If I were still teaching journalism, Jeffrey Toobin's profile of Obama's Senate replacement in the New Yorker would be an example of what magazines do best--tell readers what they don't know they want to know until they read it.
In the furor about the blatant Rod Blagojevich, the new senator he appointed has been a stick figure, contradicting himself about pre-appointment contacts and stubbornly refusing calls for his resignation.
Toobin's piece gives him dimension:
"According to the Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson, a longtime student of Chicago politics, Burris 'was a soldier, part of the machine. He’s not a distinguished politician. He’s not a powerful political thinker.' Of course, this description hardly distinguishes Burris from many of his colleagues on Capitol Hill. In his very ordinariness, Burris may represent a triumph of sorts for the civil-rights movement, which was, at least in part, a struggle for black people to be seen as just like everybody else."
In the story of a poor kid from southern Illinois who as a teenager helped integrate a public swimming pool but was no radical reformer to the ambitious pol who couldn't get anywhere until he joined the Daley Machine to the straight-laced attorney general who was apparently willing to let an innocent man die rather stir up a commotion, we get a rounded picture of the man who, as he now goes about his Senate rounds, cheerfully tries to engage his colleagues but for the most part gets averted faces.
"In recent weeks," Toobin concludes, "a consensus seems to be forming that Burris will serve out Obama’s term, but will not run for another in 2010. Burris probably couldn’t win anyway, and he has now attained the goal that appears to mean most to him--adding United States senator to his list of achievements."
Those are on the now-famous mausoleum that has his "firsts" inscribed on granite, a few yards away from the modest marker on the grave of Jesse Owens, who made history in the 1930s as an African-American track star winning four Olympic medals in Hitler's Germany.
Showing posts with label magazine journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magazine journalism. Show all posts
Monday, March 16, 2009
Monday, July 14, 2008
Obama Cover As a Museum Piece
It's one thing to find the New Yorker Obama cover in questionable taste, but the yahoo-ish invective being aimed at the magazine is over the top. However flawed in the eyes of some, the cover is nevertheless in the best tradition of magazine journalism.
Doubters can check out the Museum of Modern Art exhibit showing 32 of the 92 George Lois covers designed for Esquire between 1962 and 1972.
Unlike the current New Yorker, with the Obamas imagined by an illustrator, Lois often had subjects pose for his satirical images--heavyweight champions Muhammed Ali as the Christian martyr St. Sebastian with arrows stuck in him and Sonny Liston, the "meanest man in the world," as Santa Claus, to name two featuring African-Americans.
After the JFK assassination, inspired by the article "Kennedy Without Tears," Lois superimposed a hand with a handkerchief dabbing at the eye of the slain president. "I caught hell from a lot of people," Lois recalls, for being 'insensitive.'"
In 1968, as a takeoff on the five o'clock shadow from the 1960 presidential debate, Lois had a number of hands applying makeup to Richard Nixon, one of them wielding a lipstick, which a campaign honcho complained was a slur on the candidate's masculinity.
Lipstick had previously figured in a cover of a college football player applying it to his face to illustrate a piece on "the gay way to beat the draft."
Equal-opportunity offenders, Lois and editor Harold Hayes showed Vice President Hubert Humphrey as a ventriloquist's dummy on LBJ's lap, Stalin's daughter who defected to the US with her father's mustache drawn above her upper lip and TV MC Ed Sullivan with a Beatles' wig on his head.
The Obama cover is not likely to end up with all those in the MOMA, but it would be heartening to be able to look back at the reaction to it some day as a museum piece reflecting the prejudices and stupidity of our unevolved era.
Doubters can check out the Museum of Modern Art exhibit showing 32 of the 92 George Lois covers designed for Esquire between 1962 and 1972.
Unlike the current New Yorker, with the Obamas imagined by an illustrator, Lois often had subjects pose for his satirical images--heavyweight champions Muhammed Ali as the Christian martyr St. Sebastian with arrows stuck in him and Sonny Liston, the "meanest man in the world," as Santa Claus, to name two featuring African-Americans.
After the JFK assassination, inspired by the article "Kennedy Without Tears," Lois superimposed a hand with a handkerchief dabbing at the eye of the slain president. "I caught hell from a lot of people," Lois recalls, for being 'insensitive.'"
In 1968, as a takeoff on the five o'clock shadow from the 1960 presidential debate, Lois had a number of hands applying makeup to Richard Nixon, one of them wielding a lipstick, which a campaign honcho complained was a slur on the candidate's masculinity.
Lipstick had previously figured in a cover of a college football player applying it to his face to illustrate a piece on "the gay way to beat the draft."
Equal-opportunity offenders, Lois and editor Harold Hayes showed Vice President Hubert Humphrey as a ventriloquist's dummy on LBJ's lap, Stalin's daughter who defected to the US with her father's mustache drawn above her upper lip and TV MC Ed Sullivan with a Beatles' wig on his head.
The Obama cover is not likely to end up with all those in the MOMA, but it would be heartening to be able to look back at the reaction to it some day as a museum piece reflecting the prejudices and stupidity of our unevolved era.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Clinton Hardball
In the sad-but-probably-true department comes a Politico story about how GQ killed a piece about in-fighting in Hillary’s campaign for cover-story access to the former President.
One of the strengths of magazines is, unlike daily hard-news media, freedom of choice about what to cover and when. But along with that comes more dependence on sources for interviews in depth and cover sittings, among other needs.
When I retired two decades ago, the subjects of pieces and their publicity people, especially in show business, were getting very aggressive in bargaining for conditions that journalists should not accept. But in those days, when a major magazine cover story meant more than it does now, it was easier to resist.
But before bloggers and other finger pointers get too huffy about “selling out,” they should check the other side of the ledger. In the past year, GQ interviews have given us, among other news, Chuck Hagel’s unvarnished account of how the Bush Administration ramrodded the 2002 resolution to invade Iraq and the closest to a mea culpa from Colin Powell that we are likely to get.
In the lack-of-virtue-is-its-own-reward department, the Clinton campaign will probably sustain as much damage from the news of its arm-twisting as it might have from the story that never ran. Moreover, the juicy bits will leak out one way or another.
One of the strengths of magazines is, unlike daily hard-news media, freedom of choice about what to cover and when. But along with that comes more dependence on sources for interviews in depth and cover sittings, among other needs.
When I retired two decades ago, the subjects of pieces and their publicity people, especially in show business, were getting very aggressive in bargaining for conditions that journalists should not accept. But in those days, when a major magazine cover story meant more than it does now, it was easier to resist.
But before bloggers and other finger pointers get too huffy about “selling out,” they should check the other side of the ledger. In the past year, GQ interviews have given us, among other news, Chuck Hagel’s unvarnished account of how the Bush Administration ramrodded the 2002 resolution to invade Iraq and the closest to a mea culpa from Colin Powell that we are likely to get.
In the lack-of-virtue-is-its-own-reward department, the Clinton campaign will probably sustain as much damage from the news of its arm-twisting as it might have from the story that never ran. Moreover, the juicy bits will leak out one way or another.
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