Screw Luce, or, No TIME for you, Left

Murray Kempton (1917-1997)

Via Jess Nevins at Not by the Direct Method:

Murray Kempton on Time magazine

This bit endlessly amuses me:

…the man who conceived this postcard could have sent me a page from Fanny Hill day after day and never have come close to the depths beyond decent expression that he had plumbed within me by the mere mention of Time magazine. My hatred of Time is my one unbridled lust. If the pornographic impulse is an obsession with the contemplation of a debased object, then I have a dirty mind about Time.

For example, I could not imagine myself participating in an obscene telephone call except in response to a polite inquiry from a gently nurtured young lady identifying herself as a Time researcher. Young men from Time are the only ones I meet on a story whom I automatically identify as enemies rather than colleagues. As a slaughterhouse of moral integrity, Time is the Verdun of the young….

I remember hearing a Kluxer in Little Rock call a young man from Time a liar because he had gotten an interview on the plea that the North needed to know the Klan’s side of the story and then the Kluxer had read the result. I do know what special places in hell are reserved for editors who will encourage innocent youth thus to place itself at a moral disadvantage to a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

But let me cease this public surrender to thoughts of which I am ashamed by saying that, if I were conscripted to execute the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party, I would trust myself to do the job with solemnity and sorrow, yet I would machine-gun the entire board of editors of Time in a fit of laughter. That is the only orgy with any appeal to my fantasies….

Ginzburg’s first cover [of Fact magazine - Jess] was emblazoned with something like: “What Time did to me” and a list of victims detailing their experience. The authors included James Gould Cozzens, Bertrand Russell, David Merrick, P.G. Wodehouse, Dwight MacDonald, Mary McCarthy, John Osborne, Eric Bentley, Tallulah Bankhead, Senator John McClellan, Conrad Aiken, and Igor Stravinsky.

Now this is an extraordinary author’s list for a new magazine. It is possible that some of these people would not write their children unless a stamped self-addressed envelope were sent in advance; being professionals, they work only for pay. Yet Ginzburg got them all for free and writing from the inmost reaches of the heart, just for a postcard offering them a shot at Time. Now there’s a man who knows how to exploit perversions.

Two more bits of fugitive Kemptoniana:

Harry Truman's Plain Speaking is as

powerful an argument for measured and

restrained discourse as Deep Throat

must be for long underwear.

Alger Hiss always made his debut

escorted by the gods: He came to

Washington with a reference from Felix

Frankfurter and he went to Lewisburg

[penitentiary] with a reference from

Frank Costello.