Felix

The new double issue of the New Yorker has a not-very-clever illustration of Barack Obama as a happy doctor on its front cover.

On the back cover is an ad for Glenmorangie. “Proud to be The Official Whisky of The Open Championship”, it says, over a badge saying “The Open Championship” on top and “Official Whisky” underneath. At the bottom the ad says “Unnecessarily Well Made” - an allusion, surely, to the fact that the Glenmorangie in the ad is served in glasses chock-full of ice, so that the whisky is frozen to the point at which any quality would be indiscernible and therefore unnecessary.

In between, this double issue has just 100 pages, which means it’s stapled rather than perfect bound. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of discernible theme. The best thing in the mag is Anthony Lane’s Spider-Man review. But hey, at least there are two different Special Advertising Sections: one for Taiwan, and another for Ontario.

My theory: the editors are doing us a favor here. You have the day off, you can flick through this one. And then spend the rest of the next two weeks working through your pile of back-issues. Don’t tell me you haven’t read that David Grann piece yet.