By Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer
January 9, 2019
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Before getting to the topic at hand, which is not Trump’s address, I just have to say a few things about Trump’s address:
President Trump made his case well on Tuesday night, speaking the truth supported by facts, and his proposals were solid, though I think he could have taken a bit more time with his presentation, just to let it all sink in. He’s the President, after all, and this was his first time to address the nation from the Oval Office. He was on and off the national stage so quickly. It’s not like someone in the wings was going to “get the hook” if he was on a minute or two longer. But he was effective.
The Democratic response was pathetic –- disturbing, even –- in its utter failure to show genuine concern for border security, which they obviously don’t really care about, or address the human toll of illegal immigration. The cold stares from Schumer and Pelosi were the stuff of Edgar Allan Poe (“The Tell-Tale Heartless”?), or perhaps of Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. (The parodies of their bizarre side-by-side appearance are hilarious, though.) It even occurred to me that if Hollywood needs someone to play all the villains Kevin Spacey would be perfect for but can no longer play, they should call Schumer, who showed with this performance that he can be thoroughly unsettling. It’s too bad for the country that these are the leaders we’re stuck with for a while. Trump is on the right side of this fight and he must not cave.
The Chuck & Nancy Show was just one more way in which the anti-Trump “resistance” has shown us the dark, uncomfortable side of politics.
With that said, others can hash out the issue for now. I’ve already had my say (I’m with Chuck Norris!) and there are other things going on in the world.
……………….
Helen Smith at Instapundit has an essay that gets me as happy as the thought of a high border wall. The reason for my joy: She writes about the demise of women’s magazines. And she has the same reaction to that as I do; namely, “good riddance!”
She refers to these magazines as “paragons of social justice” that have been brainwashing the women of America. “Even magazines like LADIES HOME JOURNAL,” she writes, “are infested with left-leaning programming meant more for indoctrination than entertainment.” So true.
The good news is, these magazines are disappearing, at least the print versions. TEEN VOGUE is gone from the racks. SELF is no longer on the shelf. REDBOOK is going online-only. SEVENTEEN will publish only “special issues.” And, to really mark the end of an era, the January issue of GLAMOUR was its last print edition. Of course, the magazine industry as a whole is struggling, but women’s magazines have been hit especially hard. I’d like to think it’s the “get woke, go broke” principle coming to fruition. These magazines are relentless when it comes to the “social justice warrior” take on female empowerment. Gosh, it gets old. It’s like being stuck on campus at an Ivy League school, studying for one’s Gender Studies final. Or maybe --- scary thought --- being stuck inside the mind of the average twenty-year-old.
Smith leans right/libertarian herself and has a hard time stomaching it, too. She notes that these magazines offered careers in journalism to women who were, as she puts it, “foot soldiers for the left.” Putting it another way, they sure wouldn’t want me. Think VOGUE would hire a right-leaning female writer/editor whose job references included Gov. Mike Huckabee? Hahahahahahaha. They wouldn’t hire a conservative Trump supporter even if she were gay, non-white, AND disabled.
On the other hand, that question was purely hypothetical, as no right-leaning female writer/editor whose job references included Gov. Huckabee would ever bother applying for a job at VOGUE. She wouldn’t waste her time, and, besides, she knows she would never be happy working there among all those SJWs. She would definitely prefer to work for Gov. Huckabee, and she isn’t just saying that for brownie points, although she will take them.
Anyway, it hasn’t been that long since fashion magazines were mainly about, well, fashion, and general lifestyle. True, most could probably have been described as center-left. But they weren’t dominated by fawning interviews with “progressive” darlings like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They didn’t repeatedly feature one First Lady on the cover but detest and snub another. They didn’t assume all young women shared the same far-left opinions. They didn’t force-feed viewpoints on abortion and toxic masculinity. They didn’t constantly push androgyny and transgenderism, to the point where it’s just become tiresome.
It’s not that fashion magazines never used to get political; they’ve made political statements through the decades. GLAMOUR magazine was the first to put a black model on its cover, in 1966. It’s hard for us to imagine now how big a deal that was. Teen magazines introduced then-controversial topics such as birth control. Feminist writers Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem did stints at GOOD HOUSEKEEPING and GLAMOUR, respectively. Sensitive issues surrounding the workplace and campus life were covered, right along with movies, books and other popular culture, but it seems that only in recent years has the message become so stridently leftist. After the election of Trump, all the “resistance,” “insistence” and “persistence” exploded, and it became too much to take.
Of course, the online versions of these magazines will be just as far-left as the glossy paper ones. Perhaps even more so. But GLAMOUR is gone from the newsstand, at least, and their biggest regret must surely be that they never had the current First Lady on their cover. I jest.
https://pjmedia.com/drhelen/womens-magazines-dying-good-riddance/
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