Bad Ideas: Four Favorites

There is no inexorable evolutionary march that replaces our bad, old ideas with smart, new ones…. Like crab grass and kudzu, misguided notions are frustratingly resilient, hard to stamp out no matter how much trouble they have caused in the past and no matter how many scholarly studies have undermined their basic claims. (Steven M Walt, Where Do Bad Ideas Come From? Foreign Policy Jan/Feb 2011)

One of the reasons bad ideas seem to linger is that they occasionally work. Some bad ideas are just bad and only seemed to have worked in the past. Other bad ideas once had their day in the sun but have since been outmoded. Other bad ideas are bad simply because they have been done to death. Let us examine four particularly bad ideas which show no sign of going away soon.

1. The Stunt Issue
Magazines are in a bad way of late, so Hil-Gle is basically supportive of any survival tactic that might be tried, More or less. The Stunt Issue, however, has had its day. Our definition of a Stunt Issue is when a magazine suddenly departs from its core niche, generally to explore the niche of another. We are not talking about Cosmo doing a SEX issue or Playboy announcing its Playmate of the Year. That’s hawking your niche. Rather it’s Sports Illustrated doing a swimsuit issue or the news magazines sprouting college guides.

It is the news magazines, all three of them, which have been particularly prone to suddenly jumping from flora to fauna. None of them really does it as well as England’s Economist. Every single issue is a stunt issue of some kind, and in the classic way. As with a newspaper’s special sections, the intention is to reach a whole new crowd of advertisers. It is fine as far as it goes. On top of the usual weighty Economist fare you also get a bonus feature on a focus of some sort, which is usually just as hoity- toity. (And helping one become hoity-toity is the true purpose of The Economist. I speak as a dedicated reader.) Unfortunately our American newsmags do not have any such recourse. They just simply bolt the field whenever there’s a slow news week.

Long time readers will recall our recounting of Newsweek’s grab for pulp fiction fame, which failed to save the magazine primarily due to poor execution. Since Newsweek was transformed into the print blog of the Daily Beast last year and US News has ceased publication altogether, Time has been left alone as the sole news magazine in general distribution. They are now the print monopoly, with a 100% hold on a desirable advertising demographic. This should put them in an entirely golden position, freeing Time to bulk up foreign staffs and launch in depth investigations—two moves which would guarantee a flow of unique material into their pages. With the cuts at newspapers it would be an easy—and obvious—void to fill.



Well, skip that. Like Newsweek, when the news gets slow, Time too reaches for the pulp. This latest one was announced on last Friday’s Morning Joe. As it should happen, this MSNBC program had as one of its regular guests the former editor of Newsweek. Imagine what was going through his head as the editor of Time flopped down this chunk of Science Fiction puffery. Was he trying to rub the poor Newsweek editor’s nose in it?

The cover really isn’t much. Time’s too-cute-to-be-understood title for this is ‘2045 the Singularity’. The basic upswing of this overly imaginative piece is that by the year 2045 man will have merged his senses and bodily functions with those of machines. Time breathlessly claims that through this confluence, people will never again ‘die’. Given that 2045 is about the expiration date for yours truly, I was indeed intrigued.

Yeah, well forget it. Turns out there may well be a simulated me wandering about the Matrix doing pulp magazine history or whatever it is I do, but I will still be quite literally worm food dead. How incredibly underwhelming.



On top of that, they really didn’t sell it all that well. In keeping with our service to all news magazines who attempt to ply pulp fiction water, we have remade their cover as an example. Next time don’t overthink it. If you want to say THE MATRIX is real, do it. Look, all futurism is lies. All you need to do is do it straight and try to be amusing. Singularity? A ‘singularity’ is what happens at the center of a black hole. Any sci fi fan can tell you that.

2. Running For President
You have to wonder what’s going through their minds, sometimes. What normal person would want to be President of the United States—or even a politician in this day and age? Not any, actually. Not in the longest of time.

Given that all potential candidates are a little off to begin with, defining motives involves abnormal parsing. It is only with the ones who know they can’t win that we can even venture rational guesses on. Pat Buchanan ran essentially to increase his stock as a commentator. Pat Robertson ran to increase his standing as a religious leader. Jesse Jackson ran to deflect an investigation into his organization. Sarah Palin may very well run because she might actually win the Republican nomination. But why the hell is Donald Trump running?

Is there something wrong in Trump Land? Or is he seeking to increase his next network deal? It’s one of the two.

But if he tried, could he at least win the Republican nomination. Palin/Trump 2014?

I know we are a little out, but Hil-Gle will go on record predicting a second term for Obama.

3. Playing Hardball With Labor
Despite the paucity of organized labor in the general employment pool, the last few big attempts to break a union have backfired. As I recall, the management orchestrated UPS strike backfired fairly hideously. One wonders what makes the NFL think it can win a lock out with its players? The history of strikes in sports certainly can’t give them much confidence. True, they won the last strike, but that was 20 plus years ago. Since then Baseball nearly crippled itself with a labor action. It still hasn’t come back. The NHL strike didn’t really solve any of that league’s problems. Couple this with the competing United Football League waiting in the wings and the NFL’s actions may have the makings of a modern self-inflicted business disaster. (Bet you didn’t know there was a United Football League. If the NFL blows it, you certainly will.)

4. The Flying Car
Every time I want to wax poetic about how the electric car is the salvation to all of our energy problems, I am reminded of three things: (1) I have yet to even see ONE electric car on the road; (2) electric cars have been manufactured continuously for over 100 years and the concept has yet to catch on; and (3) the Flying Car, the other often predicted next big thing.



About every three years or so there’s another big Flying Car story. It might be the most invented thing in the world. Both the autogiro and the helicopter started off as being flying cars. As opposed to that, they both became “Something Else That Flies But You Still Can’t Park It In Your Garage.” Pictured is the Flying Car in its post WWII iteration. I think they made five of them.

Our cover comic book is from A.A. Wynn’s Ace line of magazines, which seems to have been done by Harry “A” Chesler’s shop. The Four Favorites, who weren’t really a team and seldom ever met each other in their stories, often got into far more harrowing situations on their covers than they ever did in their stories. (This was a problem Superman also had periodically.) It was sometimes unclear which four characters constituted the Favorites. As a group, they didn’t have much in the way of variety. None of them had secret identities or even day jobs. Magno and Lash Lightning had essentially the same powers, as did Captain Courageous and the Unknown Soldier. Captain Courageous and the Unknown Soldier weren’t even people, but rather spirit beings who showed up whenever trouble was brewing—great for the in and outs of four page adventures, but not much when it came to character development. Making it look like you have several appealing ideas when you only have to half thought out ones may be the oldest bad idea of them all.

Next: I am hoping to clean up the website a bit over this next long weekend. If my research comes back, the next blog post will be on a prominent pulp era celebrity.