You can tell an awful lot about a magazine’s readers from a
magazine’s ads. As a frequent magazine writer, I tend to believe
the ads, and to write accordingly, no matter what fanciful reader
profile some editor may spin. It’s simple free enterprise. The
advertisers pay to reach the readers. If they don’t reach them,
they don’t pay anymore.
There’s a reason why so many beer commercials appear on football
games, after all. Have you ever watched some habitual TV show —
say, the Friday night “Star Trek” marathon — and found yourself
watching a commercial for Geritol or for Playtex Panty Liners? “Who
do these people think I am?” you may wonder. Go look in your
bathroom. Those people know who you are.
Let’s see how this reader-viewer-advertiser profile works out in
political life. Let’s create, and then visit, imaginary readers —
based on the advertising messages in each magazine — of the
New Republic and National Review. TNR and NR may
have finely-honed ideas in their editorial departments about who
reads the magazines. What do the ads actually tell us? Who do the
advertisers think are really there?
* * * * *
“You’re late!” says Ms. New Republic, glaring at me from the
front stoop of her brownstone row house. It’s barely dawn. I start
to protest that I got lost in the maze of one-way streets in this
older, central section of the city, but she cuts me off. “If you
want to talk, you’ll have to go on my run with me. Now, stretch! I
don’t want you injuring yourself.”
I do a few obedient toe-touchers, and Ms. New and I take off,
she consulting her watch, I trying to keep up in Hush Puppies. This
woman certainly can run. She’s thin, like the magazine she reads,
and fast and determined. She wears ragged old gym shorts, an Ivy
League T-shirt, and, around her waist, a small black zipper pack in
which (as she later tells me) she carries her insurance cards and
her jingling half-pound ring of keys.
“I’m flying to Paris at nine-thirty,” she tells me as we pound
along the sidewalks. “And I’ve got a class to teach at seven before
I go.”
Ms. New, it appears, runs for half an hour a day. We finish her
regular route, me stumbling after her up the steps of her house. At
the front door, she unlocks three deadbolts and we tumble into a
big, bright kitchen.
“Mineral water? Juice?” Ms. New asks.
“Got a beer?” I croak, thinking of a frosty commercial American
brew.
Apparently not. I settle for water while Ms. New dashes upstairs
for a shower. I peruse the kitchen, apparently the only occupied
room on the ground floor. On the counter, a smiley-face sign
declaims, “Thank you for not smoking.” Cupboards and shelves are
filled with a motley assortment of chunky pottery and glassware, an
espresso maker, books, a set of spring-loaded bookends stuffed to
overflowing with papers that look like insurance policies and
brokerage statements, books, books, and yet more books — serious
books, not a speck of fiction in sight. Through an archway I see
what apparently will someday be a living room. For the time being,
the chamber is dark, and filled with cardboard boxes and filing
cabinets.
The pipes bang as the shower shuts off upstairs. In minutes, Ms.
New reappears, dressed in jeans and a baggy sweater, her red hair
crackling with energy and her green eyes flashing.
Again she checks her watch. “I’ve really got to go,” she says
half- apologetically as she packs a bulky shoulder bag with
passport, ticket, books, and (I presume) insurance identification.
“You want to come to my class?”
I decline. But outside, as she locks her three locks, trots down
the steps, and turns a key in the door of a narrow old garage, I
notice how attractive Ms. New is, how energetic, and I think that I
might like to see her again.
No use. The impulse to speak is scarcely born before she turns
on me with those determined laser emerald eyes and says, “Don’t
even think about it, buddy.”
* * * * *
As I ring the doorbell at Mr. National Review’s house (the
chimes play a sprightly, if slightly discordant, Reveille), I
survey his impressive property. The house, a solid brick two-story
Federal, commands vistas in every direction from the top of a hill.
A Revolutionary war-vintage mortar squats on the front lawn.
“Like that view, huh?” Mr. National exclaims as he snatches open
the door. “So do I. Nobody around for miles!”
As I step into the tall entrance hall, decorated with banners,
pikes, and coats of arms, a throbbing voice envelops me from
speakers hidden — it seems — everywhere. “I believe…for ev’ry
drop of rain that falls…”
Mr. National is shouting something at me. I focus my stunned
attention. He’s twinkling at me, this youthful, silver-haired man
in his gray flannel slacks and cardigan sweater, but I can’t hear a
word. “Know who that is?” he bellows again. “Take a guess!”
“Uh, Vic Damone?” I venture at the top of my lungs.
“William Casey!”
Mr. National disappears to adjust a knob somewhere. The baritone
voice drops to background level. Mr. National reappears, grinning.
“Bet you didn’t know he could sing, did you?” With a wink, he hands
me a cassette box, emblazoned with an American flag and the title,
Songs of Belief. “Little private issue for those of us in
the know,” he explains, winking again. “Come on in the living
room.”
One is struck immediately by Mr. National’s collections. His
living room, lined with shelves, displays powderhorns, thimbles,
decorative plates, pewter, mugs, and steins — every one of them
seemingly stamped or painted in patriotic or conservative themes.
The thimbles, he says, come from his days as a charter member of
Young Americans for Freedom (“a stitch in time…”). The plates
(“mostly for the wife”) show grand American scenes: Eagles,
canyons, mountains, amber waves of grain, family farms. The coffee
mugs memorialize Republican caucuses and conventions back to
1952.
I spend a pleasant, if slightly addled, afternoon with Mr.
National, well fortified with Scotch (“The sun’s over the yardarm
someplace”), firing off muzzle loaders in the back yard and finally
taking a spin in his Model T replica. Yes, we’re drunk, but as Mr.
National points out, we drive only on his property, not on the
public roads. Getting me home again is another matter. Mr. National
calls a cab and I leave my car. Next day, painfully hung over, I
hear my own horn beeping insistently in my own driveway just after
dawn, and find that Mr. National has driven my car back for me. So
I call a cab for him. Nice fellow. A little strange, but
nice.
* * * * *
All right, now let’s tackle The American Prowler. But
wait. We don’t have any ads yet. Get on it, will ya, guys?
