What do Lady Gaga and Small Wars Journal have in common? One is on the cover of the Rolling Stone and one isn't -- but sure enough both made the Rolling Stone 2009 Hot List" -- go figure.
Stocks may tumble and fortunes may fall, but hotness, it seems, is eternal.
There was some concern about compiling our latest Rolling Stone Hot List during an ice-cold era. But it seems that in these uncertain, gray days, we need what our Managing Editor Will Dana called "the sparkly and the sexy, the perfectly shaped diversions America leads the world in creating."
... Since we launched the Hot List in 1986, we've had our share of hits and misses (check our cover gallery to revisit all out past Hot Issues, from Angelina to Giselle to Britney). In 1988, we profiled "Hot Character Actor" Kevin Spacey, and we're particularly proud that in 1990, we introduced readers to a 23-year-old screenwriter named Jeffrey Abrams (you might know him now as Lost and Star Trek visionary J.J. Abrams). Of course, we've also missed the mark — in 1990, we thought Renny Harlin's hot streak would last, and the same issue that featured Abrams also declared Tevin Campbell "Hot Prodigy."
This time, we're banking on an assortment of movers, shakers and muckrakers that runs the gamut from the warfare digest "Small Wars Journal" to Hot Issue cover girl Lady Gaga...
Rolling Stone's 2009 Hot List - as soon as we grab a hard copy of RS we'll post the SWJ entry - anyone seen it yet and care to share in comments below? This issue has not hit the news stands as yet.
Update:
Jules Crittenden at Forward Movement:
Yeah, well, anyone with a Y chromosome can see the chick with the Phyllis Diller fright wig and the bubble bikini is hot. Glad to see RS is getting hip to how hot Small Wars can be. Now breathlessly awaiting the print version with the actual RS SWJ review. Hate to get political about it, but seeing as SWJ was the go-to place for understanding the Iraq surge and RS is only just catching up two years later, forgive me for suspecting that the Odoption of the Bush embrace of counterinsurgency tactics has something to do with the new Small Wars fashion craze.
Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette:
Dave Dilegge asks "What do Lady Gaga and Small Wars Journal have in common? One is on the cover of the Rolling Stone and one isn't - but sure enough both made the Rolling Stone 2009 "Hot List" - go figure."
"This time," an anonymous Rolling Stone editor says of the list, "we're banking on an assortment of movers, shakers and muckrakers that runs the gamut from the warfare digest "Small Wars Journal" to Hot Issue cover girl Lady Gaga."
The kewl kidz know where to go for the show.
Andrew Exum at Abu Muqawama:
So are we bitter that our boss John Nagl nominated Small Wars Journal to Rolling Stone's "Hot List" instead of us? Naw. I'm pretty sure no one under 40 years of age reads Rolling Stone anymore, so it makes sense that my pleated pants-wearing boss would turn down Frampton Comes Alive! long enough to speak to some geriatric Rolling Stone journalist about the latest "hot" thing.
No, no, in all seriousness, congrats to Dave and the gang at SWJ. We'll be out behind the cafeteria dumpster smoking with the cool kids if anyone needs us.
Starbuck at Wings Over Iraq:
Small Wars Journal is a great site. But you normally wouldn't associate it with Rolling Stone Magazine's "Hot List". Until now.
It looks as if I'm going to have to acquire a copy of Rolling Stone when it gets shipped over here.
Joshua Keating at FP Passport:
Congratulations to everyone at SWJ! The recognition is well deserved. Since FP has teamed up with them to publish Robert Haddick's excellent weekly column "This Week at War," we can't help but feel a little hotter ourselves today.
Rumors that Ricks and Rothkopf are appearing together on the next Tiger Beat cover have yet to be confirmed.
Okay here's the scoop (RS page 85):
Hot Intelligence: 'Small Wars Journal'
The Military's New Must Read
Want to know how Obama is going to fight the war in Afghanistan? Then check out Small Wars Journal, an online magazine that provides a crash course on asymmetric warfare. Get schooled in fighting Somali pirates. Find out what Malcolm Nance, a former Navy interrogation instructor, thinks about waterboarding ("a torture technique, Period"). When David Kilcullen, special adviser to Gen. Petraeus, live-blogged the Iraq surge, he did it for SWJ.
Contributions include who's who of the sharpest minds in uniform, regardless of rank. "You're judged purely on the strength of your intellectual argument," says John Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel who helped write the Army's Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Run by two former Marines, the site is a must-read for military insiders. "We must be doing something right," says co-founder Dave Dilegge, "because we get people calling us Attila the Hun warmongers one day and counterinsurgency-loving tree-huggers the next."
Hat tip to JMG1093 at the Council.