Upon delving into it, I found that the "What We Lost" cover story was a piece written by history professor Niall Ferguson--using the literary device of having been written 25 years from now, in 2031. I didn't count, but the thing probably ran seven or eight pages, if not more.
There was also a column from Joe Klein on "What Bush Should Have Said" in his speech to the American Legion seeking support on the Iraq war. The literary device here is that Klein writes in Bush's obstensible voice, inventing the speech he wishes Bush had given. Among the eminently predictable blather (especially considering the source) was:
I was going to deliver a speech today in which I said, "The war we fight today is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century."....How clever.
....In the speech I planned to deliver, I would have spoken—too easily, too dismissively—about how previous Presidents pursued a mistaken policy of seeking "stability" in the Middle East, which resulted in the terrorist attacks against us.
In other words, in this week's TIME magazine--one of the nation's two major newsmagazines--a huge chunk of space is devoted to pure fiction. Imagination. Fairy tales. Even more than usual, two of TIME's banner stories this week are complete make-believe.
I guess this is a taste of that piercing analysis we'll be seeing after TIME's much-ballyhooed switch to a late-week publication date.
Related Tags: TIME magazine, Niall Ferguson, Joe Klien, fiction
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