Bonfire of the Vanity
I'm the kind of joyless literalist who gets huffy about people using a single distasteful article as proof of The Death of X Magazine!! … but, well, I'm here to tell you about The Death of Vanity Fair Magazine!!
Why? In November 1994, the phone book-sized glossy ran one of the most devastating celebrity-profiles ever, Maureen Orth's "Cult Favorite," about the then-right wing political up-and-comer Arianna Huffington (you can read it by starting here; I praised it in the November issue). Eleven years, one month, and at least one political werewolf-act later, Vanity Fair has come out with a second pass on the subject, this time by Suzanna Andrews.
There's been some rich subject matter since then, no? Like, I dunno, Arianna's revisionist history about her 1994 views on Proposition 187 and immigration, her interesting relationships with current and former ghostwriters, the way she has treated those who dare criticize her….But instead, we get embarrassing ass-smoochery like this:
But it is when she starts to talk, really talk, that people are swept under. This is a woman who actually has read her Kierkegaard, her Schopenhauer, her John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx, and she can quote from them. At Cambridge she studied economics and was president of the university's storied debating society, the Cambridge Union--which has made her a master sophist, capable of cutting an issue 16 ways and winning the argument without revealing what she really believes. On television, that has made her extraordinarily persuasive, a talk-show guest who "really knows her shit," says Bill Maher, "and never stumbles." In society, among the wealthy and influential, the sheer force of her mind has won her countless friends and admirers. "It's why she pulls everyone in," says her friend the socialite and author Sugar Rautbord. "Arianna is probably one of the most intellectually seductive human beings on the face of the planet. She has such a powerful brain, and she exudes an intellectuality that is almost sexual."
Almost! Or maybe I'm just not wealthy and influential enough to appreciate the sheer force of her mind….
