Headline from the Washington Post:
Joanna Coles, Making that Cosmo Girl a Little More Serious
It would be more accurate to say that Coles, the new editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, is helping that Cosmo Girl snuggle up to President Obama's policies.
The gushy and highly-detailed treatment of the Hermes-wearing Coles—it even tells how many minutes it took the former celebrity judge for Lifetime’s “Project Runway All Stars” to get to sleep the previous night—contains this nugget:
Her influence is nowhere more evident than in the magazine’s newfound interest in Washington and the political and policy matters that most directly affect women. While Cosmo still carries (illustrated) hot reads with titles such as “12 Kinky Quickies” and “The Scary Thing 90% of Men Fantasize About,” recent issues have also contained articles about fair compensation, domestic violence and gun control. One recent issue included a 12-page, vividly illustrated description of 12 reliable methods of contraception.
“When you have children is the most important choice affecting your life,” Coles says.
There’s less fluff in the magazine and definitely nothing fluffy about its top woman. Coles wears her politics on her finely tailored sleeve and makes clear that she plans to affect more than just the direction of the magazine.
“I’m very confused,” she says, “how any moderate Republican candidates think they’re going to get women’s votes if they deny affordable, accessible contraception to those women’s daughters.”
She says she would like to meet with GOP politicians but doesn’t encounter them very often. “I tend to come across Republicans in business — and they don’t feel allied to the party at the moment, because the party is becoming so extreme.
Since I probably know more Republicans than Ms. Coles, who is 51 but obviously very sheltered, let me just say that I don’t know a single one who advocates denying women contraception. Sure, some meanies think that women who work for, say, Jesuit colleges, should pay for their own contraception (often around $10 a month). Yeah, I know it's unspeakable, but it's a religious liberty thing. That is not quite the same as denying contraception.
Cosmo is one of the magazines that is flacking for ObamaCare. Could that be the reason that, while in Washington, Ms. Coles rated a meet and greet with “a slew of presidential staff, including President Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and Tara McGuinness, a senior communications adviser for the White House?”
I usually end blog posts on newspaper or magazine articles urging you to read the whole thing. This time? Not so much. The slavish admiration the reporter showered on Cosmo girl Coles put me in mind of what Dorothy Parker—not really a Cosmo girl—once wrote about a children’s book Parker found cloying: Tonstant Weader fwowed up