Back in the day—that long ago day known as “the Fifties”—all good liberals regarded Time Magazine with loathing and contempt. Henry Luce, Time’s founder and publisher, was the Rupert Murdoch of his day. Millions of people across the country felt they knew what was happening around the world thanks to Time, much to the liberals’ fury.
Well, no one relies on Time in that manner any more, thanks to the multitudinous electronic/journalistic revolutions that have taken place in the past half century, but Time’s remnant rag, now available on the web, of course, still has the power to make an aging liberal grind a tooth in rage and despair. A case in point is a new article by previously unknown to me scribe Austin Ramsey/Dalian, wittily titled “Troubled Waters: Why China’s Navy Makes Asia Nervous,” and telling the tale of the good ship Varyag, an aircraft carrier whose keel was laid by the Soviet Union back in the Eighties. The Varyag spent a good decade or more gathering rust as an unfinished hulk, but the Chinese have now got her functional, more or less, and her rebirth, Time informs us, comes at a “fraught time.”
There’s no doubt that Asian nations can’t be too pleased to know that China now has a full-sized, 1000-foot aircraft carrier, but Time, of course, doesn’t want to report on other nations so much as it wants to scare us. The Varyag, Time admits, isn’t all that scary. For one thing, the ship’s shakedown cruise is likely to last for five years, or even more. And, let’s face it, no one remembers the Soviet navy as the terror of the seas. But, says Time, there’s danger ahead: “Analysts believe that as the PLA navy learns how to operate the former Varyag, China will begin building aircraft carriers from scratch — perhaps as many as four.” “Analysts” as in “two people who get paid by the U.S. Navy to drum up business” and “perhaps as many as four” as in “one or two, probably. Maybe more, maybe none.” Time, your Dockers are aflame. Henry Luce would be proud.
Afterwords
Time never mentions whether the Varyag is nuclear-powered. Which, of course, means that it isn’t.
The late John Gregory Dunne wrote a hilarious reminiscence about his days with Time in its salad days, unfortunately available online only to those classy enough to subscribe to the New York Review of Books. Among other things, Dunne tells us, on Wednesdays, when Time when to bed, the company would cover editors’ meals and carfare—as if they didn’t eat out and take a cab home every night. Well, Dunne found a way to make things a little more fun. Instead of taking a cab home, he took a limo, from a company that only carried Rolls Royces, which, of course, only rent for for a minimum of four hours. Tootling around New York in a Rolls, chugging expense account booze? Donald Draper would shit!
Henry Luce has been profiled many times, most recently by Alan Brinkley, in The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century.
