Are You Listening, Boys?
The Atlantic, America’s oldest continuously published magazine, is also one of its most distinguished, having published everyone from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau to John Updike and Christopher Hitchens. When the magazine was established in 1857, its founding editor, James Russell Lowell, promised that “The Atlantic Monthly will be the organ of no party or clique” and vowed to publish writers of different perspectives. By most counts The Atlantic has succeeded in doing just that. However, as with most establishment, general-interest publications, early contributors were—with some notable exceptions (Edith Wharton, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Emily Dickinson among them)—mostly male….
Ripped Out and Ripped Off
Have you wondered how mediocre films get glowing blurbs for their advertisements? The reality is—a lot of times they didn’t. Here’s an assortment of movie ads found in prominent magazines: a few are relatively faithful renderings of the critics’ opinions that still mislead the moviegoer; others are twisted to make a lukewarm review sound hot; and some include words that the cited critic never wrote at all….
Garden and Gun
Growing up in New York City, it didn’t take me long to notice that many fellow New Yorkers like to visualize our city. With its soaring skyscrapers, Broadway stages and numerous media empires, they see it as the apogee of civilization and the center of the world. On the other hand, they like to view other parts of the country—especially the South—with disdain. New Yorkers’ feelings of superiority and some less than flattering depictions of Southerners in the media have contributed to South-North tensions that are palpable and at times vituperative. This has always made me uncomfortable. And so, when I discovered the recently launched Garden and Gun magazine, I was pleased to have my eyes opened to what an unexplored and underrepresented gem of a region the South can actually be….
