Reading the Economist, Finding Frank

I picked up The Economist in the airport this afternoon because there was an article about Jeremiah Wright, subject of Sunday's Cactus Juice.  The article was of no particular interest; how to deal with your spiritual adviser is not the purview of The Economist and the text cleverly diverts into the more familiar territory of Hillary's tax return by the end of the article.  This issue also covers:

• the McCartney divorce (marriage and the reckless pursuit of money)
• politics (of course)
• global warming (it all comes down to money)
• historical pronouncement (in the form of an obituary that strained that approved Economist vocabulary)
• race relations (more about money)
• race relations and politics (that was Wright)
• psychology of religion (under the heading of "Science and Technology"
• and historical pronouncement on another tack (John Adams and the HBO series)

The final was my favorite.  Economist.com occasional names "US and Britain" as one of the divisions of the globe.  A pack of writers that were more correct than the King and fomented revolt ultimately to create institutional stability is something The Economist can really sink its teeth into.

In the review of the psychology of religion,  The Economist comments that religion "consumes huge amounts of resources."  Psychology of religion, it turns out, could be reviewed using various theories of Darwin or the Darwinian type.  And those are economic arguments.

I say The Economist because I noted that there are no bylines.  In fact, one writer charmingly refers to him (or possibly her)self in the text as "your correspondent."  Near the end of the issue is a review of Worlds at War: The 2,500 Year Struggle Between East and West.  The Economist comments of the author, "He is so frank about his prejudices as to be almost endearing."  I haven't read that book, so for today The Economist has charmed me the more.

I've been doing a very careful reading of a Newsweek article from the first week of March.  Not charmed.  The institutions of journalism are meant to give us something, something that blogs and democratization of journalism can't match. The Economist is well respected for a reason.  Every article has the stamp of the institution.  They don't publish the best a stringer could manage that week; they publish their best.