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I miss the old-style Reader's Digest. The one with artwork on the back and where the monthly WordPower quiz was actually somewhat challenging. They revamped the magazine a few years back and it seems really dumbed down. I stopped subscribing shortly after that. It was always bit nostalgic to have around the house....
I agree with this. There used to be some really good, informative articles in Reader's Digest.
If anyone is looking for a good magazine with articles that inform and make you think, I recommend The Sun Magazine. No advertisements--it's supported by donations and subscriptions/sales only.
... I also loved subscribing to the weekly Saturday Review, when Norman Cousins had built it into a serious literary success....
Yes, I miss it too. It was a fine magazine.
There was an English magazine called Country Life that I enjoyed very much too, staid by U.S. standards but I liked it very much. I think it is still around but the last time I saw it, a good number of years ago, it had become dumbed down and glitzed up.
I miss Discover magazine, the way it was before Bob Guccione took it over, and it became all flashy and less scientific. What do you expect when you put a T&A guy in charge of a science magazine?
I also miss the small TV Guide with the listings of all the shows every time of the day. A few years ago, they made it a larger-size magazine that's nearly all articles & features, and not so much about TV listings. If I'd wanted People magazine, I'd have bought People magazine.
If I'm ever home on a weekday, I don't want some grid telling me what's "typically" on every weekday; I want to know what's actually on--if it's a show, what episode, and if it's a movie, exactly what movie it is. If I'd wanted some generic list of what "might" be on, I'd look at the stupid free listings in the newspaper.
Sure I sometimes check the TV Guide website, but it's a pain, with all the pop-ups, so now I pretty much just flip through the channels like a guy.
I like to buy old magazines at garage and estate sales. I have a couple of Life magazines and a Good Housekeeping and a Time magazine. Some of the articles are still great to read, and the advertisements are both funny and sad. Example: An airline ad in a 1969 Life magazine with photos of white and Asian airline stewardesses proclaiming that on their flights to "the Orient", they now have Americans girls to make you feel at home and Orientals to get you where you're going. I showed this to my 19-year-old daughter. She was horrified...
I can't see a thing to be horrified about. But I find the word "Orient" quaint now, though I remember the term Orient being used by Japanese people at Osaka Shoshen Kaisha Co. in NYC in the 1960s. Aside from Occidental Petroleum never heard that term used.
Qatar airlines, for one, still stresses similar imagery and appeal: the familiar, the exotic in its flight crews in its TV commercials in Europe. There are other Gulf airlines that do the same. I think the fact that these places rely so much on Europeans, especially Brits, for shopping tourism makes the pitch quite understandable.
I think my first regular magazine reading was the family subscription to Colliers. I gave a book report on this particular issue in the 7th or 8th grade.
I miss the old-style Reader's Digest. The one with artwork on the back and where the monthly WordPower quiz was actually somewhat challenging. They revamped the magazine a few years back and it seems really dumbed down. I stopped subscribing shortly after that. It was always bit nostalgic to have around the house....
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The Reader's Digest was one of the magazines my Grandmother subscribed to. I must have learned how to read from them. The Humor In Uniform and other joke sections were my favorites. Maybe WORD POWER wasn't dumbed down but you had just smartened up from reading it all those years. I have heard that said about JEOPARDY also.
I can't see a thing to be horrified about. But I find the word "Orient" quaint now, though I remember the term Orient being used by Japanese people at Osaka Shoshen Kaisha Co. in NYC in the 1960s. Aside from Occidental Petroleum never heard that term used.
Qatar airlines, for one, still stresses similar imagery and appeal: the familiar, the exotic in its flight crews in its TV commercials in Europe. There are other Gulf airlines that do the same. I think the fact that these places rely so much on Europeans, especially Brits, for shopping tourism makes the pitch quite understandable.
I've heard the term "occidental" used, though not frequently. And Oriental has gone out of style, replaced with Asian.
I think you are missing the point re being horrified at the American girls/Oriental girls ad--it was blatantly sexist, almost as if these women were prostitutes--the pitch was that these "girls" were there for the sole purpose of making the male travelers happy. That wouldn't fly today, partly because the business travelers are often females, too.
I've heard the term "occidental" used, though not frequently. And Oriental has gone out of style, replaced with Asian.
I think you are missing the point re being horrified at the American girls/Oriental girls ad--it was blatantly sexist, almost as if these women were prostitutes--the pitch was that these "girls" were there for the sole purpose of making the male travelers happy. That wouldn't fly today, partly because the business travelers are often females, too.
No, it wouldn't fly today because the PC police would shoot it down, and they are the most powerful army in the world, and they always get their way. And, most women today are attracted to attractive women, and enjoy admiring them, and in fact, most women are at least a little bit bisexual, and quite a few female business travelers have probably had fantasies about their sewardess. Females can also be made happy by an attractive and stylish woman fawning over them and flashing her smile.
And, the term "Western" is very widely used in the world (instead of occidental) to distinguish Caucasian women (and men) from people of a visibly colored ancestry.
Back to the topic of magazines, why do women buy magazines that feature beautiful and sexy women on the covers? Same reason they want to fly on an airline with beautiful and sexy air hostesses.
Last edited by jtur88; 07-10-2011 at 10:10 PM..
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It was always bit nostalgic to have around the house....
