explaining
illuminating
articulating
pontificating
Last night, I was reading the first issue of Newsweek under its new format. Naturally, I opened up with the weekly essay by the journal's "wise sage", Jon Meacham, who, in his photos, always looks like a .... "wise sage". He gave a tortured description of the new look-not just how it looks, but how they present the news now. Something about "provocative (but not partisan)arguments..."
Nonsense. Skilled writers know how to insert their opinions in writing that is labeled as information-but is really persuasion.
It's the same old Newsweek. There was the usual puff-piece on President Obama along with a puff-piece interview of the "annointed one". There was a mostly positive piece on Nancy Pelosi-curious considering how she has stepped in it lately. In addition, there was a follow-up to the thinly-disguised campaign promo for disgraced former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer by the author-and Spitzer friend, Jonathan Darman, who did the original article on Love Client Number 9. It seems Newsweek took a lot of flak for writing the article, which many readers-including myself-took as a first step to opening the door for a future political run.
Meacham, in his "pearls of wisdom" essay, referred to an article about George Bush as "George W. Bush in exile". Exile? Sure enough, the article portrayed Dubya as a lost soul in Houston reaching out to neighbors' kids and college students for friendship-and generally being rebuffed-not so much out of antipathy, rather for lack of time to bother with a former president.
Meacham and his product are nothing more than a monument to their own arrogance and sense of importance. What he is telling us that we will buy and read more of this publication if they just change the margins here and there. He must think we are all just a bunch of big dopes.
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