The MSM loves Rolling Stone. Some of the editors at some of the larger dailies can probably still remember when it was a thick, newsprint tabloid, purchased in “head shops,” the patchouli incense thick in the air.

Those associations die hard. Most of them still associate the magazine with the counter culture, with daring, with acid and dropping the needle on a fresh copy of “Are You Experienced?”

The most recent issue has Robin Williams featured on the mega-gatefold cover.

It’s. Over.

Why do we care? Because they’ve come out with their Comedy Issue. And the MSM slavishly features chunks and snippets and links to the online tease, assuring the magazine will hit its circulation marks. It’s a hefty circulation. They’re a power house among magazines. (Heck, until very recently, publisher Jann Wenner was making all kinds of noise about building a casino in Vegas!) But their motto may as well be “All the cognitive dissonance that fits.” As a barometer of what is hip, RS is about as accurate as the Kohl’s circular that shows up in your Sunday paper.

So, when they turn their attention to comedy, we grudgingly pony up the $4.50 and cringe as we wade through their rather cursory survey of the current comedy zeitgeist. It’s predictably dopey.

On the front cover, they trumpet “The Golden Age of Comedy,” but the content provides little justification for such a claim. Oh, sure, the case could be made that we’re in a golden age of comedy, but RS certainly doesn’t make it.

There’s that little matter of Robin Williams on the cover. And Martin Short.

And, between the covers, there’s more of the same RS drivel and arrogance– The over-arching theme is “What’s Funny Now.” Could a publication be more arrogant? And, when one realizes that the people, the memes, the products and content are all so obviously placed by networks and agents and studios, the whole enterprise is somewhat embarrassing.

Get a load of this quote, from the flagship article (entitled “What’s Funny Now”), which is subtitled “Is the punchline dead? From The Office to Judd Apatow to Garfield Minus Garfield, the new golden age of comedy is more about uneasy pauses than rat-a-tat jokes. Meet the new awkward.”

“As with indie rock and punk before it, the new comedy’s impoverished look signals its lack of show business phoniness.”

We have no problem with niches. This awkward thing is a niche, a cultural speed bump. This nonsense about comedy’s “new impoverished look” or it’s “lack of show business phoniness” is laughable. And their eagerness to declare that good, solid standup is dead– and that some form of rumpled, pseudo-authentic, Kerou-whackiness has replaced it– is pathetic. (NBC has been pushing the “awkward is the new funny” meme for some time now.)

The first person quoted in the article is Lorne Michaels. Lorne Micheals! Could they find a bigger network whore than Lorne Michaels? Could they dig up a more tired, more formulaic, more dead-behind-the-eyeballs purveyor of warmed-over crap than Lorne Michaels? Who really cares what the quote is? They’ve managed to utterly demolish their sub-head premise with just one attribution!

Venturing further into the article, we leard that Kristen Wiig is the hot new thing! (Pay no attention to the several hundred thousand dollars worth of advertising inside the front and back gatefold!)

Patton Oswalt is quoted. Of course. We have a love/hate relationship with Oswalt. We love him onstage. We despise the claptrap he peddles to the press. We suppose it works for him. (He is, after all, quoted in the latest issue of Rolling Stone!) But his quotes are often infuriating.

“I put years in on the road, just being onstage constantly, and it was all about having to get laughs no matter what,” says Patton Oswalt, who has headlined the Comedians of Comedy Tour for the past four years. “Then I just burned my act down to the ground.” Like other standups of his generation, Oswalt developed a deep distrust of punchlines. “What you’re saying is, ‘I need you guys to like me.’ Those are really ugly aspects to a comedian.”

This is right in Rolling Stone’s wheelhouse! He maintains that every great comedian that came before him was a pathetic, needy cockroach that submitted to the tyranny of the punchline out of a need to be accepted. And the corollary is that those who shun the punchline (or artfully create the illusion of doing so) are, by comparison, worthy warriors in the new Golden Age of Comedy!

If Oswalt truly didn’t care what the audience thought– if he didn’t especially “need you guys to like me”– he would have soldiered on in the clubs and been gleefully despised by one audience after another. Instead he made the switch to so-called alt venues– where people liked him.

RS could have actually made the case for a golden age. They could have written rapturously and with wonder about the eye-popping opportunity that exists– for performers and consumers alike– in the 21st century’s sprawling comedy marketplace. Instead, they offered a narrow, parochial survey of what’s out there, packaged as a hipster’s guide to what’s funny.