I used to love The New Yorker . I remember feeling outraged the first time I saw Katie Rophie's name credited on a "Talk of the Town" squib because The New Yorker was my community, and I didn't want the author of The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism to be a part of it. Sure, The New Yorker was brain candy compared to The New York Review of Books , and, yes, living overseas in China, I began to find some of The New Yorker 's content less-than-compelling. Still, Jane Mayer, Seymour Hersh, Philip Gourevitch, Elizabeth Kolbert - and the many brilliant short stories - ensured that it was reliably worth reading. Perhaps Lauren Weisberger's worshipful references to The New Yorker in The Devil Wears Prada were the turning point - or perhaps they were only the trigger that made me notice a change that had already occurred - but I've transitioned from a reader of every scrap of text in the magazine, to a picker-and-chooser of articles - and, finally, this morning to a disappointed former acolyte. Sitting in Naivasha, surveying a drought-suffering landscape - including dwindling wildlife forced into ever-closer proximity with humans - I read the "Talk of the Town" from the May 4, 2009 issue (one of the hard copies I toted with me to Kenya). The section included stories about: Texans discussing succession after the provocation of an income tax raise; career counseling for laid-off Wall Streeters retooling for work in start-ups; Dolly Parton's NYC experiences; a paean to provincialism masquerading as an update on the reconstruction of the City Island Nautical museum after a fire; and a breezy piece about Peter Brant's new art gallery, and Jeff Koon's installation of his pieces in it. An assortment of articles more clearly documenting the mass lack of perspective on the part of a self-congratulatory "general interest" (so long as it's generally within a narrow range) audience doesn't exist. Katie Rophie, The New Yorker is all yours. It isn't my community anymore.
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