Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

A look back at a look back at 1998

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


At the end of every year in magazineland, history devolves into pithy lists of important events, quotidian grotesqueries, celebrity transgressions, and last year’s most potent political commentary: the dick joke. We offer the following chart as a public service to magazine editors who are no doubt already “conceptualizing” their looks back at 1999. This is what worked in 1998, and the hundred or so years before it. So there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work again.

Snappy proprietary package title High-concept visual element Total number of dick jokes Overcovered event of the year How’d we miss that?
Esquire Dubious Achievement Awards of 1998 “Jism in the News” graph plots how often the word “semen” is mentioned in the New York Times throughout the year. 19 See “jism” graph. “To protest ‘harassment’ of his brother Eric Rudolph, who is a suspect in numerous bombings…Daniel Rudolph cut off his left hand with a table saw and sent a video of the act to the FBI.”
TV Guide The Year in jeers TV actors dress up as the year’s most prominent figures 11 “Jewel wrote a book!” “O.J.Simpson surprised TV host Ruby Wax during a taped interview by stabbing her several times with a banana.”
US There’s Something About ’98 TV actors dress up as the year’s most prominent figures. 8 “Sexy: Jewel’s poetry” The first successful “fashion infomercial” hawks a dress with more than 100 looks. Says the garment’s model: “After a certain point, I think, the dress took over.”
Entertainment Weekly Best of 1998 TV actors dress up as themselves. 11 “The folkie’s tome reveals her tendency to both misspell the names of alleged influences and a fixation on breasts.” “To promote [her new yoga-influenced album, Ray of Light, Madonna] squishes Rosie O’Donnell into a few positions on the latter’s talk show….”
Artforum International Best of 1998 Lots of highbrow nudity 8 Veiled reference to Jewel: “Nothing in this world with a body and color is ever as simple as you think it is.” “[Claude] Wampler, as domineering mom in a steam bath with ‘jumbo shrimp’ Magic Markered on her forehead and some kind of jellied blood oozing from her nostrils, hurled Naumanesque abuse.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate