The Feit Family Ventures Corporation (FFV) is a youthful, ambitious, entrepreneurial company dedicated to pushing the boundaries of the expected
as first-to-market with multiple brands of innovative biomedical technology and engaging new media content.
Named a “Digital Driver” by the Magazine Publishers of America in January 2006.
Jonathon Scott Feit, President & CEO / Chief Editor & Publisher
(310) 625-0979 main ~ (509) 984-9049 fax ~ jonathon.feit@feitventures.com
Editor's Note - December 2004
When a startup publication with a mission statement reaches its three-month anniversary, it’s time to recline and reflect. We ran a fun first issue—Diversions was its theme—followed by a second edition covering substantially weightier second edition—Conflict in its Broadest Sense. In it we aimed to demonstrate that the responsibility derived from freedom of the press and the creativity inherent in literary journalism should, ideally, temper one another.
With this third publication we’ve found our footing and expanded the swath, including over 100 pages of content ranging from the pathetically romantic (sailors seeking online dates, pg. 40) to the steadfastly political (the Fence section, beginning pg. 66), to the scandalous (pg. 50), the nostalgic (pg. 56), and the must-see (pg. 6, 8, and 65). Like we said: Entertainment of All Sorts.
But something’s bothering me, and that is the misconception that in our fine country, and in our fine world, “entertainment” implies any semblance of homogeneity. As I sat down to write this note, I realized that entertainment’s inherent individuality is its essence: the common thread that binds the so-many types of entertainment—film, theatre, opera, and dance; music; wining and dining; arts, crafts, and photography; poetry, comedy, and tragedy—is that they are “entertaining,” whatever that means.
Entertainment defies definition, as do we each and all. And so my eyebrows raised when I picked up an August copy of Vanity Fair and came upon, long past its deadline, a contest to have published an original article that “explain[s] the character of the American people to the rest of the world.” By the time you read this, our country will have elected itself a new President, likely amid a hail of protests, insults, and late-night-television jokes—none of which is so virulent, I hope, as to incite civil war. TV sweeps will be in swing, holiday plans and New Year’s resolutions will be lined up, and unless you’re like my family, there will Thanksgiving leftovers still packed away in the fridge.
Yet seems to be little in the way of a concrete “American character”—such a fantasy is too simplistic to be possible, at least these days. We have American values—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; also the Bill of Rights, with the exception (perhaps) of the Second Amendment. We have American trends, for better and worse—Michael Jackson, jazz, the bellbottom, and the iPod. And we have that notoriously effective American work ethic.
Still, our collective character changes, just like that which entertains: sometimes war is a positive necessity; sometimes it’s not; and sometimes it was but isn’t as much anymore. The perspectival possibilities certainly outnumber the voters in this country, and so we try and try again, patriotically supporting the systems that have done us fairly well for the past two centuries. For perhaps to err is human, to forgive is divine (no matter what one’s faith). But—with a bow to the long-ago President Calvin Coolidge—only that we persevere in solidarity is distinctly and characteristically American.
Happy Thanksgiving, Holiday, and New Year, in advance.
Admiringly yours,
Jonathon Scott Feit,
Editor-in-Chief
on behalf of Citizen Culture
