Tag: hst

The 2008 campaign was an extended tour of the swamp wherein reside [John McCain’s] various grudges, pretensions, and poisonous ill-will toward anyone who didn’t recognize his Green Room-endowed right to run the country. He sold himself to all the people who’d immolated his well-loved 2000 campaign. He violated the campaign law that bore his name. He said that, in retrospect, he wouldn’t have voted for the half-sensible immigration-reform law he’d proposed. Then, in his biggest bow to the Nervous Hospital that the base of his party had become, he picked an ambitious, half-bright goober from Alaska to run with him, made her a star to people who should not be trusted to cut their own meat, and then, when her innate clownishness had made her (and him) such a laughing stock that the Republican ticket lost in places like Indiana to a black man whose middle name was “Hussein,” he sent his remaining loyalists out to emphasize (anonymously) that his running mate was even dumber than the rest of us imagined.

He then walked back to the Senate and engaged in a prolonged temper tantrum that culminated in his announcement last week that he was so insulted by health-care reform that he would hereafter decline to do his job any more – a refutation of his old “Country First” slogan that was so obviously hilarious that even Harry Reid noticed. Meanwhile, back home, he was being primaried to within an inch of his life anyway by J.D. Hayworth, a former sportscaster who went on to a brief, Abramoff-enriched career as the dimmest bulb in the congressional chandelier. So, here I sit, today, in Arizona, and not eight miles from this computer. John McCain has flown in Sarah Palin to be the featured speaker at a rally that he hopes will push him to victory over a guy whom even all the other congressional dumbasses thought was a box of rocks. She’s endorsing him but, at the rally, HE’S introducing her, and all I can think of is a paraphrase of the late, great Dr. Thompson’s memorable vale to the cursed 1972 campaign:

“Jesus, how low do you have to stoop in this country if you want to almost be president?”

Charles Pierce, writing to The Nation’s Eric Alterman, first channeling the good doctor, then quoting him. Magnificent.

The Smallening

Rolling Stone cutting its size down, going glue-back.

Sad, but true. I must admit that I particularly love this line:

On balance, going to standard size should appeal to advertisers, according to Brenda White, senior vice president for publishing at Starcom USA

Why the fuck should that necessarily be so? Advertisers like eyes. Period. RS is (reportedly) at its highest circulation ever. This is like saying people will just naturally prefer New Coke in the total absence of any evidence to support it. After all, it’s new! Didn’t you see the name? New!

And then there’s this all-too-depressing note:

In the large format, long articles often turn up as daunting expanses of almost uninterrupted type. With the revision, such pages are smaller and less intimidating, and more likely to be broken up with photographs.

Yep, we like our 2nd grade level picktoor books. Don’t skaer me with that there tipe of your’n cause’n I don’t cotton to the readin’ so much.

“We’ve evolved,” Mr. Wenner said. “But the core tradition, the mission, remains the same.”

Indeed, Jann, shorter articles and, preferably, just a picture about Brittney are irreducibly the core tradition of long form music criticism and politically charged articles. Hunter S. Thompson became the face of the magazine mostly because of his brief, 10 word bullet points (and lots of pictures) about how Avril Levigne is totally kewl.

Mark my words: this is officially the middle of the end (the beginning was the demotion and summary deletion of anything approaching serious criticism alongside the transformation of the other content to little more than Maxim-style laddy-mag filler).
Content may come and go, but you generally don’t mess with your fundamental brand image and survive. McDonalds, for instance, may as well adopt a large red “D” logo and a friendly but comically edgy cat-spokesman named Terry. How did New Coke work out? More of the same.

My remarkable, nay oracular insight into the future? Single copy newstand sales (what they claim to be after) will not be positively affected by making the magazine more generic in appearance. I know, I know. Rocket science.