From: fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu (James P. H. Fuller)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Talk Of The Town
Date: 3 Oct 92 16:39:54 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

I wrote:

>      I know that magazines and newspapers pretend there is an unbridge-
> able gulf between Upstairs and Downstairs (the editorial and the adver-
> tising sides of the publication) but it's a self-delusion.  If you're
> constantly surrounded by pretentious vulgarity you are yourself going to
> become pretentious and vulgar at some point, and that's that.  Objection-
> able changes have appeared in great numbers in TNY lately, or so I'm told,
> but the seeds of its destruction were already sprouting happily during
> William Shawn's tenure and were in fact planted by Ross.



weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) replies:

> Huh???  I for one, always liked the ads, and thought they complemented the
> magazine perfectly.  There was always a delicate pretentiousness throughout
> the magazine, with the ads being just part of the same.  Vulgarity?  I don't
> know what you're referring to.


 On the other hand, ric@updike.sri.com (Richard Steinberger) seems to
understand:

> magazine.  The ads are obnoxious duplicates from Rolling Stone, Vogue,
> Vanity Fair (Tina Brown's former home) and similarily slick NY pubs.  The
> lead editorial continues to espouse a liberal philosophy (which I more or
> less agree with), but it loses credibility when placed in a magazine
> dripping with ads for overprced trinkets, perfume, furs, et cetera.


     And this has been so for as long as I have been able to read -- and
(consulting the _New Yorker_ bound volumes in the stacks) for a lot longer
than that also.  When I say vulgarity do people automatically think of
raunchy sex?  Not what I mean at all; I mean materialism -- or in the case
of _The New Yorker_, arch-materialism.  To pick a back issue at random
(Nov. 23, 1987): inside front cover, Rolex watches (gold, with gold metal
watchband indistinguishable from a halftrack tread);  p.3, The Furs of
Nieman-Marcus.  "The only furriers in the world select enough for James
Galanos.  His designs are ours alone.  Enough Said.  Fur Salon."; p.10-11,
double page, Mercedes-Benz.  "A 'Big Mercedes' has crowned the line for
almost as long as there has been a Mercedes-Benz.  This is Mercedes-Benz
engineering at its most ambitious.  And at its most assertive."; p.12,
Tiffany & Co. "You can even tell Tiffany silver with your eyes closed.
If Tiffany flatware feels heavier than other flatware, that's because it
is."; p.14-15, double page, The Boston Company. Ad banner, THE PRIVILEGED
CLIENT.  "If you're a financially successful individual desiring the
highest possible level of personal service...."; p.30-31, double page,
The Lladro Leather Collection.  "Leather by Lladro.  It's one of the
finer things in life.  Shouldn't it be part of yours?";

     I could go on, there's plenty more material, but I begin to gag.
This is bourgeois haute-middlebrow vulgarity naked and in the raw.  It
tells you what sort of person reads _The New Yorker_, and this is the
sort of person I said I would walk many blocks out of my way to avoid.
Insofar as the magazine's editorial content pretends to be above all
this it is hypocritical (quite obviously so; see "Gifts for the house",
p.105-118 of the same issue.)

     Who wears Rolex watches and drives Mercedes-Benz cars and carries
Lladro leather?  Hollywood producers, dermatologists, congressmen and 
successful mobsters, that's who.  The subset of this set which would 
vainly pretend to a class above its own is _The New Yorker_'s natural 
audience of suckers.

                                             -- JPHF

P.S.  Not being any sort of liberal I do not speak thus for any politic-
ally correct reasons of social consciousness.  On the other hand, if the
foregoing sounded to you like open snobbery then you received my message
whole and intact.