Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Republic covers itself on Clinton Date: Mon, 2 Nov 92 15:45:13 EST Message-ID: \SE D;LIFE;THE MAG TRADE \HD Republic covers itself on Clinton \BY Cynthia Grenier \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES Talk about hedging your bets! New Republic leads the way. Last week, the magazine warmly endorsed Bill Clinton. With Election Day tomorrow, this week's TNR cover shows Mr. Clinton leading the three-man race, arms already raised in victory, but under his feet lurks - a banana peel. Given the polls and sundry small indicators, this may just prove to have been a judicious choice of cover art from a magazine whose covers have become ever more witty during the campaign season. This one also shows President Bush pointing a finger and saying, "Oh, look - a Republican!" Behind him, a grim-faced Dan Quayle comments, "Wow! You don't see many of them around these days." The cover lines: "Can George Bush Still Win?" - followed by: "And Should He?" The answer in a long lead editorial, reservations aside, is: Yes, he should - if only because "liberal opinion ardently deems Mr. Bush worth beating." And this week's TV Guide has a hot item, which may wind up madly out of date: How Mr. Clinton will use the new TV formats employed by each candidate during the campaign. Says the governor: "I don't think there's anything undignified about a president going on Larry King, or on the right kind of MTV program." Esquire has chosen to do an anatomy of an institution in decline: the media. Ken Auletta writes on "How the politicians and the public stopped reading newspapers and listening to Sam Donaldson and learned to loathe the media." It's a pretty sharp piece of analysis. DRACULA IS RISING An awful lot of cover space in lighter publications during October seemed to be devoted to "Malcolm X," the Spike Lee movie that opens Nov. 18. Now the big promotional push seems to be for "Bram Stoker's Dracula," the Francis Ford Coppola spectacle opening here Nov. 13. This latest "Dracula" is giving rise to outpourings of pure gush for Winona Ryder, one of the count's prized victims in the film. Esquire lets loose with a blurb: "The twenty-one-year-old former dream teen is set at last to become her generation's first great actress - and a truly fabulous babe." November's Vogue titles its article "Winsome Winona" and describes her as "almost like an exiled princess, some forgotten Anastasia hiding out across the street from Mike Ovitz's [talent agency] fiefdom, CAA." Vogue is really into show biz this month, giving the cover for the first time in its history to a couple: supermodel Cindy Crawford and her spouse, actor Richard Gere. Senior writer Julia Reed, usually tough and incisive in her profiles of political figures, does a virtual puff piece on the pair. But she does get a nice quote by asking Richard if Cindy, who was raised as a Congregationalist, is interested in joining the Buddhist faith (he's a devout follower of the Dalai Lama). Mr. Gere's reply: "Cindy is interested in exploring the positive aspects of the universe and herself. But I don't think she'd ever call herself a Buddhist." BACK TO MALCOLM Did we say October was Malcolm X month? Vogue is playing catch-up with a location story set in Cairo by novelist John Edgar Wideman. Called "Monument to Malcolm," it's about how "Spike Lee has fought to keep his revolutionary vision alive." Not a bad article. But Vogue, you've got to admit, is something of a weird venue for it. It's all of a piece with the high-fashion magazines maintaining an oh-so-politically-correct image in recent years amid pages devoted to photographs of garments costing thousands. While we're in the froth trough, let us linger a moment longer to note that Self in its November issue is concentrating on some of the real issues of the day, like "Staying young with a revolutionary new anti-wrinkle drug" and "How to feel happy with a smart new mind technique." THE MADONNA THING If we're all burned out with the election and Malcolm X (before we've even seen the movie), what do we feel about Madonna? Entertainment Weekly, published by Time Warner Inc. (whose Warner Books brought us the singer's Mylar-wrapped nominal book, "Sex," for $49.95), offers an impertinent report on the work. In its first week out, EW notes, "Sex" sold 500,000 copies. Even the pictures EW chooses to run in a family magazine are pretty "cheesy and raunchy," to use the mag's own words. GETTING SERIOUS American Spectator's November issue features P.J. O'Rourke's "1992 New Enemies List Third Annual Readers' Update," which makes for pretty entertaining or enraging reading, depending on your political orientation. The table of contents blurb does set the tone: "This year: dirty-money groups and individuals who fund neo- proto- crypto- demi- semi- and plain Ben & Jerry's vanilla communism in the United States - plus the special 'Peter Ueberroth gold medal for 100-meter-dash-carrying-a-VCR' awards to those who did the most to provide L.A. murderers and thieves with moral, political, and philosophic justification for all the fun they had." In the same issue, Grover Norquist takes "The Coming Clinton Dynasty" to task. He asserts that conservatives who think a Clinton administration would be a short interregnum make a dire mistake. Ever since Watergate, he writes, Democrats have learned how to deal behind the scenes to ensure their re-election - with or without popular support. WELCOME CHANGE OF PACE Perhaps the reason the November issue of Smithsonian seems so eminently readable is because there is nothing in it remotely related to the electoral season. The cover, a black-and-white reproduction of the famous Bill Mauldin cartoon of a heartbroken World War II cavalry sergeant shooting his crippled jeep, heralds a celebratory ode to the sturdy little vehicle in Doug Stewart's "The Little War Wagon That Could." Other good reads to take your mind off the election and its results are pieces on "The Old Farmer's Almanac," "Coming to Grips with the Griz" (grizzly bears, that is), and a story about 800 years of Plains Indian life. But the real goody is "Starving Artists Need Not Apply (They'll Find You)" by Ralph Graves, which gives the inside picture of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Described as "a bastion of quality since 1898," this institution quietly has handed out some $750,000 annually to creative souls deemed worthy. The lead paragraph describing "the most palatial, prestigious, exclusive - and obscure - clubhouse in America" is guaranteed to keep anyone reading. DO IT YOURSELF Tomorrow in New York, Folio and Magazine Publishers of America open what they bill as "The world's largest conference and exhibition for magazine publishing professionals." On the bill are exhibitions, editors, publishers and workshops galore. Judging by the events listed in the brochure, you easily could put out your own magazine after a few good workshop sessions. Cynthia Grenier's "The Mag Trade" appears Mondays. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM