Journals Freshen Up for New Year
Boning up for the coming prez derby, the hapless citizen turns to the political magazines for wisdom, gossip, gaseous diatribes. And what does he find? Every other magazine, particularly among those on the right, seems to be redesigning its look. Something, perhaps the recent birth of the Weekly Standard, has sent conservative mags scurrying off to the plastic surgeon.
In the case of one monthly, the American Spectator, the results are really stunning. For years that magazine has worn a self-consciously fusty look, as if it were trying to pass itself off as some eccentric old brain rag out of London. The shtick always felt a little false.
Well, all that’s changed. Radically redesigned for January, the new American Spectator has a clean, straightforward look. The debut issue’s cover art, a swell Robert Grossman caricature of Michael Kinsley, is totally magnetic. And the inside pages are a lot easier to look at, too, with relatively plain typefaces, some color illustrations and whimsical pen-and-ink logos by Elliott Banfield. The up-front “Continuing Crisis” section, an arch tour of recent news developments, features a small Banfield image of two-winged demons roasting the globe over an open fire, for example.
One might argue that the magazine has suddenly lost its distinctiveness in that it now resembles so many other journals. But this is one periodical that has never needed art to punch up its personality. Gnomishly splenetic, a font of off-key irony, the American Spectator is the bible of one particular revelation: Liberals are evil.
While the magazine looks different, the subject matter and tilt are unchanged. As a result, the new Spectator serves as a kind of experiment in magazine perception. I enjoyed it more than any of its predecessor issues, and I think the reason is appearance.
The other conservative magazine with a new face is the Heritage Foundation’s Policy Review. It has a new subtitle: The Journal of American Citizenship. But more important, the dreadful old cover design--characterless lines of abstract words that never quite came into focus--is gone, replaced by a lively new one. The January-February cover has a bold red headline, “Preserve, Protect & Defend,” and a color illustration of a knight guarding the Constitution. Inside, things are still looking rather gray, but reading an introductory letter from Adam Meyerson, one becomes hopeful. It’s a passionate, lucid statement of purpose. The conservative mission, it says, is “restoration of civil society.”
The real problem here is the magazine’s fascination with organizations bearing such names as the New Citizenship Project, the National Center for Fathering and so on. My mind was gagging on all the bureaucracy the movement seems to be belching up. Jeez, these people are starting to behave like Democrats.