Politics Through a 'Monocle'
KITMAN, MARVIN
Politics Through a 'Monocle' By Marvin Kitman Last week, the White House received a plan for solving the nation's security problems. "The Government is spending millions to protect...
...In the first place, he hardly ever brushed his teeth—I don't mean he never brushed them, or anything...
...He even quotes Robert Frost correctly...
...I mean every time you pick up a magazine, there's some phony article about them written by a seamstress, or an ex-roommate, or a sailor on a PT boat, for Chrissake...
...We never will attack Bobby," Navasky said...
...At the height of their success," he explains, "they standardized their material, started writing about home and the dog and mother, and with one eye on potential advertisers and the other on an expanding readership, they lost sight of their function...
...We may have to lift our taboo, now that White is in the Supreme Court...
...Karl E. Meyer, editorial writer for the Washington Post, analyzes the administration's new tone in Monocle's preview issue...
...He gets that steely, clipped voice...
...The Open Files Plan is a product of original research conducted at the Trial Balloon Factory, a low-budget RAND-like institution in New York City...
...But I don't feel like going into it in the first place...
...2,000,068 in Canton...
...The bulk of Monocle's subscribers are what the magazine's circulation man has called "Sub Influentials"—legislative assistants to Senators, law school librarians, political scientists—and they do get around in Washington these days...
...He yell, 'You stupid fishhead.' In Japanese that sounds like HARD RUDDER RIGHT...
...The Quarterly continued its leisurely pace while Navasky worked as a speechwriter for Governor G. Mennen Williams of Michigan, before and after the 1960 Presidential campaign...
...With all due apologies to J. D. Salinger and Holden Caulfield, it begins: "In the first place, you've probably read a thousand goddam stories about them already...
...Monocle has a distinguished collection of contributing editors, including Robert Hutchins, President of the Fund for the Republic...
...In the interregenum, while Monocle refinanced its expansion program, its editors did not waste their time...
...publish a new prayer by Eisenhower in 36-point type go in for six-color full-length portraits of Fellini in the nude...
...On the Times, overt display of a sense of humor provokes the sort of suspicion a sex deviate can expect at a policeman's ball " Others have told Navasky that the country is how overripe for satire...
...He keeps the nation informed by using what Meyer calls "The Massive Deterrence Response, frequently modified by a Statistical Twist: "Q...
...Every magazine is edited with a typical reader in mind," Navasky explained...
...1 sold out its 500 copies, and turned a small profit, even though the magazine was supposedly a "non-profit" venture...
...Monocle wanted to buy North American serialization rights to the book...
...Money was Navasky's major concern the past year, and he risked mononucleosis chasing after potential investors...
...thus he would be constantly haggling with his employers over how much the information is worth...
...Navasky is probably one of the few New Frontiersmen who went to Washington for the money— $50 a day...
...But Jack asked us to ask ourselves what Monocle could do for our country, and we decided that what this country needs is a monthly magazine of political satire...
...Even if a spy did find a secret, he couldn't be sure that it really is a secret...
...Besides, I never deal in personalities...
...Someone suggested that as long as we were launching a new magazine," a Monocle editor explained, "we come up with a size that would fit into our launch box...
...Large numbers give me a headache...
...Department heads include Reed Whittemore, editor of Carleton Miscellany, and Fred Redell, professor of law at Yale University and author of Nine Men, a study of the U.S...
...Anyway, my next older brother, Bobby, says it might be libelous and hurt the image...
...Have you heard this one...
...President, what is your position on the the Gregorian calendar...
...To begin his Leisurely Quarterly of Political Satire, Navasky organized a syndicate of financiers, each of whom contributed as much as $10 toward getting the first issue off the ground...
...It's not merely that the average rate of financial return is two cents an hour...
...The Open Files Plan solves the security problem by eliminating it...
...But he says, 'Teddy, if you write about that, I won't campaign for you in Massachusetts,' so I guess maybe I'd better keep my goddam mouth closed for once since I want to beat this McCormack phony—although how a Kennedy can lose in Massachusetts, for Chrissake, I'll never know...
...tell us again how Jacqueline Kennedy is the chic-est...
...His face gets red...
...To avoid congestion in Government offices, all the files should be put in one large clearing house, or Spy Library...
...Yet we know that spies are stealing our secrets...
...It is played with a spinner, which when spun by a player's finger, points to the nearest Communist in a room...
...Marvin Kitman, whose article "New Wave from the Right" appeared in our September 18, 1961 issue, is a satirist who writes for Harper's and, of course, Monocle...
...Monocle's team of backers, who put up $30,000 for the preview issue, include a State Department adviser, a textbook publisher, a public relations consultant for an advertising agency, a Volkswagen dealer, a major tradebook publisher, a law professor whose specialty is anti-birth control laws, a life insurance salesman, a naval officer, an NAACP attorney, and an investment banker...
...Such a need was met in Bulletin #3, issued in February...
...Well, President Kennedy has been in office over a year now and he still hasn't stroked that pen...
...If my recollection is correct, a seven-man task force was appointed under Executive Order 3255 to report back on inter-departmental usages of this commodity...
...When Ike was President," Navasky answered, "everybody recognized he was speaking nonsense...
...Well now, I will say this...
...Tears come to my eyes as I think of comrades who are dead and gone...
...My excursions into irony and satire have always been costly luxuries...
...But when anybody attacks Bobby, the President displays apoplectic symptoms...
...I on bridge serving green tea to duty officer and helmsman," he explained...
...These things—the sort of things to which I assume that your question may refer—these sort of things, as I say, are not subject to the kind of answer, let me put it this way...
...that makes black only black and white only white, but you have to remember this—check me if my memory is wrong, Jim —in this kind of governmental setup we have here, these types of problems, you might say calendrical questions, are best approached in a middle-of-the-road manner, as I believe I have said many times...
...one subscriber sent in a ballpoint pen...
...And in the second place, it wasn't any earth-shaking thing if you know what I mean...
...You are wasting your time if you think America is really ready and ripe for a national magazine of political satire," wrote Russell Baker of the New York Times...
...to attack Murray Kempton...
...The cats will first be unleashed in Vietnam...
...1,345,879 in Cheng-lu...
...The Government is spending millions to protect classified information," it read, in part...
...I know it is destiny...
...The day I visited the magazine's editorial rooms, I found Lingeman deep in translating the work of one of Communist China's leading poets, Mao Tse-tung, discovered in the leading Chinese literary review, Hsiah-Li (Steel Mill Quarterly...
...Big deal...
...Because he always missed his targets, he was given psychiatric treatment for what his superiors felt was an inadequate death wish, and was reassigned to duty as a messboy aboard destiny's destroyer...
...President Kennedy, however, has revolutionized Pressmanship...
...Monocle studies the Kennedy family through the eyes of Teddy in a piece called "Jack and Jackie," written by C. D. B. Bryan, a New Yorker contributor...
...The Trial Balloon Factory was originated shortly after Monocle's editors learned that Chester Bowles, hired as chief idea man in the State Department, had lost his job because he wasn't a good administrator...
...After years of hewing to its leisurely publication schedule—the quarterly usually made it out about twice a year—Monocle has graduated from Yale and is now regrouping its forces to invade what surely is the hellbox of American publishing: the monthly satire magazine field...
...Seventeen for the teen-age girl...
...Under this plan all classified information would be declassified and our files thrown open to the world...
...Monocle doesn't say he isn't absurd on occasion...
...To save Ball from getting bounced for the wrong reason, the Trial Balloon Factory has been wafting out ideas, many of which appear in a preview issue of Monocle's new monthly format, out last week...
...Playboy is for the young man-about-town...
...The magazine's solicitude for its readers is rare...
...Obviously, the White House has run out of ink...
...But anyway, what I will do in this story is try to set the record straight...
...It would have been much easier if we had changed our corporate name to Mononucleonics," he now says...
...In the current Monocle, for example, the editors picked Al Capp to attack Senator Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley Jr...
...President Eisenhower was known for his exotic syntactical flights that bemused and bewitched "Q...
...It's called 'Moonlight on the Yang-tse' " I sit alone in my room and gaze at the moonlight on the Yang-tse...
...And— I think I shall play my flute...
...Since most of its contributing editors and department heads are scattered across the country, the burden of editorial work at Monocle is borne by Navasky and his associate editor, Richard Lingeman, a quiet-spoken native of Indiana who specializes in Oriental Studies...
...Monocle reasoned that George Ball, Bowles' replacement, would be far too busy administering to have any ideas of his own...
...After they have cleaned up the rats there, they will be turned loose in other troublesome countries in Southeast Asia...
...Monocle used its Special Emergency Bulletins like the Army and Navy—whenever they were needed...
...We're not saying he reads Monocle, but his advisers do...
...For just that reason, the United States needs a magazine that can penetrate the Administration smoke screen with a rude, conscious stare of disbelief...
...Monocle candidly admits, in a circulation promotion letter, that it "does absolutely nothing for you...
...Before Monocle went monthly, Lingeman worked as translator for Ichiro Kuichi, Japanese-speaking author of "Destiny's Deckhand: the Autobiography of a Seaman on the Japanese Destroyer that Rammed the PT-109...
...He later distinguished himself as the only Kamikazi ever to fly 10 missions...
...For that reason, Monocle admits to having one sacred cow...
...I mean he just didn't brush them any three goddam times a day, that's all...
...There is a difficult problem in balancing various interests, but when the task force has completed its assignment, I fully intend to see that the results are made available...
...Who was that fellow Gregor...
...Monocle has done its market research homework, and we have discovered our average reader is Kennedy...
...McCall's for the woman in the house...
...My flute lies forgotten at my side As I listen to the music of the wind among the pines...
...An airlift of cats should be organized immediately under the supervision of the Cat Conservation Corps (CCC...
...I should think that what you'd really like to know is how they met and all that sort of thing, what their lousy first date was like, where they went and all that sort of gunk...
...If Monocle seems obsessed with President Kennedy, there is a reason...
...1 drop tea on duty officer's lap...
...The real character is Bobby...
...This sequence in the book runs from Page 109 to 113, and is very important...
...Many other top assistants in the White House also take the magazine, but in their secretaries' names...
...Buckley himself was a target in an earlier Monocle (in a spoof titled The Irrational Review), as were the Statue of Liberty, Hans Christian Andersen, Abraham Lincoln, Billy Graham, the New Germany, George Kennan, letter-writers to the Times, the flag, and Miss Rheingold...
...President, what are your plans for dealing with the surplus stockpile of ostrich feathers accumulated under our barter program...
...It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Monocle, a magazine which began giving free advice in 1957 as a Leisurely Quarterly of Political Satire edited by students at Yale Law School...
...Is very foggy night...
...Therefore, as a public service, Monocle presents the Ink for Jack campaign in the public interest...
...Besides, Bobby hasn't mattered too much so far...
...But Kuichi grew impatient with the magazine's irregular publication schedule—he was anxious to start work on his next book, "Profiles in Cowardice"—and went back to Japan convinced there was no market in America for a book about the PT-109...
...The new Monocle, as a result, is 5½" × 11", about as tall as The New Leader and as wide as Partisan Review, dimensions the editors felt would be most practical for reading in fallout shelters and space capsules...
...Unlike Popular Home Psychiatry, Nuclear Bomb Testing for Boys and other How-to magazines, Monocle is designed to disprove rather than improve your mind...
...Whizzer White has...
...Supreme Court...
...332,691 in Kwang-li...
...Navasky is monomanie in his belief that the nation is ready for Monocle, a belief not shared by all the magazine's sympathizers...
...We urge all good Americans to send a bottle of ink to the White House Hundreds of bottles of ink poured into the White House...
...The magazine and its various subsidiaries—which include Hole Beautiful, "the magazine of gracious survival," the first magazine for shelter owners, and the previously mentioned Trial Balloon Factory—share a two-room ground-floor suite on New York's West 69th Street...
...he served as an editorial consultant for the 1961 U.S...
...Being impartial, it attacks everybody: Democrats, Republicans, Trotskyite Deviationists, John Birchers, Time Inc.-ers, Communists, Fascists, Vegetarians, Free Silvers, White Slavers, proletarians and antidisestablishmentarians...
...So we are compromising on a monthly...
...Redell heads up the magazine's limericks department...
...They became stuffy, standardized and devitalized...
...President Kennedy, however, has charmed the articulate, critical, intellectual community...
...The United States hasn't had a magazine comparable to La Canard Enchaîné of France, Simplicissimus of West Germany, Candide of Italy or Punch of England for more than two decades...
...the New Yorker for the old lady in Dubuque...
...No longer will the government help them do their job by stamping 'Top Secret' on the most important information...
...Salinger has passed me a note indicating that the date will be announced some time in the future...
...Obedient helmsman swings wheel to right...
...Each American President has his own style in dealing with prying reporters at the weekly news conferences," he writes in a study titled "Presidential Pressmanship: A Guide for the Executive Gamesman in the White House...
...Navasky thinks he knows why the last successful American satire magazines— Puck, Judge and the old Life—eventually failed...
...Kuichi first met the future President Kennedy by accident...
...Who needs a satire magazine now that Eisenhower is out of office...
...one critic asked...
...As most monthly magazines go, Monocle is as oddsized as some of its proposals, being neither king-sized nor compact...
...3,337,658 liquidated in Suchow Province...
...Arthur Sclesinger Jr., while still a professor at Harvard, was one of Monocle's earliest subscribers...
...What we really think this country needs is a weekly magazine of political satire, but Jack, despite his prowess as a rapid reader, doesn't have time for a weekly...
...4,320,613 in Yatsu...
...That task force, I believe, has held three meetings, one on August 27, 1961, another on December 4, 1961, and a final one on March 13 of this year...
...Thousands of spy-hours would be consumed in wading through mountains of dull Government documents looking for a secret...
...The vexing Vietnam situation, for example, was tackled this way: "The real problem in Vietnam is not Communists...
...The text, printed on a blotter, read, in part: Dear Friend: During the 1960 Presidential campaign, candidate Kennedy said that by issuing an Executive Order, President Eisenhower could have ended discrimination in housing "with a stroke of his pen...
...In the first place, they had met before he went to Washington...
...Commission on Civil Rights Report to the President...
...Under legislation enacted by the 14th Congress on October 2, 1863, passed, as I recall, by 67 to 14 votes, there is a limit of 2.4 million tons set on surplus stocks...
...They invented a game, called "The John Smirch Society...
...Spying would become a tedious low-paying job, stripped of all its cloak-and-dagger glamor, and the Russians would have as much trouble hiring good spies as Time magazine has finding competent researchers...
...They ended up catering to rather than questioning the status quo...
...But I don't know why everyone's interested in my oldest brother...
...others sent checks to Monocle's circulation department, fearing they hadn't been receiving the regular Leisurely Quarterly because their subscriptions had run out...
...Monocle is unique, too, in its determination to be offensive...
...The innovator of these unorthodox publishing policies is Victor S. Navasky, a moon-faced 29-year-old lawyer who, when launching Monocle in his postgraduate days at Yale, gave away free subscriptions to the magazine at $1, the year...
...As Homer Bigart of the New York Times wrote in a recent dispatch from Vietnam: 'American DDT spray killed the cats that ate the rats that devoured the crops that were the main props against Communist agitation in the central lowlands.' As a result, 'the hungry, embittered rural population is tending to support the Communist insurgents.' "Obviously, instead of guns, tanks, and jets, what we should be sending to Vietnam are cats, preferably Siamese cats, who know that part of the world far better than American GIs...
...And I'm sick and tired of all those phonies who say they could tell by the way he brushed his teeth at Choate, for Chrissake, that he would become President of the United States...
...We don't especially like the notion of Monocle's regulating its flow of ideas by mooncycles, which is what a monthly publication comes down to," Navasky explained...
...All of this is compatible with Monocle's editorial policies: "The views of our contributors, no matter how conflicting, are necessarily the views of the editors...
...Issue No...
...If we attacked Bobby, he would be forced to reject the whole Monocle package...
...The beauty of this plan is that it would thoroughly confuse enemy spies...
...They also launched a bold new concept in publishing, Special Emergency Bulletins...
...Next I hear crunching sound...
...Kuicki enlisted in the Japanese Navy as a Kamikazi pilot the day after Pearl Harbor...
...When Williams entered the State Department he invited Navasky to follow him, but Monocle's editor decided to go home and tend his own grass roots...
...He did take on one assignment in the New Frontier...
...The editors at Monocle have only one reservation, now that they are going monthly...
...he asked...
...Concentrate on articles about menstruation aimed at adolescent girls...
...Before Monocle graduated Yale—the first magazine ever to graduate, according to its editor—circulation rose 600 per cent...
...The other weekend he came up to spend a night with me, and all he did was sit in the bathtub with an American flag on top of his head reading Horatio Alger stories, for Chrissake...
...He hasn't even been running the Justice Department...
...718,363 in Peking...
...In fact, it will heighten your power of negative thinking...
Vol. 45 • May 1962 • No. 10
