Large Fierce Mammal

Back on Day 8, I wrote, “Children like to dabble in seances and Quija boards. They shouldn’t, but they do.” A similar comment could be made about the widespread practice, even in these days when the world has been repeatedly proven to be awash in bullshit, of people still clinging to mainstream news media as their predominant source of gaining insight into what’s going on around them. We’ve come a long way; and then, not really very far at all, since Walter Cronkite could deliver his immortal line, “And that’s the way it was,” in the assurance that most of those listening would unquestioningly take him at his word. Still today there are media personalities and publications (which have a personality all their own) that carry a cachet of credibility from days gone by, still prompting people who would rather not think too much to suck up everything they have to say.

Looking strictly at the print media side of the equation, the scale runs from bald faced fabrication on the one end to the “gospel truth” on the other, and everything in print fits somewhere in between, leaning to a greater or lesser degree toward the part of it where creative writing lives. As an aside, an ironic term that – gospel truth. We all know what it’s supposed to mean, but is something really “true” when you have to take it on faith? Anyway, I digress.

Time is one of those news sources that still carries an aura of respectability. First published in 1923, Time has become, according to one source, “… the world’s largest circulation weekly news magazine with a readership of 25 million, of which 20 million are in the US. It is widely regarded as one of the most popular magazines in history.” Strictly accurate or not, it’s safe to say that Time speaks loudly to a lot of people, and has for a long … um … time. Even more so given its acquisition of humour and general interest magazine Life in 1936. From then until 1972, Life was published weekly in a format that strongly featured photojournalism.

Considering how far back the history goes, it’s natural that some odd juxtapositions might creep in along the way, and from the marriage of Time and Life came an interesting case in point involving Adolf Hitler, who was named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1938.

Now this choice has served up grist for the mill of many a pundit, not least because much of Hitler’s dark agenda was well known at the time, but was either withheld from public view, or poo pooed by those who hoped he could be appeased. It can’t be denied that Hitler was influential and very much in the news back in the day, so murderous, delusional maniac though he was,  it’s not surprising that Time Magazine was paying attention to him. Still though, Man of the fucking Year? They really needed to apply a better definition, maybe like the one everybody else uses.

By 1941, the world was in no doubt as to what kind of man Hitler was that year, and on the wet, windy evening of 22 January, Life Magazine stepped into the breach, devoting some serious reportage to a very odd act of war – a “… ‘hex party’ convened with one aim in mind: ‘to kill Adolf Hitler by voodoo incantation.'”

“‘According to LIFE, the party featured, ‘a dressmaker’s dummy, a Nazi uniform, nails, axes, tom-toms and plenty of Jamaica rum,’ and was inspired by a book by occultist and writer William Seabrook that was popular at the time: Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today.”

The Life/Time Curiosities website tells the tale in classic photojournalism style. Go and take the tour by clicking here.