JONAH GOLDBERG’S RESPONSE TO THE COVER OF “ROLLING STONES’….BEST OF ALL!!!
THE JONAH FILE NATIONAL REVIEW
Welcome to the United States of Trolling
In case you didn’t know, trolling is one of those Internet words the kids today use. The Urban Dictionary has a series of entirely serviceable definitions of the term. But the gist of it boils down to pretending to be serious while saying something outrageous in an effort to really piss people off for the sake of pissing people off.
I will be the first to confess that we at the Goldberg File are not strangers to the practice because, well, it’s fun. As my favorite Russian proverb goes, “If you see a Bulgarian in the street, beat him. He will know why.”
More relevant, journalism is a lot like Sara Lee’s Home Style Troll Pie (“Now with at least 10 percent real troll!”), the troll is simply baked in. That’s because trolling is often in the eye of the beholder. One man’s trollery is another man’s speaking truth to power. Writers are supposed to be provocative. Good writing often involves stating truths boldly and clearly. (For instance: Harry Reid smells vaguely like stale corn chips, failure, and cat urine; on this there can be no debate.) A dedicated Communist or Nazi who reads Orwell probably won’t think Orwell is a profound witness to evil, he’ll think Orwell should live under a bridge. The moment we try to cut through the white noise of life and synthesize a simple truth, we invariably generalize. And any generalization will seem unfair to the exceptions who prove the rule. (This is one reason why writing about issues like race and gender are so perilous. No matter how true the generalization, the exceptions must be treated like the rule. More on that in a bit.)
Trolling Stone
Anyway, I suppose I should get to the point. As I’ve written before, all poisons depend on the dosage. A little salt makes food tasty, a lot of salt is lethal. My concern is that the sodium content of American society is approaching fatal proportions.
Consider the entirely intended controversy over Rolling Stone‘s new cover of that murderous loser Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Now Rolling Stone has been a really lame magazine for a very long time. I’m talking about the non-music-industry coverage, since I’ve never had much interest in reading how Hair Bands find their muse.
On the few occasions I’ve picked up Rolling Stone in the last 15 years, it’s always seemed to me to be the print version of the judges’ table on Animal Planet‘s Pet Star — a roving agglomeration of has-beens and sell-outs eager for a check in return for the cachet of their faded glory supported by a bunch of people just happy for a little attention. In the print version at least, the political orientation of the magazine has long been driven by a bundle of hoary clichés about the inherent radicalism of young people, particularly the notion that capitalism is antithetical to the interests and aesthetics of the young. This sort of thinking is what fueled both the Occupy Wall Street movement and the coverage of it. The false premise underlying it helps explain why OWS fizzled out like a wet match rather than igniting a populist prairie fire. From what I can tell, the average young person is far more interested in getting a good job or starting a career than living on a kibbutz or bringing down The Man, but that is too inconvenient a fact for the Jann Wenners of the world. You have to wonder what serious Marxists think of such spectacle. The magazine eagerly turns itself into a cog for the mass-marketing operations of huge conglomerates promoting centimillionaire populists like Bruce Springsteen and allegedly radical rappers who’re more interested in bragging about how much money they make than tearing down The System.
Oh, and let’s not give in to the seductions of nostalgia and think the rock-and-roll industry was ever just “about the music.” The essence of marketing to young people — in politics and everything else — is necessarily condescension. For instance, take a look at this ad from 1968. It shows a bunch of long-haired protesters in one of The Man’s cages. The headline: “But the Man Can’t Bust Our Music.”
Pssst! Kids, The Man thinks you’re stupid.
Anyway, I agree with everything Jim Geraghty says about Rolling Stone. He’s right: Running a print magazine is hard enough, never mind aiming one at the one demographic most solidly hostile to reading on paper (or even reading at all). The Tsarnaev cover is nothing more than an attempt to troll the country in the hope that the ensuing controversy will fool a bunch of idiot kids into confusing the controversy for edgy rebellion. I can only assume we’ll look back on this lame “Hail Mary” as a symptom of the magazine’s interminable death rattle.
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