Ladies' Home Journal Channels Bush Propaganda

[True_Blue]

At first glance, Peggy Noonan's interview with President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush in the October Ladies' Home Journal seems like a fluff piece about the first family.

At one point, Noonan describes Bush as "a loyal son who told us that his relationship with his father has undergone change. He is a man in love with his wife. He is a father bemused by the strength and independence of his daughters." This may not sound like objective writing exactly, but it's the kind of harmless personal-life homage that could appear in a "shelter" category magazine about a first family named Reagan or Clinton.

At another point, Noonan inanely asks Laura Bush, "When your husband is the leader of the Free World, is it still possible for you to get irritated with him and yell at him over stuff?" The question, straight out of a 1950s homemakers' magazine, assumes that today's women don't have any political concerns and implies that the readers of Ladies' Home Journal are only interested in learning whether the leader of the world's superpower remembers to pick up his towels or put the top back on the salsa jar.

Still, while this kind of thing might make you cringe, it doesn't necessarily look like a serious subversion of editorial objectivity. But look again. Watch how a one-sided endorsement of the president and his policies – just as the White House's political standing is sinking and women's support could be oh so helpful – surges forth on the article's current of gushing sentimentality.
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17029

[petersjo]

1. I had enough of Peggy Noonan

and her right-wing drivel a long time ago. I no longer buy or read the LH Journal specifically because of her. I don't need women's magazines propagandizing me.

[Fitzovich]

2. I don't read LHJ

But, perhaps a few emails to the editor explaining our displeasure would be in order.

[izzie]

5. She always makes me turn off the TV.

Is she Matthews lover or something? I gave up on his TV show she was on so often. We do now know why Reagon sounded so stuped , she wrote what he said.

[flamingyouth]

3. My mom described this interview as "porn"

She asked, "I wonder if she masturbates while thinking of Georgie? No, wait, Peggy wouldn't masturbate. She's too boring."

I love my mom.

[RuB]

4. Noonan talks like she's on LSD describing the colors of the universe.

She's proof that inspite of having a degree, you can still be a stupid human being.