Are you finding it harder and harder to slog through page upon page of Bush-Is-Hitler articles to indulge in the guilty pleasures once provided by the glitzy New York magazines?
You are not alone. Noemie Emery has a terrific piece on this phenom: the virulent anti-Bush feelings among members of what Emery calls the “glitz-based community.” These feelings, expressed with vitriol on perfume scented pages, have robbed us of the pleasure of knowing the most decadent chef in New York or what the butler did without being preached at between luscious advertisements. Vanity Fair, which has seen a dramatic plummet in circulation, is a leader in the field:
“The new Vanity Fair,” writes Emery, “is a story the old one might have wanted to cover, as it points up an interesting trend: The really fierce strains of anti-Bush feeling come less from established political sources than from what might be called the ’glitz-based community’–people connected to Hollywood, fashion, or celebrity media, who produce diversions and lifestyle advice. At the shallower end of the pool of arts and intellect, they tend to produce the facile and transient; they make TV shows, or write them; make clothes, or write about them; try to become, or failing that tend to the needs of, celebrities.”
Anybody who hasn’t given up on Vanity Fair and the New Yorker or other mags of this ilk knows what to expect: “’There will be a draft,’ imagined New York’s James Atlas: ’The polar ice caps will melt. . . . The Patriot Act will be used to stifle dissent in the media. . . . Jews will be rounded up.’ ’Rounding up Jews’ might not seem to compute with Bush’s being a captive of neocons, but logic is not the strong suit of this faction. What Bush seems to be facing is less the normal opposition of a traditional part of the political class than a visceral uprising among fashionistas, a vast metrosexual spasm on behalf of a self-image based on cultural preening. ’Do you mean there’s still going to be civilization?’ Atlas wrote on the grim morning of November 3.”
But this phenomenon isn’t just a story of the elite scribblers posing — the glitz-based community is now the base of the Democratic Party. Emery notes:
“What makes all this more than mildly funny is the fact that glitzkrieg–political war as carried on by the glossies–has become in a sense the core of the Democrats, their chief source of lucre, and most prominent face. ’Look at Kerry’s chief supporters and you see a new kind of elite,’ says Joel Kotkin, ’a veritable ‘hip-ocracy’ of high-tech tycoons, Hollywood moguls and celebrities, and a bevy of Wall Street financiers.’ This describes the table of contents in most of the glossies, most of their subjects, and sometimes their writers and editors, one of whom pulled down a cool $100,000 for pitching a movie idea. An Axis of Edginess, they make up the Miramax wing of the party (named after the Hollywood studio that branched into publishing, and whose head is an ardent and tireless Democratic fundraiser). Last year, John Kerry cleared almost $50 million in Hollywood, and was seldom without a phalanx of film stars, who dominated his convention in Boston and stumped with him throughout the campaign.”
I just spent Easter in the south, which I love with all my heart, but even there, people want to be cool. I predict that those who strive with every fiber of their being, to be sophisticated, from Maine to Mississippi, will fall in line with the glossies. But there aren’t that many of them. As Vanity Fair’s steep decline in circulation shows.