You Call THIS a Magazine?

Why on earth would anyone want to read People magazine?

I admit that I used to read it, and that I actually thought of it as a thinking person's National Enquirer; then one day I grew up and realized that a "thinking person's National Enquirer" was a contradiction in terms. People in fact is an anthology of the worst of American journalism, offering celebrity lowdowns to readers with grade-school literacy levels who aren't sophisticated enough for USA Today, and is an outlet for celebrities themselves to offer their side of a story. Celebrities love this magazine because they can control the flow of information about themselves through exclusive interviews and profiles, which they can't do with the supermarket rags.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, though, and there have been isolated incidences when People has published some articles with something resembling insight. They publish the occasionally quirky profile on, say, the Indiana grandmother biking across America for better low-cost housing, and they did a thoughtful piece on New Jersey governor Jim Florio in 1993 when he was running - unsucessfully, as it turned out - for a second term. They also have (had?) a good movie critic in Ralph Novak. But even People magazine's best moments aren't exactly Pulitzer-caliber writing. And their profiles on ordinary folks are more jive than insightful.

There's really no reason to read it other than for light entertainment purposes, and we have television for that. And in this post-9/11/01 world, where freedom of the press means everything and the media ought to focus on issues with more substance, People is just one more useless magazine cluttering up the shelves.

Ditto the celebrity home design magazine Architectural Digest. Don't let the name and the classy layout fool you; it has nothing to do with architecture and everything to do with stars like Larry King showing off their tastelessly opulent houses. It's worse than People because, unlike People, Architectural Digest pretends to be grand and sophisticated when it's really pretentious and stupid.

And I don't even want to talk about In Style.