A friend gave me subscriptions to Time and Newsweek this year. I don’t know why he did. My guess is that he didn’t know I’m a regular viewer of PBS and NPR whose unbiased news reporting is the best there is in the United Snakes of America. (BBC-America comes close, but unless you’re tuned into WUIS 91 9 FM between midnight and 4a, you miss most of it.) Until this week, just about everything I read in both publications added up to hardly anything more than came in through my ears.
Time takes the cake this week. If you have not purchased the May 28 issue, get it while you can. There you will find two blisteringly significant perspectives on the Republican presidential campaign debates by Joe Klein and Michael Kinsley, both international icons of news journalism. Over the years Klein has been a frequent guest of Charlie Rose. Kinsley was the first editor of Slate magazine; comes across on TV like an East Coast Dick Cavett with sharper teeth and less ivy league between his bicuspids. I’ve been slapped into epiphanies by Klein’s writing and spoken words, and Kinsley delivers consistent round houses to the solar plexus which, as I shake my head clear after getting up off the matt, leave me a better defensive boxer, glad for my time in the ring with him. Buy the issue!
Newsweek editor John Meacham has his own page. On it he offers his raison detre for what’s inside, and the preview is always a solid, author’s-preface-like intro. Unlike Time’s back page retrospective of Jerry Falwell, Newsweek delivers a fine consideration of the man by Howard Fineman. What Klein and Kinsley are to T, Anna Quindlen is for N’s back page, Her take on Hillary is a gentler take, but as significant as the bare-knuckle pugilists on the competition’s inside pages.
There is a differencs between T and N. Both appear to share elements of People for folks who aren’t always chewing gum at the laundromat, but Newsweek seems to have the edge on the in-depth. I’m glad I read both.
I watched last night’s Charlie Rose during lunch today and discovered something about the voices of Halbeerstam and Schlesinger; somehing I mis-characterised in my previous posting here. I discovered that in the arduous trek back to life after napping for about two hours, I was in no position to assess their voices. Today, during lunch, the subtleties of their excellent intonation came through fine. I can’t blame the difference on the wine. I’ve had no booze since Saturday night. The difference lay in my attitude. I wanted to hear them again and pay attention this time. And I’m glad I did.
Ooo bla dee, ooo blah dah.
Live long . . . . . and proper..
