HELIOLITH

Would someone please provide feedback as to the nature of the magazine GQ. Is it like MAD or The Onion? Does it specialize in satire? What are the journalistic conventions for publishing fiction in a format that is purportedly journalistic? Does it have to do with the reputation of the publication? The New Yorker for example publishes both fact and fiction, but clearly distinguishes between the two. [edit: I just checked and they actually have headers “Fact” and “Fiction” on their homepage of the online edition]. What’s the deal GQ?

I scanned this article (along with impressive old-looking photos) in the last issue of GQ (Halle Berry Cover) while browsing an airport kiosk the other day. I didn’t get enough of it to decipher where it was coming from so I was forced to look for it online to sort out my doubts.

My impression originally was that it was investigative journalism, as it claims to be by the tone at the outset. But then there was a distinct impression even though I didn’t have much time to read, that the article was pure tongue-in-cheek satire. This paradox was enough to perplex me and keep me thinking about it for a few days. Was this their intent? To baffle people into reading it to try and decipher the tone? Is this a journalistic trick?

The odd thing is, if you only read the first part of the article, as many people do, it really doesn’t make fun of the “president,” but rather it somehow mystifies him in this James Bond aura of Cowboy cool. this is evidenced, in fact by this random (in the sense that I didn’t know of him before this search) blogger’s observation:

And actually, I do sort of like him a little more if it is true. I think it makes him kind of a badass.

I found Ezra’s entry on his blog “Digital me” after doing a google search on “Special Undercover Missions Service” the group to which GQ alleges Bush belonged to. The only other blogger to comment on this story (Saheli) didn’t say much about it, but her tone was clearly incredulous. Most likely she realized immediately that it was a spoof, whereas it took (gullible) me a day or two to sort it out.

I suppose that my confusion stemmed largely from the fact that I only had a few moments to scan the article in the store, and it was screaming “this is true” and “spoof” at me at the same time, and being curious to understand what Bush’s explanation for his absence was, this article offered to fill that void. The more you read the more bogus it sounds, and it does make fun.

Here’s a little excerpt from the article in which exemplifies the author’s style in which he both sounds factual and burlesque. The irony is that far from undermining any “square” image a president possibly ought to have, this style seems only to glamorize Bush’s wild-child reputation, and I would even hazard to guess that the president himself might find the article [edit: the first page or two of the article] flattering, especially as an alternate explanation for his being absent without leave from the military.

“Bush was serving his country elsewhere, in a clandestine military unit: the Special Undercover Missions Service (SUMS), an elite air-force agency specializing in national security and acts of espionage. Created by the Eisenhower administration in 1958 to respond to growing concerns about aerial reconnaissance by the Soviet Union, SUMS operated for twenty-one years in a shroud of secrecy. There is no offcial record of the organization; SUMS is said to have been terminated by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

But SUMS was something of an open secret among air-force men of Bush’s generation. ‘SUMS was flashy stuff,’ said Lieutenant Tom Kapers, a decorated air-force pilot who did tours in Korea and Vietnam and who’d met several SUMS officers. ‘We’d hear about those boys all the time. Real James Bonds. They’d be in Hong Kong one day and London the next. We always imagined they flew in their dinner jackets.’”

Ah well, live and learn. Thanks for wasting my time GQ, I would’ve appreciated a more sincere approach, so that I could at least appreciate satire as what it is… Anyone interested in the actual news about Bush’s lack of military service should read the latest via this moveon.org article, or this Christian Science Monitor article.