As one of the original editors of George, the political magazine founded by John F. Kennedy Jr., I’ve long maintained that, behind its celebrity factor, George was a smart and influential magazine. The idea of a mainstream magazine premised on the convergence of celebrity and politics felt, at the time, quite radical to me; these days, I don’t think anyone would blink an eye, which is probably proof that John had put his finger on something true about American culture.

So I was pleased to see Charles P. Pierce, writing in the current issue of Esquire, agreeing with that estimation:

Once upon a time and not that long ago, and don’t let it be forgot, there once was a glossy magazine named George. It was founded and edited by the late John Kennedy Jr., who was, by all accounts, a more than decent bloke. Its conceit was that there was no essential difference between politics and show business or between political celebrity and all other forms of celebrity. (I think we all can agree that JFK Jr. was something more than an authority on that last part.) Its first issue featured model Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington, who once had only Parson Weems as his personal celebrity biographer. Sadly, in March of 2001, its last issue had Kennedy himself on the cover, the editor having died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999. Despite some contemporaneous ur-snarkery from Spy, it’s hard now to conclude that the basic premise behind George was wrong. (By 2005, Tom Brokaw, the man who invented World War II, was moderating a ten-year retrospective on the magazine at Harvard, although that might have been just a Kennedy thing.) The entire world of political journalism has come around to George’s fundamental philosophy.

Pierce doesn’t entirely mean that as a compliment; his essay is really about what a piece of rubbish Politico (“George’s bastard child”) is, which is basically true.

Of course, back when George—and John—were still around, Esquire was one of their most frequent critics….