Brad Pitt looks buff, but Graydon Carter is número uno in my book

[lebkuchen]

Graydon Carter is Vanity Fair's editor. I subscribe, and Carter's http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2006/12/graydon200612">"Editor's letter" is the first thing I read when VF arrives to my mailbox. In December's issue Carter opens with,

Given the complete cock-up the president has made of his job during the past six years, I wouldn't be surprised if Bush in Rehab were the title of the next volume in Bob Woodward's topsy-turvy history of this administration. As I've said before, if the president's hitting the bottle these days, who could blame the poor fellow? He's got a catastrophic war on his hands; his budget deficits are in the stratosphere; his poll numbers are lost in the carpet somewhere; his fellow Republicans have been avoiding him in the run-up to the midterm elections as if he had just farted; he's got a sex scandal involving male pages staining the front pages and a crazy man in North Koreas with a nuke who's sticking his tongue out at him.

This is standard Graydon Carter, and he's helped to keep my sanity for the last several months. Poppy won't be pleased w/Carter's analysis, but my Xmas gift to friends will be a VF subscription.

Buzzflash interviewed Carter in Sept. 2004. Have a http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/09/int04049.html">look.

[MADem]

1. The entire thing is online. Here's a link and a few more paragraphs

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2006/12/graydon200612

...Under normal circumstances, the president could fall back on his base: Christian fundamentalists. Except that a new book by a former deputy director of the administration's religious-outreach office claims that the Bush administration fawned over dignitaries from the Christian right to their faces, then snickered behind their backs, mocking them and all but taping KICK ME signs to their jackets.

Whether the president is wetting his lips or not, he might need the all-purpose alcohol excuse just to get out of the public doghouse he finds himself in. It might work for Mel Gibson. It might even work for Mark Foley. Bush in late 2008: I was drunk when I invaded Iraq—there, I've said it. Then it's off to Silver Hill for two months of drying out, followed by a book contract with Simon & Schuster, a teary confession on 60 Minutes, and the $250,000-a-pop speaking circuit. Experts differ on the subject of the president's drinking. Alcoholics Anonymous veterans of my acquaintance say that Bush is a "dry drunk"—someone who quit one day and is just holding on for dear life. My esteemed colleague Christopher Hitchens claims that the president was no more a heavy boozer than any other wealthy layabout his age—but that he used drinking as a hurdle to overcome in order to be saved by the Lord, and thereby get in good with Christian evangelicals.

The Mark Foley scandal has given Americans a delightful insight into the actual values of the party of family values. As The New York Times put it in an editorial, "When there is a choice between the right thing to do and the easiest route to perpetuation of power, top Republicans always pick wrong." The Foley affair has been particularly vexing for House Speaker Dennis Hastert—a politician in the Tammany Hall ward-heeler mode that only 19th-century political cartoonist Thomas Nast could have dreamed up. When the page scandal broke, Hastert's immediate reaction was to take the lead of Sergeant Schultz in Hogan's Heroes, the popular 60s sitcom: I know nothing! The president, for his part, simply followed the tack he had taken when he told FEMA chief Michael Brown, after Hurricane Katrina had leveled New Orleans, that "Brownie" was doing a "heck of a job." As the swirling Foley scandal began to center on exactly when Hastert had first been informed about the congressman's indiscretions, Bush told reporters, "Denny is very credible, as far as I'm concerned. And he's done a fine job as Speaker." A fine job, I suppose, as long as you don't happen to be a teenage male page being sexually stalked via e-mail by a Republican congressman from Florida—the pivotal state in the 2000 election.

Foley himself was quickly hustled offstage to rehab for the duration of the election, but not before playing another card in his effort to get back into the public's good graces: he said that he had been abused as a teenage altar boy, and went on to identify the priest who did it. Party mandarins were uncharacteristically sympathetic about Foley's lurid tale. Can you imagine what would have happened if he hadn't been a Republican? (In a momentary bout of wishful thinking, Fox News's O'Reilly Factor even briefly labeled Foley a Democrat.) One shudders to even contemplate his fate at the hands of the Bible-thumping Republican attack squads were it so. That Foley was chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus is an absurdist jolt of irony that even a writer of fiction wouldn't go near. The other irony that is difficult to overlook is that the party that, in the 2004 presidential election, so manipulated the issue of traditional morality got mired itself in a truly tawdry Capitol Hill sex scandal just weeks before another election. And tawdry it is. In one instant-message exchange with a teenage male page, Foley said that he had masturbated while waiting to cast a vote in the House. When it's time for C-SPAN to issue parental advisories, you know that Washington has become overly louche.....

Four more juicy paragraphs at the link, above.....

[lebkuchen]

2. Thank you!

Found it!

Now, to find a photo of Graydon...

[MADem]

4. Ici?

http://www.mediabistro.com.nyud.net:8090/content/archives/04/09/21/graydon.jpg

[lebkuchen]

9. très sophistiqué!

my type, defintely.

[stellanoir]

3. I've a friend who introduced me to VF in the late 80's.

They described it as the "thinking man's People." It's the only magazine to which I've ever subscribed.

Their astrologer is a real hoot though insightful as well

http://michaellutin.com

[MADem]

5. If you can ignore the scary people in the ads, the content is great

But those models; page after page after page after page of them....regardless of gender, they are uniformly angry and starving. Heaven forbid they be 'uncool' and actually SMILE as though they are pleased about something, anything!!!!

I guess I'd be pissed off too if I couldn't ever have a good meal and had to wear some of the trite, overpriced, gee-you-look-like-a-total-asshole-in-that-absurdly-expensive-crap they drape on them!

Geez, no dinner, and get a load of my VISA bill!!!!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!

:rofl:

[lebkuchen]

8. Have you seen the Gap ads in VF?

Some good photogs of Seal, Claudia Schiffer, Helen Mirren and Bow Wow, not to mention, the Gap has a fairly high Democratic Party affiliation average.

http://www.buyblue.org/directory/g

[stellanoir]

10. LOL I'm fairly good at ignoring the ads

but I hear ya. I heard a report recently (can't recall where) about how the fashion industry was leaning away from emaciated models for many reasons. Some were health related. Other's having to do with how few middle aged women can relate to that look.

[lebkuchen]

6. VF is way beyond People.

I feel depressed after reading People (in the checkout line, cover to cover--too many "sophisticates" w/too many boring hangups). After reading VF, I feel informed, and I enjoy the perfume smells as I read from the bathtub.

I usually don't pay attention to astrological forecasts in general, but mine in VF for Oct., Nov. and Dec. were on the mark. And I found out that Stephen Colbert and I were born on the same day. :)

[stellanoir]

11. That' precisely why I found my friend's recommendation so humorous.

"People. . .people who (read) People are the (most thoughtless) people. . .in the world. . ."

Sorry but you just inspired that earworm. :)

[lebkuchen]

12. There's something about a mag that's full of fluff, cover to cover

Cosmo falls into that category, imo. That and People, US, Reader's Digest, hell, Time and Newsweek most weeks...

Not VF!

In the Dec. issue is a good photog of The Gropinator shaking hands with "Makaka" Allen, as "Page-boy" Foley and Katherine "Cruella" Harris looking on, all smiles.

[stellanoir]

15. I've another friend who used to pretend to do an advertisement for

Cosmo. He'd use this melodramatic funny voice and rattle off a litany of vaccous titles for fake "informative articles" really quickly. . .the only titles I remember specifically were "fuzzy slippers or fuzzy dice. . .?" and the one he always finished with. It was . . ."How to tell if your man is hard. . ." :rofl:

I haven't seen a "Reader's Digest" in decades but I remember my grandmother getting them and if memory serves, they had a lot of health related stuff and excerpts from novels at least.

Maybe they've changed content since then.

[lebkuchen]

16. Reader's Digest is very conservative

Don't bother.

My friend was thumbing through Cosmo at the checkout lane and proclaimed it "spicy," especially the story re: how many hands a man's penis is. Two hands is supposed to be best...perhaps some noteworthy material for your friend's new melodrama? :)

Cosmo is mind-numbing. I'm surprised it's gotten as far as it has.

[stellanoir]

17. Oh I wasn't gonna bother believe me.

And my grandmother was fairly conservative but funny and good hearted nonetheless.

[mitchum]

19. I prefer the wag who said, "Vanity Fair exists so that Mick Jagger...

has something to read in the bathroom"
Dig up some old issues and look at how much Carter fawned over the bush administration from 2001 until about 2004 or so. Quite a bit. Carter is essentially an opportunist who leans with the wind.

[Pab Sungenis]

7. Graydon used to edit SPY Magazine

...arguably the best satirical magazine of all time, and one that is sadly missed.

[elehhhhna]

14. Best. Magazine. EVER.

god i miss it

[mitchum]

20. And that is a very pathetic decline (from Spy to Vanity Fair)

Carter went from puncturing twits to fluffing them

[leftchick]

13. he is very cool!

Thank you for this! :)

[Manifestor_of_Light]

18. Doesn't any body here read The New Yorker?

Doesn't Anybody Here read The New Yorker?

Sy Hersh? Hendrik Hertzberg? Etc., Etc.?

Although I have learned to skim the parts where the author beats something to death.

[lebkuchen]

23. The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly...same genre as VF?

Both have such rich literary content. Difficult for me to subscribe to them and still find time to read the books I have bedside.

I'm currently reading John Dean's "Conservatives w/o Conscience," which lays out the damage done by the neocons in shocking array. No wonder the US is #17 on the list of world's democracies.

VF is a good way to get friends who tend not even to read the paper, preferring to shop, to ease into the political arena.

[Bombtrack]

21. Graydon Carter comes off as so pompous and fullfilling of a negative stereotype to me

that of the full-of-himself liberal elitist. And he isn't even that great a journalist or that persuasive an arguer to make up for it.

Even his hair is pompous.

[mitchum]

22. You're not the only one.

Carter is a ridiculous, opportunistic twit. A lackey of the ruling and glittering class. Proud to haul shiny rocks for the Pharaoh.