Because I stopped giving a shit about TIME during my sophomore year of college, these days the only times I come across this magazine are either by accident, or when I’m waiting at the dentist’s office for a really, really long time and I’ve already read all their issues of Highlights and Ranger Rick. So it was only a few days ago, as I was walking past the recycling bin at my office, that I finally saw the cover of TIME‘s May 30th issue:
I’ll admit that at first, I was somewhat offended. As a man who aspires to be powerful, I thought it was awfully unfair of TIME to make an overly simplistic and grossly misandrist claim that “Powerful Men Act Like Pigs” just because recently a few powerful men have been caught having extra-marital affairs and one texted pictures of his schlong and another was accused of rape. The big bold headline on the cover should have read, “What Makes Some Powerful Men Act Like Pigs- Not All Powerful Men, Mind You, Just A Minority Of All The Thousands Of Powerful Men In This World.” Though I guess that version is not nearly as punchy as the one TIME went with.
What stung even worse was that they put that “No offense” in tiny, tiny print next to the pig, as if that’s supposed to make it all OK. I wondered if “no offense” was national-news-magazine-speak for “Some of our best friends are men!” or, “We’re not really sexist, but..”
But then, after some thought and reflection, I yanked the splinter out of my dick-hole and stopped feeling so offended. I remembered another TIME-published article I had read recently, one which I saw linked on Andrew Sullivan’s blog. In this article, Joe Klein wrote about how “men are the lesser sex” and that “with any luck, women will be the dominant sex in a generation or two.” And I remember laughing so hard at that! As if women were inherently superior to men! As if a world dominated by women wouldn’t be just as flawed as the male-dominated world we currently have! And as if we should hope for a world not where all genders are equal, but where one gender continues to dominate others! That article, I immediately observed, was obviously another work of brilliant satire from the author of Primary Colors (only this time he wasn’t such a pussy that he had to publish it anonymously)!
And then when I remembered Mr. Klein’s comedic masterpiece, I realized that since I had stopped reading TIME over a decade ago, it must have evolved into a satirical publication that sinks its teeth into all the silly sexist notions that continue to pervade the stupider corners of our modern world. So I stopped being offended, and had a nice healthy belly laugh. Well done, TIME! You really had me there for a minute!
Since I’m something of an aspiring satirist myself, I thought I’d offer my services to your hilarious periodical. Without further ado, here are just a few more cover stories you could run in the near future, should you choose to once again skewer society’s sexism by taking the entire gender population of a large group of people and comparing them to unflattering creatures based on the dishonorable actions of a select few. Enjoy!
