Adbusters #54: Enough

No, it's not convention related. It's not even about the election! Aren't you relieved?

The six month odyssey which began with a deliberately provocative, if vague, attack on Jewish neo-conservatives is now over. I am no longer a subscriber to Adbusters. My initial reaction to the neo-con list was to call for deeper, not shallower, analysis. There were other troubling articles in that issue as well. The next issue was, frankly, boring, and the current issue is no better.

Another round of letters in response to the anti-semitic article (though none noting the connection to the other articles in that magazine) were published, interspersed with bios of Bush and important advisors that is supposed, I think, to emphasize the point that the leadership's religion and identity matters; apparently Christian Zionists are as much a problem as Jewish ones, now, but it's still shallow, US-centric, stereotyping. The letters were rehashing arguments which were pretty thoroughly hashed before (and which continue to be hashed on HNN on a regular basis), concluding with a repetition of Editor-in-chief Kalle Lasn's rather lame attempt to excuse his provocation by pointing out that a few substantive issues got discussed in the process.

Apparently the magazine went to the publisher before the website went through its latest redesign, because the letters section concludes"The debate continues at www.adbusters.org" but I can't find a comments section or discussion anywhere.

But that's not why I'm canceling my subscription. The magazine was getting a bit stale even before this round of fiascos; the latest issue is just boring. Same issues (which were interesting, when they first came up), same graphic dissonance (which was bracing when they started doing it), a few interestingly juxtaposed and captioned pictures (but nothing that was really thought-provoking, just snide). That's it. I used to look forward to the arrival of Adbusters, and devour it and think about it, learn from it. Now, it's just a paper pose, activism limited by its inability to consider serious subversion instead of self-congratulatory brattiness.

So, now that World Press Review is gone, I'm down to two non-professional magazines: Z Magazine and Fantasy & Science Fiction. I've got nothing in between except History and Japanese Studies journals. And blogs, but you can't read those in.... Oh, well.