POLITICS MARCH 1, 2012
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Last April, former TNR Senior Editor Jonathan Chait asked a piercing question: “Why Does the Weekly Standard Hate Hippies So Much?” Chait’s pictorial tour of hippies on the cover of the right-wing magazine did little to stop the epidemic. In fact, The Weekly Standard may have taken it as a challenge: In the last six months alone, the magazine has had no less than five covers depicting liberals in long-haired hippie glory.
Sandals? Check. Unkempt hair? Check. Sunglasses? Check. Rolling Stones t-shirt? Check.
Poor George Harrison. The Weekly Standard apparently had a bone to pick with the long-deceased Beatle in their November 2011 issue.
The magazine caricatured the Solyndra saga as President Obama carelessly dumping a load of money on a hippie wearing—once again—sunglasses and flip flops.
In the imagination of Weekly Standard editors, cultural studies professors aren’t just infecting the impressionable minds of America’s youth with the terminology of “hegemony” and “Otherness”—they’re also preaching the scandalous aesthetic of socks-and-sandals.
To be fair, this cover does come somewhat closer to relevance, depicting hipsters with large-framed glasses and cups of coffee. The guy on the left still has The Weekly Standard’s trademark hippie flip-flops, though.
7 comments
I thought that only the British wore socks and sandals . . . Mind you, Rupert Murdoch IS Australian.
- lump516
March 1, 2012 at 2:55am
Whoa, whoa there - hipsters and hippies are totally, completely different! You guys need to get your categories straight! For the record, a $2,000/month studio apartment is closer to the going rents in Williamsburg than it is anywhere in Portland, which suffered a huge housing bust in recent years. You can get studios there for less than half that amount in the hipster neighborhoods, and they are even cheaper elsewhere. I still admire that artist, though.
- wildboy
March 1, 2012 at 8:39am
who the hell wears flip flops in Portland? (or, for that matter, sunglasses) The magazine is run by men who are still pissed off that during the era of free love they couldn't get laid.
- blackton
March 1, 2012 at 12:46pm
Blackton, you (and Ironyroad) (and my Craftsman impact drill) are my heroes. Off target, sure enough, but you gotta admit... the attention to detail by that artist is pretty good.
- mdichner
March 1, 2012 at 1:53pm
blackton...people who live in Portland wear flip flops. It's like asking who wears heavy woolen ponchos in Mexico City? I guess it's all based on your personal acclimation levels. Heck, if the temperature drops below 60 here in New Orleans people break out the puffy winter jackets. And since we're all picking on Portland, I was there for a 4 day conference in November in 2005, which seems eons ago and right before the hipster momentum really picked up and all things Williamsburg in Brooklyn was the hipster epicenter. It was a great city to visit. Very walkable, unseasonably mild weather when I was there, less grey than Seattle (which is even more insufferable as a Pac NW uber-culture hot spot). The city scale was about right but I'm a big fan of medium sized cities like Portland, Denver, Austin, NO and a few others. I can't say that I found it all that insufferable. Certainly less so than Brooklyn or Philadelphia but maybe that's because it hadn't been infected by hipster culture where everyone is a consultant or freelance creative type selling crap on Esty. However, I will say the P.J. O'Rourke piece on baby boomers ruining pop culture was actually entertaining and dare I say...the cover was spot on.
- singlspeed
March 1, 2012 at 2:26pm
Blackton, mdincher, I think the guy on the left in the shades is up from Silver Lake (or maybe Los Feliz) visiting his friends who own the fair-trade artisinal coffee roastery and Etsy boutique in Eastmoreland. That's the only logical explanation for the picture.
- wildboy
March 1, 2012 at 3:26pm
Actually, on the Portland cover, the 25-30 year old guy in the hat and blue glasses is actually a "hipster" type; that's a signature look of hipsters, at least here in L.A. The sort-of John-Lennon guy on the left is indeed a "hippie"-type, but at about age 40-45 he is too young to have been an actual hippie from the era. His "chick" (sorry, gals) to his right is actually a hippie type although pretty young (~20), and so she must be either "John Lennon"'s daughter carrying on the "hippie" tradition, or his girlfriend from a similar hippie-culture family.
- gmck1948
March 2, 2012 at 12:18pm