Absent at the reunion?

As always, someone misconstrued my Tweet when I linked to the Slate-esque confession by a novelist that she was responsible for Gourmet’s demise because of its indulgence of her free-spending ways. My take was that failure has a million mothers in this situation — who hasn’t been blamed besides the real culprit: the enthusiasm gap? (As I’ve hammered repeatedly, this was a Joni Mitchell line in action: No one missed it till it was gone.) But I’m so cynical I realized the come-to-Jesus moment occurred for the most craven of reasons — I read it only a day after a big House & Home feature and just thought: Someone has a new book coming out. It’s link bait, formerly arboreal media- style.