Lonely Editors and Famous People
May 1st, 2006Headlines in the newspaper don’t typically make me laugh. But I’ve gotta admit, the Chicago Sun-Times’ article, “Tony’s New Job? That’s Snow Biz!” made me smile. It’s a good piece, and it gets it right on why Snow is a good choice to be the Press Secretary.
Time magazine today let loose its list of a hundred influential Americans, and in several cases allowed guest writers to pen the profile. In some cases, like with Sandra Day O’Connor writing about John Roberts, it’s cute and fits. In others, like the fellating of John McCain by one Ralph Nader, it isn’t quite as fitting. To be pithy: McCain loves war, supports Bush, and is Conservative on everything except his stance on the regulation of automobiles and campaign finance reform. Because of the last two, Nader loves him.
This is akin to a vegetarian Frenchmen calling Hitler a good man because he happened to be nice to his dog and didn’t eat meat.
George Bush’s profile is here, and there’s one on Al Gore here. Tell you the truth, Gore’s piece annoyed me because it focused so much on the fact that George H.W. Bush used to call Gore “Ozone Man” instead of writing about the fact that, oh, Al Gore is doing big things. The article I found myself most looking forward to reading was about Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister of Israel. Alas, his piece is nothing special. Angela Merkel’s is nice enough, and I’m glad to see that she’s successful.
I’ve been critical of Time in the past. My relationship with the magazine soured a couple years ago when they ran a cover of Ann Coulter and also a big piece on her. I was quite annoyed by it because there didn’t seem to be a single reason to have run it and, frankly, the piece seemed to be made to blow smoke up her notoriously short skirt. After thinking it over, I decided that someone on their editorial board had a desire to date the dottering dunderhead. Ever since, the magazine has bothered me, and today, with their list of influential people, they sure made it up to me by counting the Dixie Chicks, all three of them as one person (perhaps they decided to combine their IQs?) in their 100 list. It’s not 2003 anymore, and there’s no reason to have counted them. Aside from, perhaps, a lonely Editor?