It’s not just me! Slate‘s Jack Shafer on the new Newsweek:

One would think that with the Arab world spinning apart, political insurrection visiting Capitol Hill and the state houses, and the NFL going on sabbatical, the week would be so hot that Brown could stir-fry its ingredients for a sizzling meal.

Instead, Brown puts the queen of cold, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on the cover and fills the corresponding article with hagiography. Also on the cover, she leans on the oldest trick in the magazine playbook—a list—which she runs over the nameplate (“150 Women Who Shake the World”). She continues the women theme inside. Several new big-name columnists appear in the front of the book—Kathleen Parker, Niall Ferguson, Leslie H. Gelb, and Joanne Lipman—but none of them turns a phrase or casts a thought you haven’t heard a million times before. This is a meal that a homeless person would walk away from. [E.A.]

More where that came from, at the link. … P.S.: Is the debut issue so bad because Tina was trying to please Barry Diller or because she was trying to please Sidney Harman? Discuss. Shafer suggests both possibilities. 

Or is it because she was trying to please Tina Brown? …