The New Opinionated Newsweek: 'A Pretty Stupid Idea for a Magazine'

In a piece for the June 1 Weekly Standard headlined "Some Industries Deserve Bankruptcy," Andrew Ferguson discusses Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and the "Meachamism," which he defined as "a statement so comically banal or transparently untrue that only a man whom everybody is crazy about or hopes to not get fired by would try to put it into print."

Ferguson had his own favorite Meachamism in a somewhat obscure place: "The book is called My Father, My President, by Doro Bush. On page 218, Doro prints this quotation from Jon: 'An important thing to remember about the press is there is no ideological bias.'"

Ferguson then mocked the first newly designed edition of Newsweek, the one in which Meacham oozed all over Obama, how he was "moving as he wishes to move, and the world bending itself to him." Or at least Newsweek is bending itself to him.

Ferguson wrote that was absurd, since Obama's broken several campaign promises and bent toward the world instead of the other way around.

"While flipping through the pages of Newsweek, it began to occur to everybody that hey, this is a pretty stupid idea for a magazine. Are there really 1.5 million readers -- the number of subscribers Jon has promised advertisers -- who want a liberal opinion magazine written by liberals who don't want to admit they're liberals? Last week everybody look at one another and pondered a world without Newsweek."

Ferguson mocked Katie Couric and Maureen Dowd in the piece, as well. But the article is not online, so you'll have to buy a copy or grab one from someplace.