What the MSM Must Do Now

One good thing about the MSM, as liberals, they understand and embrace the incredible diversity of this nation’s beliefs and opinions. As much as they like John Edwards, they know that he was way off — we’re not two Americas, we’re many Americas. As Al Gore once famously said, “We can build a collective civic space large enough for all our separate identities, that we can be e pluribus unum — out of one, many.” *

But you wouldn’t know from the sort of broad sweeping cover blurbs and headlines that Time and Newsweek love to run, reducing a complex nation of 300 million people from every race, creed, color, and DirecTV channel, into an oversimplified 48-point Helvetica sentence.

Such as this representative sample over the past couple of years:

• “What Women Want” — Newsweek cover story, September 22nd, 2008.

• “We Are All Socialists Now” — Newsweek cover story, February 7 2009.

• “What to Read Now” — Newsweek cover story, July 13, 2009

• “How To Restore the American Dream” — Time magazine cover story, November 1, 2010

• “Is America Islamophoblic?” — Time magazine cover story, August 30, 2010

• “Is Your Baby Racist?” — Newsweek cover story, September 14, 2009

• “Are We a Nation of Bullies?” — Newsweek, October 14, 2010

As paradoxical as it seems, I know how much easier it is to write the big sweeping headline first, and then write the 3000 words of boilerplate to flesh out the narrative. Or at least for the editor to write the big sweeping headline first, and then the freelance stringer to write the actual article, which is primarily a placeholder for Viagra and Depends ads.

It will never, happen, but given how much disdain that Time and Newsweek have for for the rest of us in the hinterlands, can we at least suggest that Time and Newsweek hold off on the sweeping State of America cover stories for a while?

* Germans? Pearl Harbor? Out of one, many? Forget, he was rolling.