Part two...

Over the course of many emails, the conversation about Simpsons Godhead George Meyer morphed a bit, but in an interesting way. Recalling that what started this all was a profile of Meyer in The New Yorker, Jon Schwarz wrote:



“I agree with Mike about George Meyer. [Thanks, Jon!--MG] It's not that we want to condemn him -- it's just interesting that someone so smart would talk about hating advertising so much that he considers it 'a global force of destruction,' yet not have an immediate follow up comment about how he reconciles working in network television. If advertising's a force of destruction, well, Meyer's profiting enormously from that destruction. There's no other way to put it. It's like someone who spends all their lives trying to get people to look at billboards saying that he loathes billboards. So it's kind of fascinating that he didn't go into it further.



But there's even more to it than that. Personally (here I think I'd part ways with Mike) I find it even more interesting that the guy who wrote the article didn't immediately follow up on this with Meyer when Meyer didn't himself. And it's more interesting still to me that whoever edited it didn't flag that section and send the author back to delve into it more deeply.”



You're right, Jon--I do find the complex rationales of George Meyer the person, more interesting than an editing snafu at The New Yorker, but that's because I'm cynical about the magazine business in general, and that magazine in particular.



For his part, Ed very charitably replied:

“I assume they're oversights. I certainly hope they aren't evidence of a secret New Yorker agenda, or something spooky like that. In the case of the Meyer Profile, maybe the writer, David Owen, who is a good friend of his subject -- he was Meyer's roommate at Harvard and was a contributor to [Meyer's short-lived and extremely influential magazine] Army Man -- was afraid of embarrassing Meyer...Maybe one of you can get Owen on the horn and ask him.”



Ah, Ed, you overestimate my Rolodex. David Owen can buy and sell nobodies like me. I’ve spoken with him—not about this—and while he was very nice, he’d have to be positively Christ-like not to get pissed at me for bugging him about it. It's only comedy. But as to The New Yorker’s agenda, Jon replied:



“Well, there's no SECRET New Yorker agenda. Instead, there's a non-secret NYer agenda -- they're trying to make money, and the people who work there are trying to keep on the good side of Si Newhouse. Think of it this way: the New Yorker has customers, and it has a product. Because of the way they price subscriptions (way, way, way below the cost of producing the magazine) their main customers are their advertisers, and their main product is their readers. And like any business, they tend not to do things that will piss off their largest customers. One thing advertisers don't really love is indepth discussions of whether or not advertising is a global force of destruction and the morality of making your living off it, so you tend not to find too much of that in the NYer. Writers and editors also tend not to do things that might make their billionaire boss angry. Is Newhouse friends with fellow billionaire Warren Buffet? Well, if I'm an editor or writer and I'm not 100%, completely sure, I probably won't run an article with nasty cracks about Buffet. Much better to be safe than sorry. This agenda plays itself out in subtle ways, ways that I suspect aren't always conscious...”



Yes (MG again), and that's why we as readers can't let institutions, even good ones like The New Yorker--which even in my most anti-Shouts and Murmurs rages, I consider to be vastly more positive than negative--rest on their laurels. Please, no more profiles of Thurber, or discussions of John O'Hara by John Updike. Self-criticism is useful, self-praise is not, but self-absorption is the most useless thing of all.



Continuing this thought in another email, Jon wrote: “I know Ian Frazier a little bit. Right after I'd gotten out of college I had a conversation with him where he said (in reference to the NYer specifically) 'institutions will always, always fail you.' He said the only institution that he really liked was the New York Public Library.”



I’d just like to interject that I think Ian Frazier is one hell of a writer, and a real mensch. Buy his books and send him positive mental energies. It's worth also noting that he said this to Jon during the Tina Brown regime, during which he was somewhat estranged from the magazine. Anyway, Jon continued, “At the time I didn't really understand what he meant. In fact, it sort of upset me. After all, I wanted to be scooped up by these institutions.



But now I think Ian Frazier was completely right. It's just the nature of institutions, whether they're magazines or countries. You're very lucky to get one generation of great people, and even luckier to get two.



Look at the New Yorker:

1st generation: Harold Ross (I highly recommend the biography Genius in Disguise if

you haven't read it.)

2nd generation: William Shawn

Later generation: Tina Brown



Or America:

1st generation: Thomas Jefferson

2nd generation: James Madison

Later generation: George W. Bush



That's why, when you meet the Buddha, you must kill him. And then cook

and eat his entrails."



And on that note, I'm going to lunch.