My friend Michele and I were on the phone yesterday talking about…well, the only thing there is to talk about.
I did slip in the big news that I’d gotten a haircut but neither she nor I paid any attention to that.
The Conversation. The Conversation always comes down to: “What do we do now?”
While both of us are trusting there will be an insurrection, until we can figure out what shape the insurrection will take, we read. A lot.
For a tad of comic relief, I have been entertained by how brilliant NMP (Not My Pres) is as a tweet salesman. After he disparaged the New York Times (maybe “disparaged” is too classy a word for what he did but I’m still not functioning up to snuff with vocab), Times subscriptions went way up.
And what about Vanity Fair? When a VF reviewer trashed the Trump Grill (or Grille), NMP clumsily trashed Vanity Fair and its editor, Graydon Carter, muttering something about what a failure the magazine was, what a failure Carter was. You know, the usual nonsense.
And subscriptions for Vanity Fair–which has never been a failure–went soaring.
So this is one thing we can do: support the First Amendment because it may be all we’ve got in the coming months, until the insurrection. Don’t wait for NMP to trash tweet: subscribe to good newspapers and magazines.
Of all serious magazines, the New Yorker is the best. Great writing, deep thinking, wisdom elevated to a mountain peak. And the cartoons, sure. They’re still laugh-out-loudly funny.
I have subscribed to the New Yorker for so long, as did my family when I was a kid, I don’t remember when I started reading it. It’s always been there for me.
So I’m pleased to give Michele and the rest of you this, from John Cassidy and the New Yorker. It answer that nagging persistent question: what should we do?
I’m also apologetic: I don’t like the state publishing has found itself in, what with all the free stuff available on the internet, and try not to link to any article I haven’t paid for because so many writers aren’t being paid.
So I hope the New Yorker will forgive a long-time fully paid-up subscriber for delivering this to all of you. Consider it a pitch for the New Yorker: don’t wait until NMP trashes it to subscribe.
There are lots of ways to get involved and retain your sanity.