Advice to the Lovelorn
Aug 24th, 2006 at 9:59 am by Susie
I thought this whole thing was absurd. First of all, any man who takes marriage advice from Forbes is a moron. But the real point was lost in the debate; frankly, the magazine is a piece of crap.
I like business publications - the good ones. (By that, I mean they stick to good reporting and keep their opinions out of the way. The exception as always is the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page stands in sharp contrast to their stunningly good reporting.) I’m also interested in the politics of business, but Forbes routinely publishes earnest tripe, poorly reasoned and grounded in a mishmosh of right-wing ideology.
It was so bad, I got to the point where I canceled my free subscription.
Thank you Susie. Forbes is not only a piece of crap, they’re quite moronic in their business practices. I received a subscription as a gift one year in the late 90s. After one year I did not resubscribe - for God’s sake, they were promoting the EyeCat advertising wand as a key technology and publishing breakthrough when almost everyone else knew it was one of the most inane products to come out of the Internet Bubble.
But when I didn’t resubscribe, they sent me letters to try to convince me otherwise. Sometimes I’d get two a day. That didn’t work. Then they gave my name and phone number to a telemarketing bureau to try to re-up. For two years I told them no. FINALLY THEY STOPPED, but not after several times of telling the telemarketing company to quit calling me.
What worked? Telling the telemarketers that they had a business number. Then they quit calling.
I subscribed to Forbes for over a decade, back in
the ’60s and ’70s, and found it informative and
useful for quite a while. (After all, if you are
being informed about US business, you are being
informed about how the country really works.)
But one day it struck me forcefully that they had
begun editorializing in their stories, and were
“reporting” with a heavy right-wing spin, so
I called to cancel my subscription, and told
them why. (Not that it had any impact, of course.)
This was well before the age of Fox News, so I
wasn’t prepared for such propaganda
being offered
under the guise of journalism.
I’ve found that answering the phone:
“Hello. FBI.”
is very effective.