Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Schadenfreude alert, Harper's edition

Disclaimer: I used to subscribe to Harper's magazine. Eons ago, it used to carry non-political articles that were interesting and engaging such as James McManus's account of his run in the 2000 World Series of Poker. But somewhere into the last administration, the magazine succumbed to Bush Derangement Syndrome and nearly every column, sidenote, and footnote seemed aimed at pushing a political viewpoint at a volume set to 11.

Which is fine, I guess, if you want to be a political magazine. But, very quickly, the magazine was a crushing bore, and Harper's liberal benefactor John McArthur was losing patience and money. According to NY Magazine's "Venerable lefties at Harper's divided by union," a staff shakeup triggered a union at Harper's, much to McArthur's displeasure:

MacArthur contested the staff's right to unionize. Staffers couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony: The staunch defender of unions, who in a 2009 Harper's piece called the UAW “the country’s best and traditionally most honest mass labor organization,” was now on the other side of the table as the "worst kind of factory owner," as one staffer put it to me.
Whoops. Looks like somebody was mugged by reality.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha Ha! Maybe he can move to work offshore. Hire some Indian and Chinese writers.

Anonymous said...

you suck