Strangely though, TV Guide's editorial seems ignorant of the magazine's real purpose. Its articles, profiles, special interviews, etc. show the magazine at its condescending worst - either standard magazine promospeak ("The September 5 wedding of chat collosus Larry King and singer/infomercial hostess Shawn Southwick - a spartan bedside service in the UCLA Medical Center - was the strangest exchange of vows King has ever gone through.") or saccharine appeals to what it transparently believes to be heartland values ("Jeers to the folks at Sweet Valley High for overconcentrating on sexy Bridgette. SVH used to be our favorite kidvid sitcom - but now it seems that sex appeal has beat out family values as the lesson of choice for today's teens!")

Departments, too, tend toward froth. In Star Style, we learn that Fiona Apple dressed poorly for the Vibe music awards, or that Courtney Cox outdistances her Friends co-stars in style as well as age. Phil Mushnick's sanctimonious ravings over the decadance of sport are counterbalanced by the judicious self-censure of Gene Siskel's movie column, where the pedantic baldy affects ambivalence about such offal as Batman Returns or Star Trek Generations. The presiding genius of the magazine's whole glossy front section is pansy critic Jeff Jarvis, whose desire not to come across as an effeminate egghead results in painfully labored "reviews" of unwatchable shows. "The actors aren't to blame; they try to create a likable bunch." Bring back Cleveland Amory, with his pipe and august perspective! Because it is primarily a resource, TV Guide errs in attempting to posit a readership interested in the fat actress who plays Mimi on the Drew Carey Show, or self-proclaimed Yalie David Duchovny's pompous views about acting in continuing series.

This does a great disservice to the true mission of TV Guide, which is to bind the nation's wounds with text and programming grids. This is perhaps best revealed in its crossword puzzle. Much as G.I.s during the Battle of the Bulge tested suspected German spies by asking them questions any American would know ("who is Sluggo?"), TV Guide's crossword is absurdly easy - if you are an American with a TV. Only sinister Unabomber types could miss clues like "Beavis and ____ " or "Actor Shatner of Star Trek." Such satisfaction, so easily bought!

Or this movie description:

Disturbing saga about a family tormented
by a group of joy riders.
Bobby: David Arquette. 1:35

These sketches are meaningful only if you're seen ten thousand movies and TV shows like this. The only "guide" which assumes greater knowledge on the part of its readers is the New York Times TV listings, of all things, which typically describes movies with such sentence fragments as, "brisk, terrifying romp" or "strictly for the kids." TV Guide can't assume as much of its readers, owing to their vast number. But the same dynamic applies: elitism on a global scale.

The ads too show admirable commitment to all Americans. Unlike the upscale prurience simpleton finds in Grand Marnier promos, America's magazine has a pathetic number of ads, and these pander to strange outgroupings of American society. In the issue before me, I see between pages 132 and 133 an add for some death's door insurance: an old man is handing his grandmotherly wife a dollar - the signup cost. In another insert, one of those grotesque baby dolls, with tiny, obscene lips and eerily realistic glass eyes. This is circulation democracy, where freespending yuppie and trailer park shut-in count equally before the law. A cigarette ad and a Nicoderm patch round out the handful of paid messages. A contradiction, yes, but as Walt Whitman wrote,

Do I contradict myself?
(Very well then, I contradict myself)
I am large, I contain multitudes

In its bundling of contradictions TV Guide doesn't just sing America, it is America. General DeGaulle spoke of the impossibility of governing a nation with two hundred forty six cheeses; the same can be said of a culture with five hundred or more magazines. Yet in its infinitely dense text, so reminiscent of the Vietnam Memorial, TV Guide makes sense of the destructive chaos of television. Sense that fits in the calloused palm of the cowboy's hand, or the crack fiend's sooty mitt. Sense which makes human and real the chaotic, Heraclitan fire burning at us through the coaxial arteries of modern society. Sense, where sense is not; context, in the blur of no context; democracy, amid the tyranny of the Glossy Babel.