A sign of how pathetic Mother Jones is is that they recently rated my institution, James Madison University, as one of the ten most "activist" campuses in the US. To say this is a joke is not even funny. This was done on the basis of "community volunteerism," sheesh. Unfortunately JMU is also home to the self-proclaimed largest Young Republican chapter of any campus in the US, a chapter full of nuts for Ollie North who were so extreme a film was made of their absurd and scary antics. Come to think of it, I suppose this constitutes some sort of "activism"... :( Barkley Rosser On Fri, 4 Sep 1998 16:31:34 -0500 (CDT) jf noonan <jfn1 at msc.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Sep 1998, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > >While I never felt the caliber of intellectual or political discussion at
> > >Mother Jones to be that high,
>
> Neither is what goes in the magazine.
>
>
> > >Craddock is correct that the race issue, and the one on spirituality that
> > >followed, incensed some members of the board. I can't claim credit for the
> > >spirituality issue, though I thought it was well done. It was mandated by
> > >Klein (the same guy Craddock claims eschews soul-searching essays for
> > >hard-edged political investigations) and brilliantly executed by Marilyn
> > >Snell. The criticism of it, repeated by Craddock, that spirituality has
> > >nothing to do with progressivism, and had no place in the magazine, is
> > >narrow and dumb. The names of Frederick Douglas, Ghandi, Cary Nation,
> > >Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dalai Llama come to mind.
>
> Cary Nation? A progressive? The Dali fucking Lama, a progressive?!?
> No wondor they didn't see anything wrong with the race issue; these
> people are what they consider progressives.
>
> In the early 80's, I used to subscribe to MJ. It wasn't great then,
> but it is surely insipid now. I read the parts of the spirituality
> issue that they had on the web, it was the same sort of pablum that
> you get from Time or Newsweek (one of which did a similar cover right
> around the same time). But the race issue, I actually went and bought
> and read it cover to cover. That issue was really revolting.
>
>
> --
>
> Joseph Noonan
> jfn1 at msc.com
>
>
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu