Life — June 20, 1918 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 981 The main cartoon depicts St. Peter at heaven's gates dealing with a new arrival—a heavenly bureaucrat problem. St. Peter must tell someone they'll wait "a couple of years" because there's a "new wing administrator" from the United States who moves slowly on administrative matters. This satirizes American bureaucratic inefficiency and red tape, suggesting that even heaven cannot escape American administrative slowness. The joke implies that American management styles are so notoriously cumbersome that they've infected even the afterlife. The page also contains brief humorous comparison pieces ("Comparisons") and a short story titled "A Complicated Case" about a woman in a New York hotel kissed by an intoxicated man in an elevator, exploring social propriety and masculine thoughtlessness.