It's Time For Newsweek To Fade Away

In case you haven't heard, Newsweek Magazine is being sold off by the Washington Post, although the Post may have trouble finding a buyer, since it's a recession and large numbers of people aren't going around trying to lose money... and Newsweek is losing lots and lots of money.  Over at Ace of Spades, Ace has written a brilliant breakdown of why Newsweek has failed.  This is just an excerpt, but it really is worth reading the whole thing...

Newsweek, I always thought, was a political magazine for people who wanted to pretend they read politics.


Newsweek's most famous innovation is the oft-parodied "conventional wisdom watch," which is perfectly emblamatic, because, like that little colored box of up and down arrows, Newsweek itself was simplistic, fluffy, light-on-substance and uncritically reflective of standard-issue first-impulse soft-liberal conventional wisdom.


It wasn't real politics. It certainly wasn't serious-minded, or wonkish, or challenging, or inventive, or daring, or contrarian.


Newsweek, in short, was the "news" magazine you read (or looked at the pictures of, at least) when you were at the chriopractor's waiting to have your lumbar realigned and someone else had snagged the Star with Jessica Simpson's boobs on the cover.


People have changed their habits. People are doing less pretense than they used to. And when I say that, I don't mean that's all a good thing. Pretense has its uses.


...At some point in the last thirty years, I think, people's lives became too busy to bother with keeping up with stuff they weren't really enjoying -- they had enough homework from actual work or raising their kids to easily take on non-required homework in the form of keeping up with news or culture. Or it was due to something else. Either way, it happened.


And the internet threw gasoline on to that fire, because it gave people a way to seek out only the stuff they really cared about. Our culture became less "push" (stuff pushed on you by the sometimes well-meaning guardians of the conventional cultural establishment) and much more "pull" (you decide yourself today that you don't feel like reading a novel, but watching an old episode of Greatest American Hero on Hulu).


...At any rate -- to be brief (ahem) -- I think that is what has doomed Newsweek. Not really its liberalism, or its lying about it.


But the simple fact that Newsweek always existed for people who didn't like or care about politics, but simply wanted to make some token gesture of being a well-informed citizen concerned about such matters. It was never read by people who seriously cared about these matters, but in fact played almost exclusively to those who precisely did not care.


...Rather than faking an interest in ugly fake celebrities, why not indulge in your real interest in pretty real celebrities? Why not just read Perez Hilton and stop pretending to care about the ugly gray people depicted in Newsweek?


And that's what I think is going on. We're seeing less and less gestural media, and less and less general-interest media, in favor of media that is specifically targeted to a much smaller audience's precise preferences.


Everyone feels less and less obligated to pretend we're interested in stuff we're actually not interested in. We're becoming more atomistic and less influenced by a common culture. We're less interested in "keeping up" with such things.


And Newsweek was a manner of "keeping up" with politics for someone who would rather be reading celebrity gossip.


Newsweek's chief competitor wasn't The Economist.


Newsweek's chief competitor was actually People Magazine.


People won.

As to why Newsweek failed (assuming it does)... I'm reminded of the scene in Major League where Wild Thing gives up a grand slam to Clu Haywood early in the movie, and the fans in the bleachers start arguing over whether the ball initially looked "too high" to leave the park. As three of them argue about the trajectory, one shuts up the argument with a simple statement: "Who gives a f---? It's gone."

When Newsweek's gone, that quote will probably sum it up nicely.

We Finally Have Proof: All New York Baseball Fans Are Disturbed

Craig Calcaterra points out the most interesting results of a Wall Street Journal poll of New Yorkers conducted to determine the differences between Mets fans and aYankees fans.  Basically, Mets fans drink more beer, own more guns, listen to more sports radio, gamble more, and are slightly more likely to have stopped education after high school.  Based on the results, I can conclude the following:

1.  Mets fans are alcoholics and more likely to need to blow off steam using firearms.  No shock there.

2.  Yankees fans are mostly wine-cooler sipping nouveau riche poseurs with superiority complexes.

Hey, it's all science.

Today's Random Disturbing Thought

I'm at home hanging out with my daughter today, and was playing Candyland with her just before she went down for a nap.  As we're playing, my daughter draws the card with an ice cream cone and Princess Frostine on it.  This is a most certainly a good thing, since it means the game will end sometime before June (see here for a detailed description of how much of a nightmare the game can be due to its length).  But I happened to take a close look at the card for the first time, and came to the disturbing conclusion that Princess Frostine would probably end up getting arrested for solicitation in many parts of America.

Don't Tase Me, Bro

Since I feel obligated to comment on the tasing of the 17 year old idiot who rushed the field at the Phillies game earlier this week... let's just say I don't think the Taser was necessary, but I'm not shedding tears over it.  In the meantime, the Phillies are 3-0 since the Taser was used.  So maybe I am in favor it.

Speechless

I'm not even sure how to classify this on the stupidity scale -- the cops leaked the address of the Times Square bomber to the media, allowing them to show up at the stakeout of the suspect's house, which tipped him off and almost allowed him to escape.  Someone needs to be fired.

Reasons I Don't Live In California, Part 745

I know public school administrators have a tough job.  But how stupid do you have to be to tell students that they can't wear t-shirts that feature the American flag because it's Cinco de Mayo?  Apparently, the American flag is incendiary on Cinco de Mayo.  It would make more sense if the French flag was a problem... speaking of which, why is it important to celebrate a victory over the French army?  The Germans would need to take a holiday once a week if they tried to celebrate every win over the French.  And don't get me started on the idiotic suggestion that the students turn their shirts inside out.

The President Fears Teabagging

Stay classy, Mr. President...

Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations.


In Jonathan Alter’s “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” President Obama is quoted in an interview saying that the unanimous vote of House Republicans vote against the stimulus bills “set the tenor for the whole year … That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans.”


Tea Party activists loath the term “tea baggers,” which has emerged in liberal media outlets and elsewhere as a method of mocking the activists and their concerns.

I wonder if President would approve if the right regularly started referring to left-wing groups by using the term "douchebags." Allahpundit has a pretty good point about this...

How many prominent Democrats, I wonder, have yet to use “teabagger” in one form or another? Kerry and Schumer both used it in fundraising e-mails to appeal to the lefty base before the Massachusetts special election, and we’re bound to hear it again as the rhetoric ratchets way down before the midterms. Can it be that … Joe Biden is the tactful elder statesman on the left these days?

It's more likely Biden's advisors are trying to keep him from saying something about it, because he'd be just as likely to say something like, "C'mon, you teabaggers! I'm begging you -- teabag me!"

And in yet another shock, Robert Gibbs doesn't want to discuss the use of the term with the President. No balls, I guess.

Ummmm.... Bacon

Apparently, there is nothing bacon can't do.  Although I'd be more impressed if this was a working AT-AT that shot bacon grease.

Not Spilling Much Ink Over This Story

You know, if the Interior Administration under Bush had exempted BP from an environmental impact analysis on its drilling operation in he Gulf of Mexico prior to the oil spill, we'd hear a lot about how government doesn't work well under conservatives because they don't believe in government.  Maybe this is yet another signal that the real problem is that government regulators can't always do their jobs well, in part because there's too much to do, and in part because bureaucracy is pretty inefficient.

Saturday Night In Times Square

I'm late to the party on the Times Square bomber, but it's nice to see the left-wing dishrag refer to him as simply a "suburban father"...

He had obtained citizenship through marriage to a woman who was born in Colorado — the authorities say she and their two young children are still in Pakistan, where they believe he was trained in making bombs last year in Waziristan, a tribal area that is a haven for militants.


On Saturday, the authorities said, Mr. Shahzad drove a Nissan Pathfinder packed with explosives and detonators, leaving it in Times Square.


About 7 p.m., as a robot from the bomb squad was being summoned to the S.U.V., Mr. Shahzad called his landlord from the train to Connecticut and said he had lost his keys; in a criminal complaint filed on Tuesday, the authorities said the keys had been locked inside the Pathfinder.


The landlord met him at the apartment that night to let him in. “He looked nervous,” said the landlord, Stanislaw Chomiak, who had rented him a two-bedroom apartment in Bridgeport since Feb. 15. “But I thought, of course he’s nervous, he just lost his keys.”


In nearly a dozen years in this country, Mr. Shahzad had gone to school, held steady jobs, bought and sold real estate, and kept his immigration status in good order, giving no sign to those he interacted with that he had connections to terrorists in Pakistan. Nor was there any indication that he would try to wreak havoc in one of the world’s most crowded places, Times Square.


His neighbors in Connecticut said the things neighbors always say about someone who suddenly turns up in the headlines — he was quiet, he was polite, he went jogging late at night. Like so many others, he lost a house to foreclosure — a real estate broker who helped him buy the house, in Shelton, Conn., in 2004 remembered that Mr. Shahzad did not like President George W. Bush or the Iraq war.

Hell, based on the last point, he could have qualified for the Times editorial board. But give the Times credit -- at least they're not acting like MSNBC, where one of their anchors was actively disappointed that Shahzad turned out not to be a Tea Party member. What's really ironic is that she cites the case of the Hutaree militia in Michigan, just days before the members of said militia were released on bond by the judge. At times, I'm wondering if the mainstream media has finally given up the false premise that they're objective.

Meanwhile, it appears to be more and more clear that Shahzad was indeed trained by the Taliban. Kudos to our guys for capturing him, even if he almost escaped by suddenly evading surveillance and due to a snafu involving the watch list. These investugations aren't perfect, but this one was done rapidly and concluded with the capture of the bad guy without loss of life. That's pretty good. Then again, I might feel better about all this if Janet Napolitano seemed competent, which doesn't appear to be the case. Of course, in this Administration, she probably qualifies as a superstar because she actually pays her taxes.

Anyone Else Find This Creepy?

This is flat-out one of the more chilling government commercials I've ever seen.



(hat tip: Hit and Run) Seriously, they deserve bonus points for the eerie disembodied female computer voice doing the narration. The entire commercial did a great job of convincing me that I shouldn't move abck to PA.

Oh, wait, that wasn't their goal?