Magazine Rack Captures the Current Zeitgeist

As 2015 began, I browsed the still-robust magazine rack of the Boulder Bookstore for signs of the current Zeitgeist – the intellectual fashion of these times.  As fate would have it, the Zeitgeist experienced a tectonic shift last week with the horrific events in Paris. The violent crimes visited on humanity by four psychopaths who murdered gleefully in the name of Allah will undoubtedly have altered the way we relate to the billboards of popular culture. Our view of the world will have darkened a bit, opening the way for disturbing new strains of nihilism in the arts. Fiction, painting, poetry and theater – if not dance, which remains vibrant  – are all about to descend a few further steps into the chill of night. Let us consider herewith how things were just before this darkness began to eclipse the printed word. A sampling of magazine covers from New Year’s Day, circa 2015:

Harper’s Bazaar: Whatever else we may worry about in 2015, it apparently won’t be the year that Jennifer Aniston finally goes over the hill.  Here’s the evidence.

Elle: Nicole Kidman, on the other hand, may be a worry. This is the first tarted up picture we’ve seen of her where she didn’t actually look like Nicole. And what’s with the platinum hair? A too-gay art director, perhaps, with an axe to grind? You be the judge.

Hipmania: Only in post-liberation America could a magazine hope to entice readers with this teaser: “Search no more: Your genderqueer paper doll is here.” If the magazine world is about to have that silly grin wiped from its face, Hipmania will undoubtedly be among the last to submit.

Esquire: Struggling to find an audience ever since men stopped reading and women gave up on them, “The Millennium at 15” cover features machismo comin’-at-you: Tatum Channing in a business suit, accessorized with a pit bull rather than the more traditional watch fob.

No Kardashians!

Nature: This magazine’s choices for ‘persons of the year’ stand as serious counterpoint to the increasingly irrelevant honor bestowed by Time, which, increasingly desperate to seem relevant, undoubtedly would have had Kim Kardashian on its short list. You may not recognize any of Nature’s choices, but follow the links and you’ll see that frivolousness has yet to overrun the world of science: Andrea Accomazzo, Suzanne Topalian, Radhikan Nagpal, David Spergel, Sheik Umar Khan,  Masaya Takahashi, Sjors Scheres.

Car and Driver: America’s 200 mph Sedans!  Enjoy America’s final burst of speed while it lasts, you hellions. In the interest of saving pedestrian lives, U.S. cities are moving toward a 25 mph speed limit that supposedly will apply even to New York City cabbies.

Conde Nast: The ubiquitous Taylor Swift leads the A-list, of course, followed by a sundry semi-worthies whose agents have evidently been hard at work earning their 10 percent: Jennifer Lopez, Michael Keaton (!), Rosamund Pike, Eddie Redmayne, Jimmy Fallon, Lorde, Angelina Jolie, Bradley Cooper, Reese Witherspoon, Beyonce/JayZ.  Conspicuously absent: Jennifer Lawrence, who may have gotten more exposure last year than she’d hoped for.

Are YOU a Racist?

Mother Jones: “Are you racist?” this month’s cover has the self-righteous daring to ask. Rest assured, we are told: “Science has the answer” (and you’re not going to like it).

Atlantic Monthly: “Why do the best soldiers in the world keep losing?  The tragic decline of the American military”.  This story had grown tiresome since the fall of  Saigon, but it has since been made relevant again by James Fallows, a reporter of no mean gifts.

Forbes: Bravo to Steve Forbes for restoring Michael Milken to the pantheon of American heroes where he belongs! As the “Junk Bond King,” Milken was railroaded by the SEC in 1989 for alleged securities violations but has since repaid his debt to society  a thousandfold.  He is co-founder of the Milken Family Foundation, chairman of the Milken Institute, and founder of medical philanthropies funding research into melanoma, cancer and other life-threatening diseases.  Others celebrated on the New Year’s cover include Walmart heiress Carrie Walton Penner, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and anti-Islamist activist Malala Yousafzai.

Phone-Company Bloodsport

Consumer Reports:  “At last, a phone plan you’ll love”.  Will 2015 will be the year, finally, that competition breaks out among cell phone carriers? If ever bloodletting were to be enjoyed, the spectacle of the phone companies going for each other’s throats promises to be it.

The New Republic:  “Some of my saddest friends are rich,” proclaims the lead story. “Why extreme wealth is bad for everyone.”  Given the magazine’s soft-on-socialism  proclivities, you will already know that the author’s friends are NOT the Clintons.  The author is Michael Lewis, however, and that’s why this story is worth reading.

The Economist: The New Year’s cover was deliberately designed to provoke dark suspicions and to provoke talk about what the Masters of The Universe hold in store for us in 2015. Artistically, the style is reminiscent of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.  To wade into the murky depths of interpretation, click here for ZeroHedge’s scary take.