Lisa Miller, Sarah Palin, Newsweek and walk on by ...

Desperate times for desperate folks with their magazine on the auction block.

But does writing a half-assed story in the style of a woman's magazine get you out of jail? In the way that the Royals have kept women's magazines afloat in Australia these past few decades?

Well you can read Lisa Miller's story Saint Sarah and decide. Whether you'd fork out hard cash or just check it out online. So you can catch up with banalities like this:

For all her apparent authenticity, though, Palin’s real motivations remain hidden. (She declined to be interviewed for this article.)

Yep, it's a beat up. No interview, no new angle, just a load of old rope so the cover can feature Sarah Palin, on the principle that Palin sells. Meanwhile, you'll just have to accept that Palin's real motivations - which clearly have nothing to do with "look at me" vanity or actual small town Alaskan beliefs - remain firmly hidden. That means a hell of lot of American media scrutiny these past few years has been a heck of a waste of time. Including Miller's opus.

The only joy is to know that her rise is partially the fault of the left:

Palin has her faults, but the left is partially to blame for her ascent. Its native mistrust of religion, of conservative believers in particular, left the gap that Palin now fills. “You hate to say it, but mainstream feminism has had an antireligious bias for a really long time,” says Griffith.

Oh dear. Why hate to say it? I hate to ay it, but conservative Christianity has had an anti-feminist bias for a really long time. And surprisingly apples are different to oranges.

Could Miller top that kind of excruciating insight? Why yes, with the help of others, she can rifle through the banalities to produce top drawer banality:

Palin refers often to Ronald Reagan in her speeches, and even critics concede there’s something Reaganesque about the way she approaches faith. It’s easy. It’s optimistic. It’s future-oriented. “She seems like an ordinary Christian woman who has done extraordinary things,” says Georgetown history professor Michael Kazin.

There comes a time when the pre-digested pap that passes for news commentary in the American news magazine must surely pass. Sure the Readers' Digest will go on forever mutilating books and texts - lordy, they even have an Oz website of surpassing vulgarity - but the time for Newsweek and for Time has surely passed, in much the same way as The Bulletin lowered its colours in Australia. We once got Newsweek included as a throwaway inside The Bulletin, as part of a free offer I hasten to add, and it's remarkable how often the rag was thrown away unread, and that was before the intertubes offered 'free' all over the shop.

Miller's story, with its equivocations and uneasy desire to thread the needle while maintaining faith with the conservatives who bought the rag on the basis of its cover, is just another nail in the Newsweek coffin.

The only good thing to come out of the whole tawdry, silly affair, and the tired jaundiced cynical cover?

The reaction of others in the American media, happy to cannibalise their own ...

Everybody's had a go, under the apparent delusion that what Newsweek does is still relevant. The best responses have come from those calling out the rag. Especially Vanity Fair, with their "Sarastopheles", "Sarah Pagan" and Other Discarded Newsweek Covers routine.

Here's a sample, and give them a click to see the other two. They deserve it. As for Newsweek, walk on by.

(Oh and a hint or a tease: the other Vanity Fair covers takes up the matter of circumcision, an issue on everybody's lips this week thanks to Sophie Mirabella, and Palin's remarkable appeal to Zeus worshippers ...)