My November Vanity Fair came in the mail today and I have to say vanity is the operative word. This edition reads like a gossip column. It’s lead article is, “The 2013 New Establishment: Who’s Up, Who’s Down and Who’s Roadkill,” — to which I’d have liked to add, ”Who cares?”
I thumbed through the magazine in less than 15 minute and was still hungry for something substantive. In desperation, I turned to the readers’ letters. There I found a complaint written by a couple who had taken umbrage at an earlier profile of Martha Stewart: “The Golden Goose Lays and Egg.” I hadn’t read the offending article, but I delighted in the rebuttal.
Not once in any [of Martha Stewart’s TV shows] has she ever taught us how to make a bomb, how to poison our neighbor, or how to get rid of a husband or wife we no longer find useful. What she has done, the pair argued, was focus her audience on the pleasure of being alive. (“V.F. Mailbag,” Jeffrey and Iva Kimmelman of Stow Massachusetts, Vanity Fair, November 2013 pg. 82.)
I liked the standards Jeffrey and Iva Kimmelman applied. Mainly, they charged the homemaker’s diva with doing no harm and attempting to make others happy. As I poured milk on my cereal, I wondered how most of the beautiful people profiled in the magazine would measure up. Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sach’s wouldn’t pass muster I’m sure. How about Dick Cheney? George Wolfowitz? Donald Rumsfeld?
While they might not meet the Kimmelman’s high standards, I could think of many who did: teachers, nurses, social workers, hospice workers… Which leads me to wonder, “Why doesn’t Vanity Fair write about them?”
(Martha Stewart courtesy of yahoo.com)
