"The
Atlantic" and "Harper's" are both iconic magazines that are responsible
for promoting the careers of many prominent writers. I have been reading
them for years. They also both have a profile of John Kerry in their
December issue. David Rohde did a individualist profile of Kerry,
lauding him as an "activist" diplomat shaking up the stuffy old foreign
policy establishment in "The Atlantic." In "Harper's,"
Andrew Cockburn rejects this sort on analysis completely and challenges
the idea that there is such a thing as foreign policy at all. Kerry
comes off as a power hungry but powerless hack who owes his position to
back room politics much more than shrewd determination. Cockburn was
actually communicating original thoughts and I turned each page with a
new morsel of knowledge. Rohde's fluff would have fit nicely after a top
ten vacation spot list on Delta's in-flight magazine. Reading the whole
thing felt like choking down sugarless oatmeal. With a few notable
exceptions, this is a good representation of the current trajectory of
each magazine.
"Revenge of the Squares"?
Brandishing the values of "yesteryears," some Mayberryish place that exists only in conservatives' minds, North Dakota is the nation's economic hot spot. Although it ironically has become hip to write little fluff pieces on how refreshing it is North Dakota, being so neglected by America's elite, has managed to stave off Capitalism's latest crisis, a few contextual points are in order.
First off, the oil. North Dakota has oil. Now this point is almost certainly mentioned by the glorymongerers, as it is in the above piece, but this key fact has little to do with culture and lots to do with luck and new technology that allows access to oil that was once unprofitable to be refined. A quick look through history tells us oil is, at most, a finite mixed blessing. Oil, unlike the infamous North Dakota weather, tends to keep the "riff-raff" in.
Next, we have the State bank. North Dakota is the only state in the…
Brandishing the values of "yesteryears," some Mayberryish place that exists only in conservatives' minds, North Dakota is the nation's economic hot spot. Although it ironically has become hip to write little fluff pieces on how refreshing it is North Dakota, being so neglected by America's elite, has managed to stave off Capitalism's latest crisis, a few contextual points are in order.
First off, the oil. North Dakota has oil. Now this point is almost certainly mentioned by the glorymongerers, as it is in the above piece, but this key fact has little to do with culture and lots to do with luck and new technology that allows access to oil that was once unprofitable to be refined. A quick look through history tells us oil is, at most, a finite mixed blessing. Oil, unlike the infamous North Dakota weather, tends to keep the "riff-raff" in.
Next, we have the State bank. North Dakota is the only state in the…
Comments