When editors were gods

The magazine editor who gave the rest of us Festivus

December 23 is, of course, Festivus, the holiday “for the rest of us.”

While popularized by “Seinfeld,” it was actually invented decades earlier by a magazine editor, Dan O’Keefe.

O’Keefe spent 30-some years at Reader’s Digest. A 1978 issue lists him on the masthead as a senior editor. John Heidenry, in his book “Theirs Was the Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the Story of the Reader’s Digest,” refers to him as a senior staff editor in the 1980s, a notch up in the Digest hierarchy.

“Perhaps the most eccentric of the Younger Turks in Pleasantville was Dan O’Keefe, described by one associate as ‘a sophomore science nerd — very bright but painfully shy,’” Heidenry writes. “He was also widely regarded as [John] Wulp’s successor as resident intellectual, a man with strange interests in things like magic and philosophy…”

O’Keefe’s son, also a Dan, brought the Festivus concept to “Seinfeld,” where he was a writer. It made its debut in a December 1997 episode.

The elder O’Keefe told The New York Times in 2004 that he’d come up with the idea and celebrated the first Festivus in 1966. It evolved through the 1970s, becoming an O’Keefe family tradition.

“In the background was Durkheim’s ‘Elementary Forms of Religious Life,’ saying that religion is the unconscious projection of the group,” he explained to the Times, sounding very much like the man Heidenry described. “And then the American philosopher Josiah Royce: religion is the worship of the beloved community.”

O’Keefe died on 2012 at age 84. Festivus lives on.

Future right-wing hero takes a walk on the Wildean side

On this day (November 11) in 1922, Whittaker Chambers was at the center of his first, but certainly not last, controversy.

In decades to come, Chambers would gain fame as a former Soviet spy turned anti-Communist, nemesis of Alger Hiss and deflater of Ayn Rand, and hero to the likes of Ronald Reagan. But at the time, Chambers was a 21-year-old Columbia University undergraduate who'd recently lost his job as editor-in-chief of a campus literary magazine, Morningside.

Chambers had been forced to resign in late October over a sketch he had published in the magazine, called "A Play for Puppets." According to an account in the New York Tribune, Chambers's piece, whose characters included Jesus Christ, the voice of God, an angel, and a couple of Roman centurions, "was believed to have overstepped the bounds of cleverness and propriety." The newspaper added that it was written with "a distinctly Wildean flavor."

A November 11 newspaper account said that Chambers had been reluctant to discuss the matter with reporters, fearing that he'd be expelled from the university. But it quoted him defending the piece: "I am not ashamed of the play. I do not consider it either blasphemous or anti-Christian. I put it forward simply as literature, without any aim at propaganda, and I have no apologies to make. I am sorry that the place was not civilized enough to take the play as it was written."

Whittaker Chambers's magazine career was not over, however. He would spend about a decade as an editor at Time magazine and later have a short stint at William F. Buckley's National Review. Chambers died in 1961.

The (money-mad) modern magazine editor, 1923

“The modern magazine editor knows what kind of slush will pander to the depraved and sensual tastes of a shallow-souled and pleasure-mad constituency. The modern editor is a psychologist and a success-seeking business man. He does not regard it as his task in life, as did the editors of the past, to mould public opinion into pure, strong, and noble form. He has one goal. That goal is MONEY.” — Grace and Truth magazine, 1923.

Grace and Truth, edited by Clifton L. Fowler and published in Denver, called itself “a Bible study magazine for earnest men and women everywhere.”

Another thing editors and juvenile delinquents have in common

Today (January 31) is celebrated by Roman Catholics as the feast day of St. John Bosco, the patron saint of editors.

Born Giovanni Melchior Bosco in 1815, Bosco died on this day in 1888 and was canonized in 1934. 

In addition to editors, Bosco is also the patron saint of apprentices, juvenile delinquents, magicians, school children, and publishers.

One editor’s trick for conquering worry

“I plan well. I work hard. I try to leave nothing to chance. I pray about things. Then, if someone disappoints me or if something goes wrong and things don’t work out the way I wish, I take a philosophical attitude toward it because I have done all I can do about it and I don’t let it worry me.” — an otherwise anonymous “distinguished magazine editor” quoted by Norman Vincent Peale in a 1951 newspaper column on “How to Take Things As They Come.”

In addition to being a bestselling author (“The Power of Positive Thinking,” etc.) and minister, Peale was also the founder of the magazine Guideposts.

Why magazines are like politics and religion: an editor explains

"A real magazine is a force. To its reader it is really akin to a tenet of faith or a political party.... Have you ever noticed how men swear by a newspaper or magazine, often blindly, just as they cling to their church and their party? That kind of a clientele is what makes a bunch of sheets of paper with printing on them a magazine." — T.J. Zimmerman, managing editor of System magazine, 1906. System, one of the most successful business magazines of its day, later evolved into Business Week magazine, known today as Bloomberg Businessweek.   

Editors: More powerful than Presidents and as worthy of our prayers, 1879

"The Editor of a leading journal is more powerful than the President of the United States. Why should an Editor not be prayed for?" — Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine, 1879.

Yes, even editors have a patron saint

January 31 is celebrated by Roman Catholics as the feast day of St. John Bosco, the patron saint of editors. Bosco died on this day in 1888, at age 72. 

 

The evangelist vs. the magazine

It was on this day (September 24) in 1938 that the flamboyant, to say the least, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson filed a $1.5 million libel suit against Look magazine, alleging that its article "I Am God's Best Publicity Agent" had defamed her. The suit was settled a month later, reportedly for $2,000.

The patron saint of editors

January 31 is celebrated by Roman Catholics as the feast day of St. John Bosco, the patron saint of editors. Bosco died on this day in 1888, at age 72. 

On this day...

... in 1898, Norman Vincent Peale, preacher, positive thinker, bestselling author, and founder of Guideposts magazine, was born in Bowersville, Ohio. The first issue of his magazine, published in 1945, was all of four pages. 

On this day...

...in 1952, Fulton Oursler, editor of Liberty, among other magazines; author of "The Greatest Story Ever Told;" and amateur ventriloquist, died in New York City. His posthumously published autobiography is "Behold This Dreamer!" (Little, Brown, and Co., 1964).