Talked Out
Hello, Walter:
Inspired by your accolades, I am going to tell the truth. I was wrong last
night. I hunkered down with Talk only to find it ... bloated and oddly
uncompelling.
Not all of it. I enjoyed Charles Bowden's account of the perils of being a
young female factory worker in Mexico, safari guide Mark Ross' harrowing if
sentimentally written account of his kidnapping in Uganda by Hutu rebels, and
much of the front-of-the-book "Conversation" section. But other features seemed
pretentious and empty, like a photo spread of male stars and their ponderous
quotations. "Celebrity is the pox of success," says Harrison Ford as he gives
the camera his trademark weary stare. Some others have been amply reported
elsewhere--Richard Butler's piece on the emasculation of UNSCOM is his own
telling of material that's appeared in the Washington
Post and
the The New
Yorker , and the Wall
Street
Journal and Fortune got to Lorna Wendt way before Mimi Swartz did
(she does, however, have the good grace to acknowledge it). And the magazine's
attempt at edginess seems desperate and strained. I've already seen a million
cheesecake photos of Gwyneth Paltrow and Drew Barrymore, and despite the
dictates of Talk's "Hip List," I am not prepared to believe that scabby
knees are cool.
In her editorial message, Tina Brown writes that she chose the name
Talk because of its "unpretentious brevity." But this is a whale of a
magazine, with 13 feature stories, 14 front-of-the-book "Conversation" items
(many of which are almost feature-length), plus fashion spreads, celeb pics,
book reviews, an astrology page, and more. This doesn't feel like editorial
bounty--it's as if Talk is throwing everything to the wall to see what
sticks. I kept looking for a unifying sensibility, for flashes of brilliant
Tina-osity, for Vanity
Fair's sumptuous glamour or the The
New
Yorker's pensiveness or wit. I also didn't find a single phrase
to stop and admire--or even one that carried the metaphorical oomph of that
terrific milk-carton quote you found in the Times .
Wise of you not to take my bet about the Hillary Clinton profile, Walter.
You wouldn't have won. The piece contained no new revelations at all-- unless
we counted the news that, according to the Northern Irish secretary of state,
Hillary is responsible for the region's recent economic boom.
Back to Ron Klain and his stellar sense of wordplay. The Times has
consistently been printing dishy, embarrassing quotes from Gore-niks about the
campaign's weaknesses (landmarks in this series: President Clinton's worries
about the veep's electability and Bob Squier's railings against Carter Eskew).
And now staffers, clearly upset at his departure, have blurted out a goodbye
speech. This strikes me as just as much a testament to the campaign's poor
morale and weak organization as it is to the skill of reporters like Seelye.
Hasn't Tony Coelho told everyone to keep their mouths shut? What are we going
to hear next? I worked in the Giuliani administration for a year, and no
one spoke to the press. The policy was overly suspicious and vituperative,
but it also cultivated a sense of common purpose and team loyalty. Even though
I'm a journalist now, the former staffer in me wants to hush the
blatherers.
No more stabs, Walter. Let's keep talking about money and risk--and let's
agree not to let Mark Barton represent the perils of the Internet economy. I
enjoyed today's Journal story quite a bit more than yesterday's. With
(smile) one quibble. The piece argues that Americans are newly eager to embrace
risk, and compares risky career moves and aggressive investing to " 'hard
adventure' travel, where risk-seekers hack through jungles with machetes or
scale the world's highest mountains." Is this really all part of one big Trend?
I'd give you my thoughts now, but then we'd never eat lunch ...
Talk soon,
Jodi
P.S.: Ryan Papir, one of our readers, helpfully told me that after losing
about $4 million in the 1987 crash, a man named Arthur Kane killed a Merrill
Lynch office manager and seriously injured a stockbroker.
