Time certainly seems to have MovedOn

It's been a long time since I read a newsmagazine. I get headlines from Yahoo and a slew of RSS feeds aggregated at bloglines, and analysis from a handful of blogs I read semi-regularly. But the current issue of Time had Darth Vader's visage staring out at it, so I forked over the four bucks. I figured it'd be a nice thing for my Star Wars-besotted preteen son. Hoo boy, was I in for a rude awakening. There is a decent article on the final episode of the Star Wars saga. A bit thin for psuedofanboys like yours truly who have devoured the behind-the-scenes goodies at Hyperspace (the members-only section of starwars.com), but not bad. Not much in the way of spoilers, and a decent if lightweight exploration of hte dramtic sweep of the saga. The interview with Lucas provides interesting insight into the man who never really wanted to be defined by the space epic, and who offhandedly describes himself as a San Francisco liberal. But... Next comes, "How Star Wars Saved My Life," by a guy who as a seven-year-old dealt with his "confusing" crushes for the other boys in the neighborhood by becoming a Star Wars geek. They couldn't find a straight person whose life was changed by Star Wars? And just what the heck difference did the kid's nascent sexual persuasion make w/r/t his becoming a geek, or vice versa? Exactly nothing - it's totally and utterly gratuitous. Elsewhere, an article on the Christian college students on secular campuses (a growing demographic, according to the author's statistics) begins with two women kissing at a drunken frat party. (At least the article treats the Christian students it describes with respect.) There's a snarky item about a "creationist" museum of earth history founded by a "right-wing zealot and notorious anti-Semite." Later in the magazine is a full-page ad for P-FLAG, and the final commentary is by an author who flaunts her "Volvo-driving, pro-abortion rights, pro-gay-marriage, liberal credentials" as a prelude to ripping on a new Florida gun law. I knew things had gotten bad at the venerable newsweekly, but this was a real shocker.