Shots In The Dark: Remembering George

Monday, October 10, 2005

Remembering George

Ten years ago, the first issue of George magazine was published, to equal amounts of hoopla and criticism. I remember those crazy days vividly and fondly; nothing in the magazine business is as fun as creating a first issue, and George, for lots of different reasons, attracted a huge amount of attention. It was hectic, stressful, exciting, invigorating, and, as I mentioned, fun.

Tomorrow the Kennedy School is hosting a panel discussion in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum about George. Panelists will include Roger Ailes of Fox News, CNN's Judy Woodruff, Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, and Tom Brokaw. The only person with any connection to George will be Paul Begala, who wrote the occasional speech for John Kennedy and, for a little while, wrote a monthly column on Democratic politics.

I wasn't invited to the discussion, and I'm not quite sure why. Could be because Caroline Kennedy, who is the m.c. of the occasion, has never forgiven me for writing a book about John. Could be because I wrote an article critical of the Kennedy School for Boston Magazine. Could be because I wrote a book about Harvard critical of president Larry Summers. These are the consequences of writing honestly about powerful people, and I accept them; if reporters have a problem with being, in some fundamental way, outsiders, then they shouldn't be reporters.

Still, I think it's a great shame that no one from George is participating in a discussion about the magazine's importance and influence, and so I wrote this op-ed piece for yesterday's Boston Globe. It's a little reflection on the magazine's influence on how the media covers politics (wish it could have been longer, but regardless, I'm grateful to the Globe for the opportunity). I've long felt that George was a more influential magazine than most media types were willing to admit, and this was a nice chance to say so.

¶ 10:23 AM

Comments:

I read your op ed piece yesterday in the Globe and thought it was one of the most ridiculous theories I've seen posited in a very long time. How can you possibly claim that a magazine that NO ONE READ had any influence on the merging of politics and pop culture?

Comedy Central was pushing Al Franken and Arianna Huffington long before you sent Al to cover anything. It was called, Strange Bedfellows. That was 1996. Aaron Sorkin's career was in overdrive before your magazine was even conceived. All of this was in reaction to a man named BILL, not George Magazine.

Bill Clinton was bringing his Hollywood friends to the White House and making frequent trips to Los Angeles, bridging the gap between the Beltway and the box office. He appeared on Arsenio Hall. He answered questions on MTV about boxers or briefs.
Rock The Vote was hosting and MTV covering, live on TV, pop music infused inaugural parties.
If Rock the Vote's co-founders wanted to lay claim to being influential in Jon Stewart's career, I don't think anyone would raise an eyebrow.

If you ignore the 1500 or so days that preceded George's debut, a compelling argument can be made that George was at the forefront of merging sex, hollywood and politics. I bet the initial reviews of George acknowledge that George was part of an emerging consensus, do they not? You were riding the wave. That is not innovation.
If you think about it even sitcoms like FRIENDS obsessed on JFK, Jr. and Stephanopolous.
You can't expect people to think any of this had anything to do with George Magazine.

Gladwell states it best.

1. Innovators: the adventurous ones. Visionaries.
* Connectors, mavens, and salesmen make it possible for innovations to connect with the early adopters. They are translators: they make ideas and information from a highly specialized world and translate them into a language the rest of us can understand. They drop extraneous details and exaggerate other details so that the message itself acquires a deeper meaning.
2. Early adopters: the slightly larger group that is infected by the innovators. Visionaries.
3. Early Majority: the deliberate and the skeptical mass, who would never try anything until the most respected of this group try it first.
4. Late Majority
5. Laggards: the most traditional group that see no urgent reason to change.

At best it can be argued that George falls into "Early Majority" category. It's not a bad place to be, Mr. Bradley, but claiming anything more is pushing it.

I will give George credit for this: dressing up modern people in founding fathers drag. but since no one has copied that innovation, I don't know if that acknowledgment is significant!

Greg Weiss

# posted by Greg : 12:48 PM

Greg,

No one read George? 450,000 people monthly made it the largest political magazine in American history. Granted, we probably couldn't compete with Maxim or In Style. But for a political magazine, that wasn't so bad.

I don't claim in the piece that George created or inspired the fusion of pop culture and politics. Obviously, that's not the case; the existence of that trend was one of the reasons George came into being. I do say that George reflected that fusion, covered it, and in the process, legitimized it. (Though I will admit that some of this argument got tamped down in the editing process.)

You're absolutely right that the Hollywoodization of politics was well underway by the time George got started. But that really wasn't being covered in the press—and in fact, the political press was deeply hostile to the idea, in large part because it threatened their entrenched monopoly. If you go back and read our early reviews, you can feel an almost palpable sense of hostility to change.

And by the way, Al Franken wrote for our debut issue, in the fall of 1995. Obviously, Al had a long track record of combining entertainment and politics, but gave him an outlet that wasn't otherwise there.

Malcolm's construct is interesting, but I think you could pretty easily concoct half a dozen ones with just as much coherence.

Greg, from the tone of your post, it sounds to me like you have some unacknowledged beef against George that makes you reluctant to admit the influence it had.

# posted by richard : 2:25 PM

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