I understood why Christopher Darden lost the O. J. trial when I saw him on the cover of Pen World magazine. There he was caressing an Omas Bibliotheque Nationale fountain pen. As one of the editors of Pen World noted inside, the person who owns an OBN pen tends to be passionate and classy, but is this really the sort of penthusiast who could outwit O. J. ‘s legal Dream Team? Wouldn’t it have been better to have someone with enough brute drive to own Montblanc’s Peter the Great pen made of dark green resin with gold-plated overlay and powered by an 888 piston-filling delivery system?
I confess that my own pen-judging criteria revolve around which ones are best to chew, but I was reading Pen World magazine as part of my plan to become a global media mogul. The insight upon which I am going to build my fortune is that there are plenty of market opportunities in the world of accessiporn journalism. Accessiporn magazines are those that focus on a single fashion accessory, and combine drooling enthusiasm for the item with lush, bare-everything photo spreads of said product. I believe I can become the Bob Guccione of accessiporn.
There already is an accessiporn Hugh Hefner. His name is Marvin R. Shanken, the editor and publisher of Cigar Aficionado, which I’m sure you’ve seen recently. Cigar Aficionado is the perfect accessiporn magazine. It describes a product that you have to destroy in order to use. Therefore you have to keep buying more, which is good for advertisers. Second, it appeals to men in their ’50s and ’60s. These are people in their prime earning years who have plenty of money, which they are happy to spend on sensual products they can enjoy without having to worry about throwing their backs out. And most important, it appeals to obnoxious jerks.
It’s worth expanding on this last point. Men in the male-menopause years like to be jerks. If you’ll notice, any obnoxious middle-aged white male who writes a book has it become an instant bestseller (Lee Iaccoca, Bobby Knight, Alan Dershowitz, etc.). Similarly, any loud-mouth jerk of the same age who runs for office immediately captures a large jerk constituency (Ross Perot, Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, Umberto Bossi in Italy, etc.). That’s because middle-aged men have worked hard for a bunch of years, they’ve achieved a certain measure of success, and they feel they’ve earned the right to be selfish and obnoxious. They like reading about and voting for insufferable jerks like them.
One of the most pleasant aspects of jerkdom is being able to conspicuously demonstrate your own smug self-satisfaction. Cigar Aficionado features a page called the Photo Gallery. Men send in pictures of themselves in which they are seen posing with a fat stogie in their mouth. They are usually standing next to their power boat or their Mercedes, and they are wearing the sort of self-satisfied smile that makes normal people want to rip the cigar from their mouth and treat them to a Cuban enema.
Another pleasing aspect of accessiporn jerkdom is that it allows you to savor your own bogus knowledgeability of specious distinctions. So if you are a reader of International Wristwatch magazine you can opine at great length on the relative merits of the Epos Rectangular Classic Jump Hour watch (which has sapphire crystals and a skeleton back) versus the Daniel Roth Sport Chronograph (which has an exhibition back and a screwdown drown). And you can effortlessly look down on your listeners if they are the sort of philistine who does not appreciate the difference between, say, a $ 6,000 watch and an $ 8,000 watch.
Now the only thing standing between me and great riches is that I haven’t yet settled on the consumer products that I will build my string of magazines around. To review: The product I choose has to be destroyed in the act of using it, it has to be produced in large quantities, it has to make specious claims to supposed connoisseurs, and, finally, it has to appeal to middle- aged male jerks.
The simplest thing would be simply to put out a magazine called Trophy Wife Aficionado, but that’s too offensive even for me. I think it’s better to appeal to the male love of gizmos, so my first idea is a magazine called Remote Control Quarterly, which would feature lascivious photo spreads of $ 12,000 television remote controls, with essays describing their merits. Then I’m thinking of branching out into the hardware line with Cultivated Taper, a magazine that would review the full range of masking-tape options. And then, finally, I might complete my empire with Pluckings: A Magazine for Tweezer Enthusiasts.
Venture capitalists, call now.
DAVID BROOKS
