The Boston Phoenix
August 21 - 28, 1997

[Don't Quote Me]

Pretty vacant

JFK Jr.'s once-promising George is as vapid as his own narcissistic prose. Plus, ethical questions at the Wall Street Journal and mush from Microsoft's wimps.

by Dan Kennedy

The knee-jerk spew of punditry that greeted John Kennedy's boneheaded attack on his cousins having run its course, we are left with this: John-John puts out a magazine that really, really sucks.

So wrapped up have the media been in JFK Jr.'s description of Joe and Michael Kennedy as "poster boys for bad behavior" that they missed the weirdest and most offensive part of his "Editor's Letter" in the September issue of George. In promoting "The 20 Most Fascinating Women in Politics," the magazine's cover package, Kennedy writes, "Our 20 women fascinate, ultimately, because a part of us wants to be like them."

Turn to page 110, and what do you find? Legitimate picks such as Madeleine Albright and Maureen Dowd. Celebrities such as Chelsea Clinton and Anne Heche. Then we have Paula Jones, famous for claiming she was invited to kiss the presidential seal. Jennifer McVeigh, who shared her brother Timothy's far-right paranoia, if not his taste for terrorism. And Patsy Ramsey, still under investigation in connection with the death of her six-year-old daughter, JonBenét.

"Their collective example is the latest rage," the seminude editor-in-chief and co-founder continues. "Each has, in her own way, stretched the boundaries of conventional behavior -- not all of them in soothing ways." No, indeed. Well, except for Chelsea.

Such incoherent nonthinking has come to define George. It's a damn shame, too, because it didn't have to be this way. When George debuted, two years ago, it was widely panned for its flaccid nonpartisanship, its splashy graphics, and its obsession with celebrity. In fact, though, the early George showed considerable promise.

Its generally respectful tone toward public officials was a relief amid the sneering cynicism of most political journalism. The magazine offered substance by explaining policy issues to readers presumably not accustomed to wonkery, and by throwing some genuinely tough pieces into the mix. Especially memorable were takedowns of plagiarizing journalist Ruth Shalit and of former congresswoman Enid Greene, undone by her marriage to a smack-shooting con artist.

With a little bit of tightening up, George could have grown into something special, making politics cool for people who thought they hated politics, much in the same way that Wired transformed geeky propellerheads into the stud-muffins of the '90s.

Instead, George has been laid low by Kennedy's quietly raging ego. Editor Eric Etheridge was fired after just three issues; his replacement, Elizabeth Mitchell, was handed the downsized title of executive editor, and though she's said to be smart and competent, it was instantly clear that John-John was calling the shots.

Then, this past spring, Kennedy forced out his long-time business partner, Michael Berman, who had been president of the magazine. Berman's departure leaves Kennedy's authority complete, with no one Kennedy considers a peer to question his judgment. Thus, the ongoing deterioration of the editorial content must be laid entirely at his exquisitely shod feet.

"Good ideas come up at the story meetings, but somehow they never make it into the magazine," says a well-connected observer. "It's a weird place. John thinks he knows what he's doing, and he doesn't."

The gestalt of the magazine might be described as a desperate attempt to be hip by people who aren't. Some cover lines from recent months are beyond parody: "Why Everyone Fears Katie Couric"; "Top 10 Hunks in History by Arthur Schlesinger Jr." (two Roosevelts, no Kennedys, by the way); and "Dog Gone! A Furry Farewell to Millie Bush." Cover-model choices are similarly lame. Particularly vapid was the July shot of a red-white-and-blue-tongued Jenny McCarthy, whose Andy Warhol clock is surely flashing "14:59."

The September issue may well represent the nadir. Newt Gingrich's thuggish ex-flack, Tony Blankley, who has a monthly column, shares the magic of how he persuaded Newt to get more-frequent haircuts. Tom Dunkel tells us all about Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, who's not just an old fart, but a dead old fart. Anita Hill revisits Those Hearings. And Elizabeth Kaye offers a wide-eyed beatification of Whitewater figure Susan MacDougal that's so long even William Shawn would have cut it in half.

To be fair, Kennedy must be doing something right. Although its circulation and advertising are not yet being tracked by independent auditors, outward indications suggest George is a financial success story. Circulation is reportedly in excess of 400,000, which makes it the biggest political magazine in the country. (National Review is around 250,000; the Nation and the New Republic both check in at about 100,000.) The magazine contains page after page of glossy fashion ads, making it feel more like GQ or Vanity Fair. No doubt Kennedy's corporate backer, Hachette Filipacchi Magazines (Elle, Premiere, Car and Driver), is quite happy.

And Kennedy throws enough stuff against the wall that some of it inevitably sticks. In the current issue, African-American essayist Stanley Crouch provocatively wipes some of the shine off the three famous widows of the civil-rights era: Coretta Scott King, Myrlie Evers-Williams, and the late Betty Shabazz. But such small gems feel like random accidents.

In his May "Editor's Letter," Kennedy begins: "In this, our media issue, we at George do what comes easiest in our business: We talk about ourselves." That's certainly an easy theme for Kennedy and his dreadful, narcissistic magazine. What's ironic is that the Kennedys have an ingrained aversion to introspection, an unfortunate trait that, as Peter Collier and David Horowitz wrote in The Kennedys: An American Drama (Summit Books, 1984), has more than a little to do with the messes they frequently find themselves in.

By contrast, John Kennedy offers at least the appearance of having explored the inner depths of his soul, and of inviting us to peer in and take a look.

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot to see.


A convoluted chain of events handed Dow Jones a long-awaited excuse last week to whack back at its media tormentors. But in using the pages of its flagship, the Wall Street Journal, the company has called its own ethics into question.

Down Jones's stations of the cross proceed from Fortune magazine to the online Drudge Report to Vanity Fair, which beat up on the beleaguered company in its August issue. But it was Vanity Fair's September issue, with its factually shaky piece on New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's love life, that gave Dow Jones the opportunity to return fire.

Journal editor Robert Bartley, in an obsequious August 12 editorial-page column headlined NY TABS TAB VANITY FAIR ON PRESS ETHICS, drew parallels between problems with the Giuliani story and Robert Sam Anson's vicious VF piece on Karen Elliott House, said to be the "ferociously ambitious" power behind the troubled throne of her husband, Dow Jones CEO Peter Kann.

"In fact," Bartley writes, "Ms. House is not only a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist but, even more impressive, a stellar business executive. . . . More generally, the print side of Dow Jones has never been healthier. As anyone following the company knows, Dow Jones has launched a vigorous response to recent problems at Dow Jones Markets, which sells real-time information to the financial community. Ms. House does not have any role in this business, and never has." And what a good corporate soldier is Bartley.

Some background: Dow Jones's woes were exposed to the public last February 3, when Fortune's Joseph Nocera -- in a lengthy, detailed piece titled "Heard on the Street" -- reported that Elisabeth Goth, a younger member of the ruling Bancroft family, was attempting to force a major shake-up on the board in response to the company's anemic stock price. The company's problems were thought to result mainly from its flagging Telerate division (now Dow Jones Markets), which had lost its technological edge to the ubiquitous Bloomberg computer terminals.

Nocera speculated that a corporate titan such as Rupert Murdoch might buy Dow Jones (not easily done, since the Bancrofts have made the company virtually takeover-proof, much as the New York Times Company and the Washington Post Company have), sell off Telerate, and turn a tidy profit. (Full disclosure: immediately after reading the Fortune article, I ran out and bought some Dow Jones stock.)

Instead, the company drew in the wagons. It poured more money into Telerate, and announced a partnership with Microsoft. (Characteristically, just before the announcement was made, Matt Drudge "reported" that Bill Gates was buying the Journal.) It easily repelled Goth's challenge at the April annual meeting. It even refused to let Fortune advertise in the Journal.

Until now, though, Dow Jones had remained fairly silent. Bartley's column suggests why that was the best strategy. Even if his defense is entirely true, this is press-release journalism, a company official explaining why all is right with his company. But instead of taking the usual route (that is, from fax machine to the recycling bin), this press release occupied a considerable chunk of some of the most widely read space in newspapering.

Business problems aside, Dow Jones has a well-deserved reputation as one of the great publishing companies, as devoted to excellence as it is to making money. Bartley's column was an ugly departure from that tradition.


Ever since Gennifer Flowers's alleged affair with Bill Clinton was revealed in 1992 by the Globe, a supermarket tabloid, a well-established ritual has developed by which sleaze rises into the mainstream media: the tabs break the story, and the quality press reports it by citing the tabs as the source, often accompanying the reports with hypocritically moralistic tut-tutting about the tabloids' low standards.

So it was quite a surprise when the web-zine Slate (http://www.slate.com) recently postponed plans to run a weekly digest on the latest tabloid trash. "That feature has been delayed while our lawyers ponder the risks of reporting what has been reported in the tabs," editor Michael Kinsley wrote puckishly.

Though it's tempting to laugh, the lack of nerve on the part of Slate's publisher, Microsoft, is disturbing. The right to comment on what other media are doing is a well-established part of First Amendment law; it's essential to a media critic.

Just last week in this space, I criticized the aforementioned Drudge Report for passing along unsubstantiated -- and apparently untrue -- rumors that White House aide Sidney Blumenthal is a wife-beater. Blumenthal, through his lawyer, says he's going to sue the author, Matt Drudge. If I were working for Slate, would Microsoft's barristers have killed my column for fear that Blumenthal would sue me, too?

Microsoft, through ventures such as Slate, MSNBC, and its Sidewalk entertainment guides on the Web, is attempting to become a major media force. I hope that Kinsley's placid public exterior masks a sense of outrage, and that he's now trying to educate his corporate masters about the importance of standing up for their -- and our -- freedom of speech.


Dan Kennedy's work can be accessed from his Web site: http://www1.shore.net/~dkennedy/


Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com


Articles from July 24, 1997 & before can be accessed here


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