Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
January 1999 is one of the most historically loaded publication dates in the entire run of George Magazine. The issue arrived as the United States Senate was preparing to conduct the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton — the House had voted to impeach on December 19, 1998, just days before this issue went to press, and the constitutional crisis that had consumed American political life throughout the previous year was reaching its formal institutional climax. George, as a publication explicitly dedicated to the intersection of politics and popular culture, was in some ways the publication most naturally positioned to engage this moment — and the contents of this issue reflect exactly that positioning. The 1998 year-in-review content documented here — covering falling stock prices, "scandalous interns," the retrospective analysis of how the press got the story wrong, and the readers' poll of political winners and losers — constitutes a primary source record of how a politically engaged, culturally sophisticated American publication made sense of one of the most extraordinary years in postwar American political history, captured at the precise moment between the year's end and the trial's beginning. For collectors building an archive of George Magazine issues from across the publication's run, this January 1999 edition represents the magazine at its most historically situated — an issue whose content is inseparable from the specific and irreplaceable moment in which it was produced.
The cover subject, Robert Duvall, was chosen with the deliberate logic that George always brought to its celebrity-politics intersections. Duvall in January 1999 was actively promoting A Civil Action, the legal thriller in which he played a defense attorney — a film with direct thematic resonance for a magazine publishing during an impeachment proceeding, and one that gave the Josh Young profile a natural hook connecting Hollywood to the Washington drama consuming the country's attention. The profile's detail that Duvall was "holed up in Virginia" and willing to go off on Barbra Streisand — a figure with well-documented Democratic political connections — captures the kind of specific, unguarded celebrity content that George's profiles at their best delivered, and the Ralph Lauren styling and Wayne Maser photography reflect the magazine's consistent commitment to treating its celebrity subjects with the full production resources of a serious fashion-forward publication. The John McCain feature by Tom Dunkel is the issue's most prescient piece of journalism — published in January 1999, it engaged McCain's potential White House run more than a year before the 2000 primary campaign would make him a genuine national political phenomenon, and its characterization of him as a "Senate icon" navigating tobacco and campaign finance battles while eyeing the presidency captures a political figure at the exact moment his national ambitions were transitioning from speculation to active preparation. Collectors researching Robert Duvall magazine features and the political journalism of the late Clinton era will find this issue a precisely dated primary source of unusual depth.
The supporting content documented in the listing's table of contents makes this one of the more editorially complete George issues to surface with full content documentation. Howard Kurtz's media criticism piece — "Dead Wrong: How the Press Botched the Story of the Year" — is a significant piece of journalism in its own right, engaging the failure of the Washington press corps to accurately read public sentiment about the Clinton impeachment in a register that has only grown more historically interesting as subsequent decades have repeatedly revisited the same question about political media and public opinion. Bob Beamon's Eyewitness piece on the 1968 Olympic Black Power salute — published thirty years after the event by one of the athletes who had been present — connects the political journalism of 1999 to one of the defining protest moments of the twentieth century. Naomi Wolf's "American Dreams" feature and Gwen Ifill's White House piece on the James Hormel nomination add further layers of political and cultural journalism that collectively make the issue a comprehensive document of the American political landscape at the turn of 1999. Collectors researching political and cultural magazines from 1999 will find this issue a particularly well-preserved and fully documented artifact of an extraordinary political moment.
About the Publication
George Magazine was founded by John F. Kennedy Jr. and Michael Berman in 1995 and published monthly until its closure in 2001, following Kennedy's death in July 1999. It occupied a genuinely original niche in the American magazine market — a publication that treated politics with the visual production values, celebrity cover approach, and cultural breadth of a mainstream lifestyle magazine, while maintaining substantive political journalism in its features and departments. Its editorial philosophy was built on Kennedy's conviction that politics and popular culture were not separate spheres but deeply interpenetrating ones, and that a publication addressing the intersection seriously could attract a readership that neither pure political magazines nor pure celebrity publications were reaching. By January 1999 George had been publishing for nearly four years and had built a distinctive editorial identity, a loyal readership, and a cultural presence that made it one of the more closely watched political publications of the late Clinton era. This January 1999 issue — published six months before Kennedy's death would end the magazine's run — represents George operating with full institutional confidence at the most politically consequential moment of its existence.
Key Highlights Inside
- Robert Duvall cover and profile by Josh Young — a full feature on one of American cinema's most consistently serious performers, timed to the release of A Civil Action and capturing Duvall in characteristically candid form, photographed by Wayne Maser and styled in Ralph Lauren — representing George's signature approach of bringing full fashion-magazine production values to celebrity political journalism.
- "John McCain's Private War" by Tom Dunkel on page 68 — a prescient early examination of McCain's potential presidential run published more than a year before the 2000 primary campaign would establish him as a genuine national political phenomenon, engaging his Senate record on tobacco and campaign finance reform and constituting a primary source document of his pre-campaign positioning at a specific and significant political moment.
- "1998: A Year in Full" retrospective on page 74 and "Dead Wrong: How the Press Botched the Story of the Year" by Howard Kurtz on page 80 — collectively representing George's comprehensive journalistic reckoning with the Clinton impeachment year, the former as a documented historical overview and the latter as a significant media criticism piece engaging the Washington press corps' failure to accurately read public sentiment about the most consequential political story of the decade.
- "Grand Exits" photo-essay by Chris Mitchell on page 60 — an intimate memorial to significant figures who died in 1998, with anecdotes from people who knew them, representing the kind of culturally wide-ranging documentary content that gave George its distinctive editorial identity beyond pure political journalism.
- Bob Beamon's Eyewitness account of the 1968 Olympic Black Power salute on page 48, Naomi Wolf's recovery movement essay on page 52, Gwen Ifill on the James Hormel nomination on page 50, and the annual readers' poll on page 90 — a range of political, social, and cultural journalism that reflects George's breadth of editorial ambition and provides multiple layers of primary source documentation of American political and cultural life at the turn of 1999.
- Additional features on the mysterious death of Jim McDougal (page 74), the FBI's unsolved cases (page 78), the National Reconnaissance Office's missing $4 billion (page 82), and Tony Blankley on the political talk show circuit (page 56) — the full depth of George's political journalism infrastructure in a single issue, documented with the precision that makes this table of contents an unusually complete research resource for the late-Clinton-era political press.
Condition & Rarity
George Magazine issues from January 1999 are approaching their twenty-seventh year of existence — recent enough that surviving copies are still relatively available, but old enough that condition variation among examples is meaningful, particularly for issues from the final years of the publication's run whose historical significance has become increasingly clear with time. Very Good condition with only light edge wear is an honest and strong grade for a nearly three-decade-old monthly magazine, indicating a copy that displays cleanly, reads completely, and retains the full visual integrity of the Robert Duvall cover without the structural damage that would compromise its collector value. The address label has been removed rather than never applied — a condition distinction worth noting, as label removal can leave adhesive residue or surface damage depending on how it was done, and the listing's photos provide the best evidence of how cleanly the removal was accomplished in this case. The plastic protective sleeve provides ongoing archival protection for a coated-stock publication whose cover surface benefits from protection against scuffing and oxidation in long-term storage. Collectors evaluating surviving examples of this issue should prioritize cover surface quality in the area where the label was removed, overall spine integrity, and the completeness of the documented interior content — particularly the McCain feature and the year-in-review journalism — as the primary condition criteria.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
A Very Good copy of George Magazine from January 1999 with the Robert Duvall cover, a fully documented table of contents, and the John McCain presidential run feature is a historically specific find — issues of George from its final years with confirmed content documentation are among the more pursued entries in the publication's collector catalog, and this issue's proximity to both the Clinton impeachment and Kennedy's own death six months later gives it a historical weight that only increases with time. If this issue is no longer available, the Robert Duvall magazine collection at OriginalMagazines.com is the most focused place to locate other cover appearances and features from his career. The full George Magazine collection offers surviving issues across the publication's 1995–2001 run for collectors building a comprehensive archive of this historically significant and now-closed title, and the 1999 magazine collection brings together issues from across that year's major publications for collectors documenting the full breadth of American political and cultural print journalism at the turn of the millennium.