{"id":574,"date":"2011-11-13T14:01:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-13T20:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/?p=574"},"modified":"2011-11-13T14:16:27","modified_gmt":"2011-11-13T20:16:27","slug":"the-magazine-of-parody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/the-magazine-of-parody\/","title":{"rendered":"The Magazine of Parody"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been taking Harris Online Polls<\/a> since college. In that time, I\u2019ve racked up a lot of rewards for taking all those polls, from gift cards to binoculars to universal remotes to an room air filter, of all things. Recently, though, they changed their rewards structure, and pretty much the only things available are magazine subscriptions. I\u2019m not terribly interested in sports magazines, and less so in so-called \u201cmen\u2019s\u201d magazines (although I have not one, but two subscriptions to Complex<\/a> magazine purchased for me by some anonymous strangers, since 2007). Eventually, I chose a subscription to Forbes magazine, thinking it would be interesting to read a viewpoint that I\u2019m not as familiar with. Little did I know how \u201cdifferent\u201d that viewpoint would be. After reading it for several months, I\u2019m still not convinced that it isn\u2019t an absurdist right-wing Onion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What I expected was something along the lines of mainstream conservative economic thought: lower taxes, less regulation, and so forth. That is certainly well-represented within the pages of the magazine, of course. What I didn\u2019t expect was economic arguments that go completely off the rails, like constant, mind-numbing shilling for a disastrous return to the gold standard. I also didn\u2019t expect the complete contempt for middle-class workers, either, talking about how unproductive and useless all those long-term unemployed are. The belief that hyperinflation is right around the corner is something that I\u2019ve heard from plenty of conservative \u201ceconomists\u201d who don\u2019t know what a liquidity trap is and don\u2019t let the facts get in the way of their arguments, but I expect that in a presidential campaign or on Reddit, not a staid business magazine. Steve Forbes\u2019 introductory ranting about Obama and the tax system was expected, and was often mild compared to the other commentators. Last, but not least, were truly bizarre articles like the one that describes American culture as \u201criding high<\/a>\u201d and offers Patsy Cline as proof (based upon the picture of the author, it\u2019s certainly possible that\u2019s the last singer he has held in high regard).<\/p>\n

The articles aren\u2019t necessarily as bad as the commentary, much like the Wall Street Journal. Every issue has a few good reads about new businesses like Dropbox or what Bill Gates is doing with his philanthropy. However, some of the articles align pretty clearly with the editorial beliefs of the magazine, which frankly is to be expected. From there, you can almost divine the rationality behind the ideology they espouse. For example, if you are in the business of selling $250,000 coats to the wealthy<\/a>, your clientele is going to be the 1%. Moreover, you\u2019re still going to be making more money selling one coat at that price than going the Walmart route of selling 10,000 coats at $20 apiece. If that is your market, then all those people making less than seven figures a year are indeed \u201cworthless\u201d and may as well not exist. The increase in the prices of dresses, shoes, and yachts may even explain why they think inflation is everywhere!<\/p>\n

It would seem fairly obvious to even a child that the super-wealthy can\u2019t exist without us middle-class working folks doing our jobs. CEO salaries don\u2019t exist in a vacuum: it\u2019s the businesses and workers that create the wealth that support the 1%. Like I\u2019ve said before, I have no problem with wealth accumulation at the top as long as it\u2019s accumulating at all levels at the same time. The writers at Forbes, though, often espouse the worst stereotypes that enemies of the rich attach to the 1%, doing themselves no real favors. Sometimes it is so over the top, it does reach parody, although I doubt it is intentional.<\/p>\n

When it comes to a good conservative viewpoint, I\u2019m going to have to stick with FrumForum<\/a> and The American Conservative<\/a>. Although I don\u2019t often agree with what they say, most of the time (with the exception of Pat Buchanan\u2019s rants, which you couldn\u2019t pay me to read) at least they are based in reality. No gold bugs, no magic wands fixing all of Europe\u2019s problems instantly through austerity, and an understanding that long-term unemployment is as much a threat to the rich as the unemployed themselves in the long run. Even the articles I vehemently disagree with don\u2019t leave me rolling my eyes. As for Forbes, though, I\u2019ll still read it, because I know that it won\u2019t be too long before Charles Montgomery Burns<\/a> becomes a commentator and not just a member of one of their lists<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been taking Harris Online Polls since college. In that time, I\u2019ve racked up a lot of rewards for taking all those polls, from gift cards to binoculars to universal remotes to an room air filter, of all things. Recently, though, they changed their rewards structure, and pretty much the only things available are magazine… Continue reading The Magazine of Parody<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[174],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-forbes","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":575,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions\/575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}