Question of the Day

What if it were Katie Couric, rather than Charlie Gibson, saying that "the questions were asked" during the runup to the Iraq war and that, if given a do-over, "I’m not sure we would have asked anything differently"?

Here's the video:

About Monocle

Ordinarily I wouldn't bother with something like this, but if Monocle aspires to be "a comprehensive global briefing," it seems to me that making mistakes on basic, widely known, and easily verifiable facts is a bit of a problem. This is from a sidebar to an interview with the head of Al-Jazeera's New York and Washington bureaus:

Soon after [September 11], President Bush launched an attack on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. While this received widespread support, the expansion of the campaign into a "war on terror" was less popular. The Iraq War -- which Obama voted against and Clinton and McCain voted for -- continues to be a crucial issue in the election campaign.

Of course, Obama wasn't in the Senate when the vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq took place. (Even if he were, it's not even clear he would've voted against it.)

This may seem like a quibble in the scheme of things, and I confess that I haven't read enough issues of the magazine to render anything like a solid judgment, but to me this is indicative of the problem with Monocle -- it is an utterly, almost unabashedly superficial magazine. I mean this primarily in the sense that its "briefings" and "reports" have very little depth. They blend together to create the sense that you're reading a magazine comprised entirely of what would be front-of-the-book pieces in another publication. It also happens to be the case that Monocle is preoccupied with stuff. I lack the Wallpaper point of reference or the design chops to dig deep, but I read about a lot of nice, cleanly designed Scandinavian and Japanese things. It was hardly groundbreaking stuff and more like reading annotated Ikea and Muji catalogs.

The whole thing basically felt to me like a mashup of Vanity Fair's Fanfair and New York's Strategist sections. Which is to say, not good. In any event, this guy has a much more informed and comprehensive take.

Welcome Back, Me

After a long (and unintended) break from reading magazines and generally living like a normal person, I was looking forward to diving right back in and checking in on what the kids were reading. So far, though, I am regrettably 0 for 2 in the game of Reading Things That Don't Suck.

First was Philip Weiss's pseudointellectual, failed attempt at justifying his either past or future adultery. Second was Emily Gould's over-the-top melodramatic exploration of her personal life while working for Gawker. (Best/worst line: "Instead, though, I kept moving blithely closer to the spoon." And no, it isn't better in context.) I should say that I actually kind of liked what Gould did while she was at Gawker, and I don't begrudge anyone their desire to write about their personal lives online, but look, if you're the kind of person who's going to betray your significant others' privacy, you're going to do it with or without a Typepad account. You may convince Gerald Marzorati that it's all wrapped up in some "larger political or ethical or philosophical concerns," but you're not fooling the rest of us.

Back to my pile of magazines. Here's hoping things get better.

Hiatus?

Er, so it turns out that this really long day I've been experiencing has actually been, like, three weeks. Oops?

But! In a few days, things will appear here again. They will blow your mind.