MAGAZINE REVIEWS
Slouching towards the millennium
by Seth Rogovoy(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Nov. 1, 1997)by Seth Rogovoy -- As sure as the calendar page turns each year, so do we grow one step closer to the end of the century. And as we find ourselves creeping up upon the year 2000, we can increasingly expect to read all kinds of meditations on the meaning of the millennium.
The New Yorker
The thick, double-dated (Oct. 20 and 27) "Next" issue of the New Yorker wholly dedicates itself to ascertaining the shape of things to come.In "Clinton's Afterlife," Mimi Swartz asks the question on everyone's mind these days: what will Bill Clinton do when he is as old as Mick Jagger? Assuming he's not going to hit the road with his saxophone -- hey, there's an idea! -- what does life hold in store for Clinton when, at age 54, he is constitutionally barred from calling 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. his home.
Numerous possibilities are tossed about: heading up a think tank or a federal commission, becoming Secretary-General of the United Nations, hitting the lecture circuit, running a university or a movie studio. The best idea, however, is the John Quincy Adams model: carving out a post-Presidential career as a member of Congress.
A profile of the university of the future comes in the shape of a contemporary institution, the University of Phoenix, a private school with no campus, no tenured faculty, no library and 40,000 students. According to James Traub's "Drive-Thru U.," the university is owned by a corporation whose shares are traded on the NASDAQ exchange and run by a former manager at the Price Waterhouse accounting firm who says, apparently without irony, "[O]ur students don't really want the education. They want what the education provides for them....They want it to do something for them."
Do you think of America's colleges as the last bastion of our rarified intellectual culture? Think again. Writes Traub, "Higher education in America is now a vast industry that accomodates two- thirds of America's high-school graduates....Most of the nation's thirty-seven hundred colleges see themselves as market-driven institutions trying to satisfy customer demand."
Other dystopic portraits of our future include the burgeoning health-care crisis caused by a rising tide of Alzheimer's patients, the campaign to introduce shaming punishments into the criminal justice system, the war against the independent artist and the commercialization of the domestic front.
Harper's Magazine
"It's no great exaggeration to say that dolphin-safe tuna flows directly from the barrel of a Canon, that without Kodak there'd be no Endangered Species Act," writes natural philosopher Bill McKibben in "Curbing Nature's Paparazzi" in the November issue of Harper's.But McKibben's essay doesn't celebrate wildlife photography. Rather, it indicts it for harassing its subjects and misleading its audience along the way toward providing pictures of scenes that the average person would never stumble across in hours spent in the wild.
McKibben calls on the editors and producers of wildlife magazines and programs to halt the wasteful, injurious practices of their field. He suggests they pool their resources and draw upon the vast, existing base of images for their commercial and educational purposes.
McKibben acknowledges, however, the unlikelihood of this sort of anti-consumerist, self-restraint ever becoming policy. Ultimately, he suggests, our problem is in letting commercial success in the marketplace define what is "right" or desired, instead of "thinking things through as a culture." I'd argue that's because there is no culture -- other than what can be found on the shelves of Wal-Mart or on the TV screen.
Mother Jones
It's probably just a coincidence but I laughed when I saw ads for new albums by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen in the December issue of Mother Jones, a special issue devoted to "spirituality as the new religion," because Dylan and Cohen are probably two of the most spiritually-oriented singer-songwriters in popular music.In any case, a series of articles, including an interview with the Dalai Lama, a look at the strains that temporality exert on Catholic clergy, a profile of new-age prophetess Marianne Williamson and a survey of how scientists reconcile religion with science, offers a provocative and accessible discussion of a topic too often consigned to the margins of our culture.
In an editor's note, explaining why the typically left-leaning political journal explores the spirit in this issue, Jeffrey Klein writes, "Spirituality, if approached with integrity and intelligence, is an effective force for public good."
Indeed, if the left cedes all talk of spiritually-based morality to the religious right, all that remains is the goddess of the marketplace, which as we have seen, is a prescription for spiritual, economic, cultural and environmental doom.
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Duelling covers: Both Rolling Stone and Spin magazines salute women rockers this month, the former's 30th anniversary issue touting "Women of Rock" and the latter triumphing "The Girl Issue." The choice of cover subjects, however, says all that needs to be said about the magazines' respective views of its readerships. Nineteen- year-old MTV waif Fiona Apple graces Spin's November front -- if you don't know who she is, that's fine, they don't want you -- whereas Rolling Stone's Nov. 13 issue covers its multi-generational base with a trio of Tina Turner, Madonna and Courtney Love.In the Oct. 27 issue of the National Review, historian Walter A. McDougall offers his personal ratings of every U.S. president, from George Washington ("Great") through Bill Clinton ("Below Average"). McDougall's ratings offer few surprises, except for Grover Cleveland ("Near Great"), Lyndon B. Johnson ("Failure") and Franklin D. Roosevelt ("Great"). The architect of the New Deal is described as "great" in the right-wing National Review? Well, so is Ronald Reagan -- a one-time New Deal Democrat -- so take it all with a grain of salt.
[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Nov. 1, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
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