It's not just me

Tam sez:

I hadn't read any of the big newsweeklies in quite some time, and so was a little taken aback by the tone of an article that sounded like a collaborative (no pun intended) effort between the Daily Worker and Al Jazeera. Had the rest of the magazine gone this wonky? I clicked on another article at random. Yup, it had. Jeez, this was worse than Earth First! Monthly er, National Geographic.

I've subscribed to National Geographic since 1992. Back in the day, the magazine was actually about geography, with some adventure thrown in to spice things up (I must have read the April 1996 article "Storming the Tower" a thousand times, and the photos still thrill me. That was one of the things I read early on that drove me to keep climbing, and still makes me crave my next little mountaineering adventure...)

In recent years, though, it seems to me the magazine has become little more than Algore's global-warming-the-sky-is-falling-we're-all-gonna-diiiiiieeeee-and-it's-Bush's-fault mouthpiece. The current state of the magazine is a good example of what happens when advocacy is taken too far. They used to make me care by simply showing me the world and letting me drink it in. They didn't have to preach environmentalism, or even suggest it. Reading the magazine gave you an understanding of the value of the world's people and places. That subtlety is long gone. Now every issue practically screams ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY!

Of course, National Geographic could have been that way for years, and maybe I've only recently come to recognize their perspective. I graduated from high school in 1992, after all. My perspective has changed quite a bit over the years.

Miss Fluffy insists on maintaining our subscription. Otherwise, I'd use the money for more ammo so I can study the geography of an earthen backstop and enrich the soil of the earth with more lead.