Home Satire Why Time Magazine Doesn't Want Peace
Home Satire Why Time Magazine Doesn't Want Peace

Why Time Magazine Doesn't Want Peace


                                                           Why Time Magazine Does Not Want Peace

                                                               Richard Stengel and Karl Vick

It's that time of the year again. The time where we add up our circulation figures and our ad dollars, and realize that there's no way we're going to be able to pay for a second Switzerland vacation this year. But that's all right, because we're not in it for the money. It's about journalism, fame and having a Constitutionally protected right to lie as much as we want.

Right now we're hanging on to the future by our fingernails. Because in the latest survey we found that the only people who read our magazine either don't know how to use a computer or are sitting in the dentist's office and trying to bury their fear in our infographic about the cast of the Jersey Shore.

We're desperate. I mean we've tried everything. And we've partnered with such leading news organizations as CNN, the Huffington Post, the Onion and AskMen.com, but nothing is working. And somewhere in between such vital stories as the "Top 10 Famous Toilets" and "5 Best Kim Jong Il Hairstyles" (Editor's Note: only one of those is a real Time Magazine story, guess which one. Nope, you guessed wrong) , we have to try and find geopolitical stories that somebody actually cares about, and that we can render in a simplistic fashion for our core audience of people who are just happening to browse at a newstand while waiting for the bus.

And let's face it that subject comes down to Israel. Sure we could try to do a report on the genocide in the Sudan, or the coup in Thailand or the flood in Pakistan; but who's really going to care? Can you imagine anyone picking up a copy of Time Magazine with a cover focusing on the treatment of multiracial children in South Korea? Yeah right. As it is nobody's buying our magazine. If we did that, our sales figures would hit negative numbers.

There are nights when we sit up all night worrying that there might actually be Middle East Peace. And then we'd be screwed. Completely screwed. What would we even write about anymore, except baby racism and how great Obama is? And nobody wants to hear that last one anymore. Sure we can fire the rest of our staff and just have our AutoWriter2000 do the rest of the articles. It's been doing our entertainment and sports coverage for years and nobody has noticed. But you can only save so much money that way. And sooner or later, they'll come out with an AutoEditor and then it's going to be skiing on the Alps, while we're begging the White House for a job.

Just last night I asked Joanie, "Honey, do you think there will ever be peace in the Middle East?" And she patted my bald head, and said, "Of course not. If there's ever peace in the Middle East, you'll have to get a real job." And I sighed. I wondered if this is how Goebbels felt. The man had a sweet gig, and then it all fell out from under him over that pesky invading Poland thing. Well we don't want to be the next Goebbels. Sure he got to hang out with the man in charge, and even wear a cool uniform, and he's actually a distant family relation, but where's the career trajectory? We might have made old Adolf, Man of the Year in 1938, but we didn't stick around in the bunker while the Yanks and the Brits were bombing Berlin.

That's what it comes down to. Israel is our meal ticket. Or more precisely, Israel at war is. As long as terrorists are killing Israelis, and Israeli soldiers are killing terrorists-- all we have to do is hire some second rate hack, send him to live in a fancy hotel in Jerusalem, and have him file the occasional on how awful the Israelis are to the poor terrorists. It's gold, I tell you. Gold! Occasionally we'll throw it up on the cover, with some illustration of the Star of David being nasty. Instant controversy. Instant sales. Okay maybe most of the actual sales will be to people who take it to the bathroom in bookstores and then put it back on the rack afterward, but an eyeball is still an eyeball. Even if it in the Borders' men's room.

As long as people know we exist, then we are arguably relevant. We might not be profitable. We might have less words to a page than most boxes of cereal. But we haven't been forgotten. I can't count how many times at a cocktail party, I tell people what I do for a living, and they ask if Time Magazine is still being published. "Yes", I tell them, "Didn't you see our groundbreaking cover story on 'What Animals Think About', or our cover story on energy efficiency which featured a lightbulb wearing a sweater (Editor's Note: Yes both of those are real Time Magazine cover stories). What about our latest piece on Jonathan Franzen? Franzen who? Damn it, he's the author of the most anticipated literary soap opera about suburbanites since Harold Robbins. Never mind, next week it's a cover about how evil Israel is!"

You see how it is. We can get only get by so far on Joe Klein's crazy mumblings and stories about famous toilets or how awful Americans are being to Barack Obama. We need Israel. We need it at war, endangered and bombing something or being bombed. Peace for Israel is of course the last thing we want. The last thing any sane journalist tethered to a dying print media wants.

These are scary times. An era when the old certainties no longer apply. When your old career trajectory doesn't make sense anymore, and you worry that in 5 years you'll be applying as an intern at the Huffington Post or writing ad copy for cereal boxes (which is hard because General Mills, unlike Time Magazine actually fact checks). And during scary times, people lean on the things they've always depended on. They turn to hate, and cling to their MacBook Pros and purple prose. They find a hated minority and lash out at it. Just like my great-granduncle Joseph back in Berlin did. It worked for him. It'll work for Time Magazine too.

I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone else. We're frightened little men who long ago crawled into the back pockets of the people we were supposed to be covering. These days we're pushing big government not because we believe in it, but because it's the only force that can stop the internet from smashing our business model, the way Sir Arthur Harris' RAF bombers leveled Berlin. We've carried so much water for Obama that our secret service codename is "Waterboy". We abandoned our ethics, left behind our integrity and now all we have is a determination to vacation in the Alps, twice a year, until our entire profession goes the way of the dinosaur.

With all that in mind, I ask you, can we afford Peace in the Middle East? A thousand times nay, say the hardworking people at Time Magazine, and its associated partners, satellites and coke dealers.

We must stand firm. No peace, today. No peace, ever. At least not until we get a chance to run our Feb 2011 "Israel: The New Apartheid" cover. It has a Star of David with a barbed wire fence across it. Oh did we do that already? We'll run it again anyway. It's not like anybody actually reads our little magazine anyway.

Comments

  1. Poor 'Time'.
    Way past time for them.

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  2. Wasn't Adolph Hitler once Time's Man of the Year?

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  3. 1938, a good year for dictators

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  4. amusingly... (and this is off topic), but Life Magazine, that Time bought and discontinued would actually be a good idea to bring back if they made the publication slick and like a coffee table book... with lots of photos. people like stuff they can collect and put on coffee tables. though I don't want to give them any ideas that would help them. They really don't deserve it.

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  5. Right on target as usual. Unbelievable, yet it is in print...the lies, that is. And they are protected, too....
    Thanks for getting this out there....

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  6. I cancelled our subscription to Time in 1982 after they did their hatchet job on Israel in that conflict. I would like to think I was way ahead of the crowd.

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  7. Anonymous19/9/10

    Brilliant. I noticed that you labeled the piece satire - it deserves a special label 'sad-tire'.

    Time has been using the wash, rinse, repeat method of (mis)reporting on Israel. Is it any wonder it's always so dirty..they only use stagnant water.

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  8. Daniel, brilliant!

    Time is desperately seeking relevancy while it continues to lose credibility. Too bad. It was, at one time in the distant past, a reasonably good news magazine rather than the laughable parody of one that it is today.

    I hope that Karl Vick, Richard Stengel, and their ilk at Time have updated their resumes. I don't see that Time can survive too much longer.

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  9. Good job MLR

    Anonymous, these days news gets fed up the pipeline by anti-israel and anti-semitic blogs, up to the media. That's how the rape by deception story got covered.

    Gary, they're probably already thinking beyond Time. As a print magazine is doomed. And the web version is another Salon, and can liberals really support two Salons.

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  10. Anonymous19/9/10

    are these cover pages of Time Aeal? they pulished such things? I stopped reading Times a long time ago. Maybe there should be a call for all Jewish people to bycott this Fascist magazine. it seems they are hoping Moslems will buy their magazine. help them understand Moslems don't read much. they have Imams and media who fills them with Allah's teachings of hatred and evil all year round. Islam and Christianity are hate-based religions that have been the roots of all the wars in the world for the last 200 years. But they have enough money and population and propaganda power to project their evil on Israel and Jews. the world only needs to open their eyes and study the history a little bit. but unfurtunatley 99 percent of the world have closed mind and only listen to thoes who have more propaganda power.

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  11. People still read Time. That is, if you consider yawning over it in the waiting room at your doctor's office.

    Why do doctors even subscribe to this junk? They think we really want to read it?


    Where oh where would these anti Semitic liberal eggheads be without their editorial spreads about the wretched Palestinians? Who cares about truth when their columnists and photographers need to win awards and retain jobs?

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  12. Anonymous19/9/10

    Amazing, loved the Time cover with the swastica, perfect! We should hit them where it hurts just like they constantly do it to us.

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  13. Perhaps they could save their magazine if they ran a cover story with the title "Why Islam doesn't want peace."

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  14. Its sort of sad that the world doesn't really care about some starving child in Darfur... So much so that Times and other, desparate for profit, descend upon Israel for fodder -shame on them. ...but shame on the world too.

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  15. Anonymous20/9/10

    I agree Miriam.

    But it's as infuriating as it is sad. I just don't get why people don't love Israel. It will never make sense to me.

    keliata forced to post anonymously

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  16. Saoirse O'Malley23/9/10

    Daniel--you are brilliant! Another incredible piece of work.

    @Keli Ata--my daughter's psychiatrist subscribes to Time and the lady seems to agree with the articles. Yes, we're looking for a new psychiatrist to treat our daughter. I don't like the idea of a crazy person treating my mentally-ill child.

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  17. Great job! Keep up the good work over here!

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  18. I quit ordering "Time for Kids" news magazine for my third grade class a long time ago. Woke up and smelled the garbage.

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  19. I emailed the article to Time including my comments


    I am 55 and have been reading Time Magazine since I was able to read. Needless to say, I will no longer purchase your magazine. This article below will tell you why that is the case. I am the son of an Auschwitz survivor, and in my generation, a supposedly respectable publication conjures up the same lies as Der Sturmer about Jews and war mongering. I am also an Israeli who served in a combat unit. I know for a fact that the vast majority of Israelis DESPERATELY want peace. They don't want to go to their 4th or 5th war, or have their sons or grandsons have to go to war again. The Peace Movement in Israel was started by combat soldiers because we understand how ugly war is. Ironically, there is no equivalent to the Peace Now movement in Israel anywhere in the Muslim world, never mind among the Palestinians.

    Israelis remember very well the almost daily homicide bombings in Israel proper during the Oslo negotiations. We remember very well what followed the negotiations at Camp David. We know very well what Hamas and Hezbollah and their lunatic patrons in iran want for us. Yes, we want peace like we want air. We are however quite cynical about peace negotiations while rockets are still being fired at us from Gaza, while Hezbollah arms itself to the teeth, and while their patron in Iran vows to destroy us,

    Shame on you Time Magazine

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  20. Great piece DG!

    I saw this cover awhile ago and it disgusted me.

    I wonder how many trees have died to perpetuate hate against Israel and Jews. No carbon limitations there!

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  21. Daniel,

    I just have to say this article had me laughing so hard that I almost crossed into another dimension - the one where Atlantis is real, whatever it's called.

    Finding out that "Top 10 Famous Toilets" was an actual article, through "Nope, you guessed wrong", was absolutely brilliant.

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  22. Anonymous19/4/12

    I note the Time cover's swastika is not drawn correctly, as drawn and used by the Nazis. The Nazi symbol is a "right-facing" swastika, where the components look like "S's", not "Z's". Trust the morons at Time to muck up this famous socialist emblem.

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