The New York Times Magazine

Back in the 60’s pre-adolescent boys and sometimes their fathers eagerly awaited The New York Times Magazine for the lingerie ads. By then the publication was an old warhorse, but a stately one with the kind of in-depth pieces that The New Yorker is singular in running today. Some of those pieces became celebrities in their own right and are still remembered. Today you get lost in the loopy graphic design of the post-modernist skeleton of a magazine-that-once-was before you can find any ads or articles. Making your way through the Times Magazine graphics makes the Amazonian rain forest look like a piece of cake. Perhaps the design is there to cover up the vapid content. If you want a taste of the great ideas and news coverage that once characterized the Times Magazine you have to go to what is now the best section of The Times, the Week in Review. Once called The News of the Week in Review, this newly revamped section has intellectual firepower while its fey cousin is only a poseur, a restoration fop, a dandy living in the house of an Enlightenment intellectual. It’s hard to believe that these are two sections of the same paper. Of course if you’re a reader of the Thursday or Sunday Styles sections you’ll understand that there’s plainly a cabal in The Times establishment. The lingerie may be hung out to dry, but there are boys and girls who just want to have fun.