Remembering the brief but glorious life of George magazine (1995-2001)
From 1988 to 2007 I wrote a weekly column on magazines for the LA Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Pittsburgh Trib. Here are three I wrote about the birth and death of JFK Jr.'s magazine George.
George is born
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, Sept. 14, 1995
George Washington did not come back from the dead.
All that multimedia hype and hoopla you heard from New York City last Thursday was over the launching of George, an amazingly ad-fat and glossy new political pop culture magazine that won't actually hit newsstands till Sept. 26.
George is merely named after our country's first chief executive, who, if he's seen an advance copy and has read Madonna's piece telling us what she'd do if she were made president, may still be spinning in his tomb.
What made George's premiere so universally and earthshakingly newsworthy, of course, was that it is the brainchild of John F. Kennedy Jr., America's heartthrob No. 1 and son of our 35th President.
It also didn't hurt that Cindy Crawford is on George's cover dressed like General Washington.
Or that the magazine, which set an industry record for a first issue by selling 175 pages of advertising, already has been declared the most successful consumer magazine launch in history.
Just in case you missed the news flash, we'll repeat the official PR pitch on George from the Hachette Filipacchi magazine company, whose 23 other publications include Elle, Premiere and Road & Track.
George is a non-partisan political magazine that will come out six times a year and intends to "redefine the way politics is traditionally covered" and "demystify the political process by covering the points where politics and popular culture converge."
Subtitled "Not just politics as usual," it also hopes to sell 500,000 copies an issue and make gobs of money.
Media hype and Madonna's think-piece aside, however, the October/November George is an impressive production.
With page after full page of trendy ads for Guess Jeans, Versace and Gucci, not to mention one of those now-verboten Calvin Klein kiddie-porn ads, it looks like Vanity Fair. It even smells like Vanity Fair, thanks to a volatile scented cologne ad for Nightflight Joop.
George's layout is handsome and lush. Its photography is often great — especially a series of powerful black-and-white pictures of old George Wallace by Herb Ritts, who also shot the cover photo of Crawford.
The country's most famous former segregationist and fiery speechmaker is now 75, deaf and still crippled by a 1972 assassination attempt. But he's sorry for his sins and says if he had become president, America wouldn't have a $4 trillion debt.
The long interview — which was done by co-founder and editor-in-chief Kennedy himself — is sad and often touching and was conducted with considerable taste, intelligence and skill.
The Wallace interview alone is worth spending $10 for a one-year charter subscription, but George is packed with lots of other stuff, some serious, some borderline mindless.
Its back pages harbor book, TV and movie reviews by big names like punk-poet Jim Carroll and political pundit Michael Kinsley. Upfront is a photo spread of tiny Russell, Kansas, boyhood home of two 1996 presidential wannabes, Bob Dole and Arlen Specter, plus snapshots of pop culture celebrities partying in public with politicians….
In an excerpt from his coming book, "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Moron and Other Observations," Al Franken offers a modest proposal to cut the federal budget: "Why not shoot the elderly into space?"
A piece that works equally as well is "To Tell the Truth," wherein Cindy Crawford and designer Isaac Mizrahi play fashion police. They look at slides of politicians like Newt and Hillary and make catty bipartisan fun of what they're wearing.
As for profiles and features, George is also overflowing. No one gets seriously trashed and George is obviously uninterested in making any enemies among the D.C. policy wonks and politeratti it focuses on, especially conservatives.
But you can read about Newt's gay sister, Candace. Or FBI head honcho Louis Freeh. Or Pittsburgh's $675 million leading lady of politics, Teresa Heinz, widow of one senator and wife of another, John Kerry of Massachusetts.
The best-written profile is probably "The Wild One" on Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell. A former biker, former car thief, former gun peddler and former Democrat, Campbell seems like a pretty cool Native American Republican guy for a politician.
And let's not forget Newt, who's interviewed in a wary but unconfrontational way by Grateful Dead songwriter, unrepentant hippie and libertarian computer-guru John Perry Barlow.
A fellow Republican, Barlow likes many of Newt's ideas about cyberspace and individual freedom, he just doesn't want to be forced to live by Newt's traditional values.
With its lack of definable ideology and editorial evenhandedness, George lives up to Kennedy's promise to deliver its readers "all the voices in today's political dialogue."
It also fulfills Kennedy's promise to inform, provoke and entertain its readers.
How long it can continue to do so and whether enough readers are really that interested in politics and the personalities of politicians are the big questions.
It is, of course, completely unfair to compare the relentlessly flashy and deliberately flaky personality of George with The Weekly Standard, the new conservative political think magazine.
But boy, is the Standard dull and dry looking, or what?
Based on a cursory reading of its first issue, the Standard is a disappointment and its fizzle has nothing to do with being eclipsed by George or its lack of Louis Vuitton ads.
The Standard, which owes its existence to $3 million from Rupert Murdoch's change purse, is staffed by the hotshots of the triumphant conservative chattering and thinking class, from editors William Kristol and Fred Barnes to contributors David Frum and P.J. O'Rourke.
Its grand aim is to shape and/or influence the national political discourse the way the New Republic did in the 1980s.
But insiders (as noted in, where else, George) think that the Standard may be too one-sided and partisan to be credible or persuasive to folks like Madonna who have not yet been converted to conservatism.
The Standard's Sept. 18 cover story is a four-part package on the way Newt Gingrich works, teaches and wins his political battles with his strategy of "permanent offense."
It seems as stale and dated as the Standard's 1920s page layouts, even if it isn't.
And somebody please tell deputy editor John Podnoretz that his column about his father Norman's new hobby — the first article in the magazine — is not as interesting or entertaining as the copy in the ad for Northrop Grumman's war machines in the centerfold.
Andrew Ferguson's rumination, "Are the Democrats Going Nuts? An Inquiry," has a pulse. But the funniest thing in the whole issue is the Atlantic Monthly ad for O'Rourke's new book, "Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut."
The Standard, available for $40 a year, is supposed to concentrate on serious politics, ideas and policy issues.
No one expects it to run "What If I Were President" pieces by Madonna. But so far, for all of its all-stars, the Standard doesn't look like it'll be stealing away many subscribers from its older conservative brothers, the American Spectator, National Review or Human Events.
George dies young — an obit
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
March 15, 2001
George, the orphaned child of John F. Kennedy Jr., died of natural causes after a long illness earlier this month in New York City. He was 6 years and 1 issue old.
Mr. George, who had no known last name, succumbed to acute advertising disorder, doctors said.
Although his circulation was good, and his ability to cover national politics in an entertaining, compelling and nonpartisan way was undiminished, he reportedly was never able to overcome the tragic loss of his famous young father, who died in a plane crash in 1999.
Psychologists said Mr. George's constitution might have been sapped by chronic low self-esteem.
It was thought to be a result of petty faultfinding from his doddering cousins, including the New Republic, who frequently made fun of Mr. George for being too frivolous and insufficiently dull.
Handicapped by a congenital lack of cynicism, Mr. George was known for a charming, albeit naive, belief that those who seek political power in America are 'lively and engaging men and women who shape public life.'
Mr. George is survived by his editor-in-chief, Frank Lalli; his publisher, Hachette Fillipacchi Magazines; Sen. Ted Kennedy; several hundred lesser Kennedys; and 500,000 readers.
No memorial service is planned. Mr. George's family requests that in lieu of flowers, mourners should read the special Farewell Issue of George magazine, which has a portrait of John Kennedy on the cover.
Inside are examples of Mr. George's work and highlights from his short but often bright-and-shining career. Included are snippets from articles by Norman Mailer and interviews his founding father and editor John did with famous people such as George Wallace.
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Speaking of obituaries, American Spectator, the infamously partisan and once very hot and healthy conservative magazine, was nearly in need of one itself until George Gilder, the guru of future technology, bought it last year.
As debuted by its March issue, American Spectator has completely rejiggered its once-distinctive graphics (not for the better) and has changed its editorial bearings. Its politics are unchanged, and Tom Bethell, John Corry and its all-star crew of conservative-libertarians are still aboard.
But there's a new emphasis on digital technology, the New Economy and science. March's highlights include Gilder's piece on the technology-unfriendly left-wing politics of Sun Microsoft founder Bill Joy and an interview with cover-boy Lawrence Kudlow, the supply-side economist.
And off the left bow, April's Mother Jones lists the top 400 campaign contributors of election 2000, which saw $3 billion poured into federal elections alone.
Mother Jones, naturally, is terrified that evil corporations and fat cats who gave President Bush and GOP congressional candidates $646 million will soon get the special laws and favors they paid for. The piece is valuable, though labor union contributions are conveniently unmentioned.
Mother Jones loves government power too much and understands individual freedom too little to ever appreciate the only sure way to get money out of politics - make government so weak and insignificant it doesn't pay to give officeholders a dime.
It will always be ideologically challenged, but Mother Jones is arguably America's most readable, best-looking political magazine - as long as Mr. George stays dead.
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When JFK Jr. died in a plane crash, I wrote a column about how it was covered by the media.