The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 5, 2003

---

Murdoch Might Not Be as Bad as We Thought
By Bill Steigerwald

Stop worrying for a moment about how badly things are going in crazy Third World places like Iraq or California.

And don't bother reading Atlantic Monthly's profile of Rupert Murdoch, the multi-media mogul who owns the evil Fox News and entertainment empire and is the Vast Leftwing Conspiracy's top-ranked villain. Who cares if Murdoch's $17 billion News Corp., which owns outlets such as always fair-and-balanced Fox News and the influential conservative political magazine Weekly Standard, is not as big or powerful as his competitors Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC), General Electric (NBC) or AOL Time Warner (CNN)?

So what if James Fallows, journalism's trusted conscience, says Murdoch's partisan news operations are a precursor of the media future, where political identity/subjectivity will be marketed straightforwardly to conservatives and liberals?

And is it really that important to know that Murdoch is not the Devil Incarnate, but a genius who Fallows says is successful because he has "an instinct for mass taste, an appreciation of technology, a concept of strategic business structure and a knack for exploiting political power"?

Not when the swimsuit issue of mental_floss starring topless cover boy Albert Einstein is on finer newsstands everywhere and ready to be studied.

Few have ever seen mental_floss, which comes with the tagline "feel smart again" and has only 15,000 subscribers. It is a tiny, gently satirical magazine from Birmingham, Ala., that is 10 issues and about two years into its laudable mission to "blur the lines between education and entertainment."

The 72-page magazine — let's call it MF — is precariously thin on ads and bears/bares no resemblance to Maxim or Spy in look, content or edge. But it is fat with sassy youthful fun and the right attitudes, whether it's letting Duquesne University professor Greg Barnhisel spend four pages explaining "why you don't know anything about" poet Ezra Pound or pulling excerpts from the 1996 book "The Physics of Star Trek."

The cover "swimsuit" article profiles and offers colorized but otherwise undoctored photos of 15 actual and alleged geniuses in their skivvies — Einstein, Louis Armstrong, Eleanor Roosevelt, Salvador Dali, Jack Kerouac, Walt Disney, the Beatles and Mao Zedong, but not evil Rupert Murdoch. Other articles — all informative, intelligent, well-illustrated and mildly funny — include a page on the life and works of Dr. Seuss; a guide to five Supreme Court cases "worth knowing about"; a quiz; how roller-coasters work; the origins of 10 toys like Silly Putty; and a sophisticated look at how the ideas of economists such as Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes were influenced by sex and marriage.

Besides the $5 cover price, the only prerequisites for MF are the ability to be entertained by (mostly) wholesome fun and a liberal arts degree from a community college.

But look out. Somebody phone comic-pundit Al Franken.

The magazine (mentalfloss.com), which was once a plot point on "Friends" and whose staffers appear Wednesday nights on CNN Headline News, has just signed a book deal with none other than HarperCollins — the publishing arm of ubiquitous Rupert Murdoch.

Copyright © 2003 The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review