Another death

On my 15th birthday, my aunt and uncle gave me a subscription to U.S. News & World Report. I know they thought it was an odd gift for a ninth grader, but it was a gift that I had specifically asked for. I was delighted. It was my very first subscription to an adult publication.

At the time, the magazine was very bland in appearance and loaded with facts and data. Not just no color pictures, but no pictures at all. If you wanted to know the forecasts of steel and coal production for the coming month, the value of pork belly futures and the ups and downs of the Dow Jones, U.S. News gave you that information. Its editorial stance was what was then considered strongly right wing -- pro-business, low taxes, strong military readiness and an assertive, anti-Communist foreign policy -- and, needless to say, no nonsense here at home. That was ok by me, an avid Republican in my high school years.

Although U.S. News was strongly conservative, its domestic conservatism was a stance supported by hard economic data and expressed as explicit support for Big Business (not as opposed to Main Street business, but with no particular interest in Main Street, either). Its editors would have found much of today's Republican oratory to be alarmingly bombastic and unacceptably populist. Laissez faire economics was the cornerstone of its domestic economic policy, as it is that of The Economist today. Unlike The Economist, however, U.S. News had no interest in discussing history, political theory, theoretical science, opera, literature, or music. Its articles certainly were not introduced by whimsical, ironic headlines.

It was not much interested in "nuance." Or humor.

U.S. News was a magazine a little less exclusively focused on business than, say, Business Week, but it was aimed at the same audience -- heavy-set businessmen with red faces and thick necks, men who smoked cigars, drank three martini lunches, and hadn't owned a pair of jeans since high school. Men who wouldn't be seen dead at the theater, unless dragged there by "the little woman."

At some point in my life, U.S. News gave way in my affections to Time and Newsweek, and then to other, more sophisticated publications. And the magazine itself changed radically, attempting in recent years to gain subscribers by becoming more similar to Time and Newsweek. But I've always had a special place in my heart for the publication that gave me my first insights into the adult world of politics, economics, and business.

U.S. News & World Report ceases publication next month. Requiescat in Pace, I say, although its earlier editors would have responded to that expression of good wishes with a growled "Huh?"