the lazy holiday period when we had nothing better to do, the deputy editor had reserved the Titanic Room, which was—of course—an unintentional indulgence of present distractions. Much the usual crowd, lively banter, pints of Finnegan (charitable, but not deductible). For calorie counters, the Big Boss had a walleye sandwich, which won the traditional plaudits. To our right was a “buffalo salad”—a plate of greens piled with chicken that was roughly the color of orange Ne-Hi. (We thieved a piece from starving speech-writer DG. Yummy!) Down at the end of the table, we took note of columnist CC, who can normally be counted on to hoarde the french fries and nurse the beer.

We find the main thing to come out of these little to-dos is a persistent hankering for Tullamore Dew, another recently acquired vice (affordable! benign!). The question arose as to which was smoother—Canadian or Irish Whiskey. No one cared to speculate. The wise words of Sandberg, not present, were recited: “You know, I don’t drink that much bourbon anymore.”

Although we have other favorite haunts within stumbling range of the office, Kieran’s is our social headquarters. It is a comfortable and gracious place to take the family out in public. The homage to one of The Rake’s patron saints, the generally inspiring nature of all things Irish, above all the noble art of blarney—Kieran’s fits us like a mitten.

Readers sometimes say they’d like to visit us at the office. Sometimes they just pop in. We recognize them from a mile away, and the party instantly grinds to a halt. Our man at the front desk radios up. “Incoming!” Everyone looks very busy indeed. Boomboxes are shut behind closet doors, open liters of Mountain Dew and Jolt Cola are stowed behind book cases, cigars are extinguished, the dog, cat, and shetland pony are led into the back hall and vigorously shushed, the hang-glider is folded away, the pom-poms and shredded paper are kicked into the corners, shirts are buttoned, the small kiddie pool is shoved into the conference room, the Incredible Hulk boxing mits are returned to the Ad Directors empty filing cabinet, the disco ball is turned off, the mini-trampoline goes into the wine cellar, the throwing knives go back into their velvet lined case, the can-can dancers are shuttled into the copy room, garters are pulled up, skirts smoothed, hair patted, cowlicks flattened, flasks hidden in potted plants, whoopie cushions deflated. The reader is ushered in. Nothing going on here. Just a bunch of mouse-jockeys staring at screens. A scent of Lysol hanging on the air.

No, actually here is a little flash tour of The Rake World Headquarters.

It’s true that the office is maybe not as exciting as it could be, but we’re comfortable and we do have our own brand of fun. But if you want to see us at our razor-witted best, try to sneak into our monthly round table at the pub. Flattery often pays the tab, you know.

Begob, there’s our bus. Good-bye.

Inexplicably, I’ve been obsessed with sailing—right here in the heart of winter in Minnesota. Well, there is a reason, but it’s not what you think… just a new personal obsession, originating here and here. In my ongoing effort to reverse a previous decision never to reread a good book (so many other classics I’ll never get to, for shame!), I picked up Moby-Dick again. For years now, I’ve called it the all-time best American novel. But looking back—and attempting a re-reading— I realize now why it took a graduate course in theology to force me to finish the book on a schedule. All those victorian flourishes and bygone references, they become goads, not impediments, when you are reading a book for an elective credit. It may no longer be the best American novel—probably Twain deserves that honor, I guess.

So, anyway, I’ve just finished reading the chapter on mastheads on the Pequod. Apparently, the word did not come into regular usage until the 1740s—when whaling was beginning to become one of the world’s most vigorous commercial enterprises. There have been masts, and the heads of masts, since boats were first equipped with sails (Jonah was thrown from a sailing ship, you know). But no one thought to stand at the top of one until it became a useful perch from which to spot whales spouting far off in the distance. (Pirates, seeing other merchant mariners as plunderable whales, no doubt manned the masthead too.)

So how did newspapers and other publications come to use the term as it is used today—to let you know who all the fine folks are that are responsible for creating your favorite magazine or journal? Some etymological sources say that the masthead on a ship is where you fly the flag—thus the “flag” (in a newspaper sense) is flown from its masthead. But that is a tautology. Why is the flag in a newspaper called a flag? (We’ve stopped using that word in the magazine world. We call the flag the “logo.” Stubborn newspapermen persist, as ever.) I don’t really have an answer, other than the rough guess that it originated with some broadsheet of shipping news. The first newspaper in America was Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick in Boston, in 1690. There could not have been a newspaper in the American colonies that did not concern itself with shipping and mariners and the like, and most likely on the front page, over the fold.

I like the association, actually. It’s neat to think of every little publication as its own ship, on its own journey, with captain and crew steadfast and loyal at the helm. We may not really compete with the Titanics and Lusitanias and Disney Cruise Ships of the world, but we have our own white whales to chase. Personally, I am not afraid of heights, and I don’t mind being on the lookout for ice bergs and pirates and friendly trade winds. Avast!—The Editor in Cheese

We noticed in the Sunday Times magazine a twenty-five-page advertising supplement promoting the Times’ “Arts & Leisure Weekend.” That would be this coming weekend, and it would encompass hundreds of events across the country (even spreading to Europe). What type of thing are we talking about here? Mostly it is theater and art shows, but also includes—somewhat oddly, we thought—restaurants, spas, health clubs, and “attractions.” It’s fun to browse through the supplement to learn what is going on in your own neck of the woods—but also to learn what other necks of other woods the New York Times seems to occupy throughout this bitterly divided land. The supplement constitutes fully a third of the issue, so it must be a big deal. (Paid for, apparently, by four full-page ads in the pagination by “Weekend” presenters Volkswagen, Mastercard, UBS, and Microsoft.)

Lots of publishing companies are trying this sort of thing, including our own little enterprise here at The Rake. Surely the Times is trying to fight the same weight as the New Yorker, which has quietly cultivated the New Yorker Festival into the gold standard in this particular area of the publishing biz. And the NYer Festival has merely been the locomotive at the front of a spiffy train of similar events and services that complement the book, and no doubt account for the magazine’s celebrated return to profitability last year. The New Yorker’s events and marketing department today is a wide-ranging juggernaut of brand-extension. (We noticed, for example, an advertisement in last week’s issue for a new service at Cartoonbank.com, the New Yorker’s online store, that resells New Yorker comics. The ad was promoting a new feature: Licensing cartoons for corporate reports and presentations. Go, Bob Mankoff, go! When will you return our call?)

So what is the story with every little festival accosting the good readers of America? You kind of have to make allowances for a huge diversity of offerings–from the shite “home tours” to the cerebral book signings to full-blown parties—but basically they are of a piece. The “branded editorial event” is the sort of marketing and “brand-extension” operation that can do two things. One, it “leverages relationships” with potential advertisers. Two, it offers interesting real-life opportunities to readers. Without offering both of these things, though, we feel like these things are a tremendous waste of effort—not to mention a possible distraction from a magazine that might improve its position in the world by merely being a better magazine.

Now, the New Yorker has a delicate and valuable brand that automatically lends any event a certain class and panache, a certain attractive world view. We suppose the New York Times does too, but it is interesting that they brand this event as a particular section of the newspaper. Each section of the paper surely has its own identity and voice, and this is probably a good thing—for the paper, but not necessarily for a festival. We wonder what the “Week in Review Weekend” would look like. Lots of events celebrating short-term memory? A movie marathon of “Memento”?

There’s a lot of cork in this particular wine, but if you’re lucky enough to live in New York, you may drink long and deep. From our point of view, the real value of the “Arts & Leisure Weekend” will be the limited number of Manhattan events that really flex the muscle of the brand. The “Times Talks” series, tacked on as the last page of the supplement, is where New York readers really luck out. We here in the Twin Cities can go to Gold’s Gym any day out of the year, with or without the imprimatur of the New York Times. But if you’re in Manhattan this weekend, you could see Times reporters interviewing Kiefer Sutherland, Billy Joe Armstrong, Chuck Close, Bill Murray, and Amy Tan—and that’s just in the first twenty-four hours. Blue-chip advertisers like Microsoft, Mastercard, and VW probably don’t care about these tiny little first-come-first-seated events at the City University of New York. But without them, they’d be underwriting a whole lot of events that would go off just fine without them or the Times.

And that is ultimately what the print-media festival is about. Coincidentally, it is precisely what print advertising is about: You are an advertiser, and you want good customers. So you associate yourself with a brand that already has them. All that’s left to be sorted out is who pays whom for the privilege. And whether readers actually get something they didn’t already have.—The Editor in Cheese