Atlantic Blows Out Candles With Lots of Hot Air

And now it has turned 150. To celebrate, the Atlantic has published a special "150th anniversary issue." And that, alas, is where things went horribly wrong.

The Atlantic's editors got one of these bright ideas that editors get when they spend too much time in meetings. They knew that the magazine's motto, published in the first issue in 1857, promised to defend "the American idea." So they asked a bunch of writers and politicians to describe what "the American idea" means to them -- in 300 words. It probably sounded like a great idea at the time, but reading these 34 mini-essays is like being locked in an airless auditorium and forced to listen to an endless panel discussion entitled "Whither America?: Democracy in the New Millennium."

First of all, nobody knows what the hell "the America idea" actually means. The Atlantic's editors never defined it and these folks can't either. As George F. Will points out in his mini-essay, "there are many American ideas" and it's probably best not to proclaim any of them as "the American idea."

The vagueness of the topic causes two varieties of responses -- ax-grinding and cliche-mongering.

The ax-grinders sound off about their pet peeves. Princeton professor Cornel West denounces "right-wing greed, fear and hatred." Atheist author Sam Harris denounces our "God-drunk society." Christian novelist Tim LaHaye grumbles about "anti-God, anti-Christian humanist educrats." Architect Frank Gehry asks, "Why isn't there a movement that requires real architecture as a priority?"

And novelist Joyce Carol Oates flies off into a full-blown rant: "The American idea has become a cruel joke, a blustery and bellicose body-builder luridly bulked up on steroids, consequently low on natural testosterone, deranged and myopic, dangerous."

Oh, Joyce Carol, you're so cute when you're mad!

The ax-grinders are obnoxious but kind of fun. The cliche-mongers are just plain boring. Nancy Pelosi notes that "our Founders broadened our horizons, expanded our country, and imagined a better world." Arnold Schwarzenegger urges us all to "compromise for the public good and end the partisan bickering that has created gridlock."

But the award for over-the-top cliche-mongering goes to Greil Marcus, the world's most pretentious rock critic, who drones on about "people sacrificing their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to prove that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were at once genies that could never be put back in a bottle and a promise all Americans must keep for themselves."

Wow! Or perhaps Yuck!

The Atlantic's editors call this "a wise, amused, pained and impassioned cacophony." I call it blather and suggest you skip all 28 pages of it.

Fortunately, if you start reading after Page 62, you'll find a typically excellent issue of the Atlantic. There's "I Sing of Fizzy Fluid Retention," P.J. O'Rourke's comic review of the 5,286-page "Historical Statistics of the United States." And an essay by Fallows on what he's learned about America by living in England, Japan and China. And a devastatingly deft dissection of Hillary Clinton by Caitlin Flanagan. And Michael Hirschorn's "Falling Stars," which breaks new ground in the burgeoning science of celebritology, and is also quite hilarious.

Reading this stuff, you realize why the Atlantic has lasted for 150 years -- and why that's a good reason for celebration. Happy birthday.