Where Have the Magazines Gone?

By ROB PATTERSON

It may be ironic of me to tout the notion that follows at a time when too many publications are struggling to survive and closing shop. But hey – I’ve always enjoyed going against the grain and, especially these days, resisting current trends, even when it finds me trying to yell into a gale force wind.

But there is a great big gaping hole (among a number of others) in the publications landscape that the times we live in just beg to fill. Because the tenor of these times are ripe for a smart, scrappy and snarky humor magazine (or whatever passes for magazines these days). Whether simply online or also in print – a current two-stage model I enjoy but have no idea if in the long run if it’s viable – there’s multiple people and events every damn day that provide substantive fuel for mockery, lampooning, and being set-up as punchlines for jokes and targets for absurdist outrage.

We live in an era when the acronym WTF? crops up many times a day, at least in my consciousness. in response to real-life inanities, dumbf***ery and stuff that just makes any rational, intelligent and informed adult want to scream and start yanking big tufts of hair in frustration due to a plague of irksome cultural weeds. In such cases, laughter is the best medicine and strongest ameliorative.

The Onion was supposed to play that role and started somewhat (and only occasionally) strong and then lost the plot. Maybe its attempt to widen and expand its brand with “The A.V. Club” hollowed out its core mission, which, after all, was a one-trick pony with its fake news articles. Its brew was also never quite strong enough to toss sufficient caustic humor at the zaniness of modern life.

Oh, for the early-to-mid 1970s days of the National Lampoon, when it rode the cultural waves like a skillful and sometimes even showboating surfer. (Watch the documentary “Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon” to revisit its glory days and understand why and how its brilliance faded.) Or we can reach back a decade or so further to when Mad magazine made a mockery of much of life as it was when I was a lad, including politics.

If someone were generous – and I’d like to think savvy – enough to offer me unlimited resources (as compared to the need) to create a cutting-edge humor publication keyed into the current zeitgeist, I’d use two periodicals as models and inspiration.

First would be Spy magazine in its late 1980s genius as a chronicle of the pretensions and silliness to be found in the Manhattan life and consciousness back then. It certainly takes the prize as the first public forum to grok how wretched and classless Donald Trump is, coining the phrase “short-fingered vulgarian” as the regular descriptor preceding his name. It was the source fuel for his seething resentment against the New York elites and intellectuals who regarded him as a desperate, tacky and clueless arriviste from the outer boroughs. Alas, the nation and democracy has suffered mightily since the Trumpster entered politics as a result of his home city rejection. But maybe if more people had paid attention to how Spy regarded Trump as a ripe target for joking ridicule, we might not be in such dire straits as the nation currently faces …

The other would be England’s “Private Eye,” which at its best has combined bone-dry yet cutting British mockery with excellent and pointed journalism. I fell in love with it in an early ‘80s stay at a friend’s Central London flat where a pile of them resided right next to the toilet in (what they call) the loo.

Both mags parceled out their dead-on mockery and jesting in a variety of ways and means that summed up into potent ammunition against the ever-greater rise of feckless stupidity. Sure, we have talk show hosts, weekday series like “The Daily Show” and “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” plus John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight.” But more laughs about how bad and even horrid things are here in today’s America will help us all find some relief and well as the inspiration and fortitude to carry on the battle and maybe, we hope, win the war.

Populist Picks

TV Documentary: “American Experience; 1964” – It qualifies as a pivotal year in our nation’s history: The birth of the contemporary conservative movement within the efforts to nominate Barry Goldwater as the Republican presidential candidate; the murder of three voter rights activists in Mississippi during what was called the Freedom Summer and riots in the African-American ghettos in major cities; the arrival of The Beatles in America; the ascension of boxer Cassius Clay to the Heavyweight Championship and his announcement of his conversion to Islam and name change to Muhammad Ali, to cite some. This writer, who was 10 years old that year, marvels at how much our lives and society have changed and despairs at how some issues remain dangerously entrenched.

TV Series: “We Own This Town” – David Simon, creator of “The Wire,” perhaps TV’s best series ever, returns to his hometown of Baltimore (with masterful Washington, D.C., crime novelist George Pelecanos as co-creator) to tell a real-life story of police corruption. From the first episode it’s obvious this is superior TV drama. More on the show likely to follow in this space.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2022

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