MER
July 1990
One Convicted, One Not
Closed mid-June 1990 · On stands late June 1990
The Front
The Vogue Summer
A Front item on Madonna's Blond Ambition tour as an argument about image control, not a concert review
The Essay
The Barbarians, Assessed
A long essay on the leveraged-buyout decade's hangover, keyed to the winter's RJR Nabisco book, and what the record profits bought the men who made them
The Foreign File
Dispatch, Held
A stringer's piece bumped a cycle by the well's crowding
The Feature Well
The Swoosh Economy
A profile of the athlete-endorsement business — Jordan, Bo Jackson, the sneaker as a share of a paycheck — run short this cycle
The City
Fama Convicted, Mondello Acquitted
The split Bensonhurst verdict, May 1990
The Back
Summer Films, Previewed
Short notices on the coming season's studio slate
Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em, Reviewed
A back-of-book review treating the summer's inescapable record as a text, not a phenomenon