It was fitting that lots of power people, including President Clinton, flocked to Tuesday night’s 75th anniversary party in New York for Time magazine.
If nothing else, as its March 9 anniversary issue concedes, founder Henry Luce was always more than attentive to American power.
The issue is a keeper, less because of somewhat precious essays about what undeniably is the century’s most influential magazine. For example, we could have been spared word that, “In the ’60s, during Vietnam, Time was caught in a general American degringolade, a deconstruction of established authority from the President on down.”
No, it’s more due to the reminders of where the country has gone and how Time, in its hugely influential and idiosyncratic way, dissected all with a very self-conscious air of authority (bigshots were “famed,” not famous, and “potent,” not powerful, and no accolade was greater than being termed “able”), if not necessarily perfect judgment (check out early dispatches on Adolf Hitler and on the 1929 stock market crash, which it thought would have fleeting impact).
And many of the tidbits printed here, excerpts from larger pieces way back when, are just nifty to read.
“Late one evening last week Capt. Charles A. Lindbergh studied weather reports and decided that the elements were propitious for a flight from New York to Paris,” it wrote in the May 30, 1927, issue.
“He took a two-hour sleep, then busied himself with final preparations at Roosevelt Field, L.I. Four sandwiches, two canteens of water and emergency army rations, along with 451 gallons of gasoline were put into his monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis. `When I enter the cockpit,’ said he, `it’s like going into the death chamber. When I step out at Paris, it will be like getting a pardon from the governor.’ “
A year earlier its book section included a review of “In Our Time,” from the pen of a “young new U.S. writer, who instinctively differentiates between the hawk of living and the handsaw of existing. He appears to have lived considerably himself, in unusual ways and places.” Time knew right away that Ernest Hemingway was one to watch.
The issue takes us through the succeeding decades and is a rich historical primer. We find America’s rise to world power after World War II and dramatic domestic change and conflicts symbolized by a joyful Jackie Robinson integrating baseball and a despondent Lyndon Johnson deciding that the Vietnam War precluded his running for re-election.
There’s much, much more, including its obvious sensitivity to technological change and behemoths such as Microsoft. Its solicitous coverage of Bill Gates reminds one that it remains attentive to power.
It’s unclear what the future holds for institutions such as the weekly magazine, which may increasingly be driven to put stories on a Web site lest they seem too moldy by the next week.
It’s likely that they will, especially as they merge with our sources and distributors of information, remain far more potent than the doomsayers predicts, a good deal less than their own corporate executives hope.
Regardless, this issue reminds one that Time, more than anyone in its field, has had a hell of a run.
Quickly: Budd Schulberg, whose better-known writing efforts include the film “On the Waterfront,” debates whether Mike Tyson should step into the ring again in the premiere, May issue of Bert Sugar’s Fight Game, which seems unlikely to be the next Time. . . . Feb. 28 Slate is excellent in dumping on the liquor lobby’s case against lowering the minimum blood-alcohol level of someone considered drunk. . . . March Consumer Reports tests 1,000 fresh chickens from supermarkets and specialty stores and finds more than two-thirds contain harmful bacteria, including salmonella. . . . The March issue of Conde Nast Traveler, the best travel monthly, leaves no doubt about the increasing, fare-driven segregation being practiced by the airlines in “Welcome to the Underclass.”
