I miss the days when Esquire magazine still had great style (like James Franco, cover circa 2010).
I love the smell of a fresh copy of Esquire Magazine just out of the mail. It reminds me of my Dad, who used to read it all the time.
Reading Esquire meant something to me, like a vision of being a man, an intelligent man in a common world. I felt something when I held those pages in my hands and read about men’s style and the world.
Unfortunately, I fear those feelings are gone. That vision rapidly descends into a graying memory.
I have been subscribed for about five years now. The last year I’ve noticed a steady decline in the quality of the publication. I didn’t want to lose it, this bastion of hope from my teenage dreams of adulthood. With the August 2012 issue, my fears confirmed.
I’ve always known the magazine leans hard left politically, which is fine until you call yourself unbiased (which they did, as I vividly remember and tweeted) and trick many naïve minds. The magazine used to be more about style, but this last issue had very little style references and a lot of trivial nonsense.
Esquire, your articles were poignant and often comical, for which I admired you, until they became seeping with political propaganda pushed by the current administration, for which I detest you, like you did the prior administration for their equally demeaning propaganda.
I reached the point where I would read everything except the garbage that Pierce wrote. As the political stance of the magazine became more pervasive, the publication became less interesting. It became as preachy and nonsensical as the staunchly conservative politicians and political mouthpieces they decry.
The magazine became a slobbering love-fest for Obama, parading any miniscule “accomplishment” and contorting any failure or misstep into a well-intentioned maneuver from our “great leader.”
I could handle it for a while but this issue killed it. Granger, the editor-in-chief who always finds a way to shove his head entirely into Obama’s ass, just defended Obama’s “targeted killing” even when Obama has the blood of an innocent 16 year-old American boy on his hands.
Too far. You just stood up for murder because of your unwavering obedience to the current president. I’m embarrassed to say I share an alma mater (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) with Granger.
Granger, and most contributors of the magazine I assume, view themselves as elites, rubbing shoulders with the political elites of fervent liberal persuasion. That may make you feel good about yourselves, but you are all deranged pricks.
I may not cancel my subscription, and I may even renew. It’s only $5 per year, and I suppose it’s good for me to read your articles so I know what a lot of people are thinking (which scares me a bit). Clearly, the cost of this magazine is correlated to its quality: cheap.
I really do hope Esquire can right the ship, bring back the luster and allure it once had for me. I doubt that it will though, at least as long as Pierce is unconstrained and uncontested while Granger plays kiss ass with a president who resembles his predecessor, who was abhorred by Esquire’s contributors and editors, so much it’s frightening.
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