Enough

     You will no longer see Rolling Stone magazine resting calmly on my coffee table again. Not that you likely saw it a first time, but from now on, it will not be in my home for you to see, should you ever decide to drop by. I am tired of the pages and pages of political editorials. Once in a while is fine, but it's week after week after week. Maybe it has always been this way, and I've just never noticed, or maybe it is because we are in the midst of the most heated and important Presidential campaign in our lifetime. Whatever the reason, it doesn't matter to me. I've been bothered by it lately, and when my current subscription runs out, I will not be renewing.
     I want to read about Ashley Simpson or Elvis Costello. I don't want to read 8 pages on how great it will be if John Kerry is elected president. I don't need to hear about the shocking unveiling of truths within "Fahrenheit 9/11." Not to mention a major hit-piece on my boy, Bill O'Reilly. Check it out...5 of the last 8 covers on Rolling Stone have pictured:

John Kerry (a scary close-up)
The Rock for Change squadron
A Doonesbury cartoon of American troops bleeding and dying in Iraq
(2) of Michael Moore's fat ass
Jon Stewart
+ Howard Dean on the May issue

It's not just the covers either. The second cover story on the other 3 issues without a political image:
"Bush Must Go"
"The Secret Files of Abu Ghraib" &
"The Baghdad Follies"

     Are we seeing a pattern here? Now, do I respect SOME of these people and imagery? Yes. Is politics an important issue? Of course. Is it Rolling Stone's responsibility to tell me about it? Sure, if that's what they want to do with their "music/entertainment" periodical. But do I have to pay for and read it? No I do not.

     This is certainly Rolling Stone's right, and some would argue responsibility, to "get the word out," but it is not just college kids and democrats reading their magazine. Here are the results of a recent poll conducted by Rolling Stone itself, on its readers, which is in the Nov. 11th issue.
FYI: 75% of respondants are 39 years of age or lower. Here are examples of just 3 of the questions. To see complete list of questions and results go here.

Question A
"How would you rate President Bush's job performance?"
Excellent: 5.2%
Good: 12.8%
Fair: 20.5%
Poor: 61.5&

Question B
"If the election were held today, who would you vote for?"
Bush: 17.7%
Kerry: 74.0%
Other: 2.9%
Undecided: 4.0%
Not voting: 1.5%

Question C (edited here for space)
"Will you definitely vote that way, or might you change your mind?"
Definitely voting for candidate: 82.7%
Probably voting for candidate: 7.6%
Could change mind: 6.5%
Not sure: 3.2%

     So, we know that RS readers are Kerry backers. Fine; so are the readers of New York Times' Magazine. But what else do these numbers tell us? Well, they tell us that RS consistently, week by week, alienates at least 16% of their readers. How do I get this number? It is 90.3% of the 17.7% of readers who say they will probably or definitly be voting for Bush. Now, how many people is 16% of readers? According to one website, RS has 11.7 million subscribers. Not including how many millions of news stand buyers there are. So, at the very least, RS alienates at least 1.85 million of its readers! 1.85 million readers translates in to a boatload of $$ for the company. And I'm not giving any more money to them.

     Now, I admit that I maybe wouldn't feel as strongly about this issue if it were stories backing Bush, or the war. I can admit that; but I guess my point is this: I have read and enjoyed this magazine for stories of interest and entertainment. I have relied on their top-notch reviews of music shows, albums, and artists' stories for years. But over the past year, I've grown weary of having to thumb through pages and pages AND PAGES of liberal propaganda to get to the small number of music review pages.

     The most recent issue of Rolling Stone had 120 pages. Here comes the breakdown.*
63 pages were ads
19 pages of liberal political commentary
15 pages of "other" entertainment news stories
14 pages of music stories, reviews etc...
4 pages of movies
6 pages in the "other" category (table of contents, letters to the editor, etc...)

     The ad number is huge, but I don't care about that; all magazines have too many ads. However, many of these ads were for Fahrenheit 9/11, The Daily Show, Clinton's book, etc. The real number shocker here is that only 18 pages were regarding music and movies (which is what I thought Rolling Stone was all about), compared to 19 pages of liberal political propaganda.

     I wanna finish up here and go to bed, but let me finish with this. Rolling Stone magazine is liberal political literature. THIS IS FINE. I want my critics to realize, that I don't care if they do this. I'm not screaming liberal bnias in the media or anything. I'm just publicly stating that I don't like it, and I won't continue to put my money into liberal propaganda. I also feel bad about it, because I respect their ideas, stories, interviews and reviews of music...all 14 out of 120 pages of it.


     One letter to the editor of Rolling Stone I wanted to copy for all to see:
"I am Counting Crows' bass player. I believethat you're cheating your readers by offering a one-sided argument regarding the upcoming election. George W. Bush is one of the greatest presidents in our country's history. After 9/11, he knew that America had to show the world that nobody should have tolerance for fanatacism and evil. You should present the facts with balance."
-Matt Malley, Sherman Oaks, CA

Is he really who he says he is? Maybe not, and I don't necessarily agree with all he wrote, but I do agree with this media outlet only offering one side of the story.

*I realized that my numbers don't ad up to 120, but I didn't feel like going through the whole mag again, but I did re-check the music/movie pages, and the political commentary pages, and those numbers are right.

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Related Links:
Rolling Stone home page
The complete Rolling Stone November covers