Hello, I Must Be Going

Hello, I Must Be Going

- Joel Stein

SINCE MY FIRST COLUMN, 19 YEARS AGO, READERS AND co-workers have clamored to have me fired. The first time I visited TIME’s L.A. bureau, I saw one of my columns taped outside a science reporter’s door, with sentences crossed out by red Sharpie accompanied by the words “This is what TIME magazine has become!” When I introduced myself to Gore Vidal on a flight, he ranted about how TIME’s editor at the time, Walter Isaacson, had destroyed the magazine by bringing in solipsistic young people who write in first person. I nodded in agreement, thinking, Gore Vidal knows about me!

But TIME has finally come to its senses, and it’s time for the Awesome Column to end. I know this will be as hard for the reader as it is for me, though I’m assuming here that the reader got paid a lot of money to read this column.