Of Magazines and Me

By M. Stephanie Murray

I miss Might magazine already. I came to it late and before I could even get to know it properly, it's gone, a victim of the sheer insipidness of society. A magazine of smart-ass social satire and commentary, Might was gleefully irreverent in it's mocking of everything and everyone. In an on-line bulletin board discussing the magazine, someone mentioned that they had been offended by a comment that apparently dissed Peruvians; someone else observed that in the same issue Aleutians, Senegalese, Bosnians, A mericans and a host of other nationalities had been similarly targeted. Might was an equal-opportunity offender, which is a brilliant reaction to hypersensitivity.

So now we're left with Spy as the remaining mass-market beacon of satire. Pretty sad. Spy has devolved into listless hatefulness, lacking even the joy necessary to mock effectively. A tradition that started with Chaucer, was refined by Pope and Swift, and extended (I'm only reaching slightly here) to Might is now sucked dry of its essential element: compassion. Satire is not nice, but without a hint of true affection for humanity in general (if not people in particular) is just venomous didacticism. Which is where Spy is currently headed. Where Might reveled in snarky, smart-ass satire, Spy just whines.

Speaking of ass, one of my other regular reads, Entertainment Weekly, seems to have a problem with it. Apparently EW's editorial policy is to dash out offensive words (e.g. f-, b--) making one of their racier issues read like an especially prurient game o f hangman. "Ass" is one of the taboo words, even when used in the above mentioned version. Yet this week's issue contains "tits" in its entirety, an editorial decision I have yet to make sense of. As far as I can tell (having conducted an informal poll am ongst my nearest and dearest) "tits" is more offensive than "ass."

EW is, though, in the midst of some restructuring, judging by the new layout and content. Where there once were reviews of movies, books, television shows, albums, what have you, there are suddenly personal-opinion commentaries. The worst part is the weir d "What to Watch" TV section, which looks like a weed-whacker job on a TV Guide. It's now even a listing of what the editors consider good shows; it's an absolutely random collection, ranging from the A&E documentary on Prohibition to the Drew Barrymore c lassic "Poison Ivy" on TBS. Even worse are the listings of upcoming guests for 18,000 (O.K., five) talk shows, including re-runs of Rosie O'Donnell. Although it's good to know that Carl Perkins will be on Conan, I can find that out with a buck-fifty for t he Star.

Maybe I'm just too comfortable with the status quo, but I get really agitated when magazines start futzing with their layout. I get very suspicious that they're up to no good. Take Movieline, one of the few remaining entertainment magazines that generally don't kiss up. They've got a new layout that utilizes spaces, as in lots of white space around the articles. This irritates me. I pay my hard-earned (you think this slaving over a keyboard is easy?) $2.50 for a rag and I expect to find all available spac e filled with words. Call it the New Yorker school of thought, but to my mind a dense magazine is a good magazine. Could be that I grew up reading all of my grandmother's back issues of Reader's Digest, which filled the pages up to the margin with really, really small print. (I'm also of the school of thought that the price of clothing should be somehow related to the total fabric content of the garment. A skirt should cost less than pants, a tank top less than a long-sleeved shirt, and women's underwear should be the cheapest thing you can buy.) I'm even OK with pages upon pages of ads, since they increase the overall bulk of the magazine and make me feel like there's plenty of stuff there. I got a Rolling Stone a couple of weeks ago that clocked in at u nder a hundred pages; they could have thrown in an extra twenty pages of their copy boy's journal and I would have been appeased. As it is, I'm wondering why I paid for something that weighed less than the Tucson Weekly, which is free.

Here's the sad thing about this whole little rant. I will continue to buy and to read. Six magazines arrived at my home in the past two days and they will all be stupid and I will read them all. Hell, I even buy Cosmo, which is the literary equivalent of those horrible Sun Chips that I find whenever I go to my mom's house: I start eating them, and even as I'm horrified and disgusted with their taste and texture, wondering exactly what type of recycled paper waste they're composed of, I can't stop.

M. Stephanie Murray is a junior majoring in English literature