Well, it is the law, you know. I dodged them as long as I could, but when the Thought Police caught up with me and gave me the choice of sixty days in the hole or posting a comment, I buckled, so here it is: The New Yorker’s Obama cover was smart-alecky, pretentious, and condescending, exactly why I stopped subscribing five or six years ago.
When my first novel was published the New Yorker very sportingly sent me an offer for a special “author’s rate.” Well, I’m sorry, but getting the New Yorker at the “author’s rate” made me feel cool, so I bit. Just about every issue of the New Yorker has something worth reading, and I recall one issue that I read cover to cover with complete satisfaction. But gradually the eternal moral smugness of the mag, the overwhelming Upper West Sidedness of it all, drove me over the edge, and I’m proud to say that I turned down the author’s rate, which is a damned good deal.
Of course, the fact that most of each issue is available on the web made it easy to be virtuous, but what’s wrong with a little easy virtue? Anyway, I occasionally buy an issue, to prove that I’m not a total cheapskate. And when the New Yorker does something cheesy like the Obama cover, I feel virtuous all over again. Virtue that’s free and easy! Hey, you can’t complain!
