Staff at Vanity Fair have got into a lather over the prospect of a cover interview with Melania Trump. Oh, the horror of polluting a publication featuring the world’s most prominent A-listers with America’s First Lady.
The magazine, now a slim, advertising-lite shadow of its former self, has just appointed a new global editorial director, Mark Guiducci. He had barely got beyond floating a prospective interview with Trump’s wife before staff mutinied.
“I will walk out of the motherf***ing door, and half my staff will follow me,” a rebellious editor told the Daily Mail. Perhaps they should be told not to slam the door behind them. The problem with Vanity Fair is not that it is too “woke” but that it is too boring.
The glossy hasn’t been part of the national conversation since Radhika Jones took over from the far more mischievous and creative Graydon Carter (a worthy successor to the incomparable Tina Brown) in 2017, and drove its circulation into the ground. Jones left last spring.
But last November, there was a chance to make a splash again. Vanity Fair or Vogue should have invited Melania to be on the cover the moment Trump won the election. Hitting newsstands around the inauguration in January would have been perfect timing, since half of America had just voted him back into power.
But the ice-queen Anna Wintour, an ardent Democrat who still rules over parent company Condé Nast as chief content officer and Vogue‘s global editorial director – but was eased out as Vogue editor-in-chief in June – reportedly wouldn’t hear of it.
Now, it’s a bit late. With masked men snatching immigrants off the streets, armed soldiers in Washington, DC, the law being flouted on a daily basis by the administration, and Trump behaving like an absolute monarch, asking Melania to “grace” the cover of Vanity Fair would seem like another abject capitulation by the US establishment to her husband’s power grab.
Were I editing Vanity Fair, though, I would still go for it. The sphinx-like Melania fascinates and perplexes a lot of American women who admire her glamour, resilience, and most of all, the way she keeps her distance from her husband. The days tick by with barely anybody seeing her at the White House. What a scoop it would be to get her to comment on this.
It would also be worth probing Melania about her “peace” letter to Vladimir Putin at the Alaska summit, in which she claimed “it is time” to protect the children, especially given that Russia continues to rain hell on Ukrainian civilians, killing 18 people and four children in Kyiv on Thursday. Apparently, her views influence her husband’s – so let’s hear them.
She could also be challenged about gun control, having called this week for “pre-emptive intervention” in identifying potential shooters after a 23-year-old gunman killed two children and injured 18 at a Catholic school in Minneapolis. After all, in July last year Trump himself was the victim of an assassination attempt by a disturbed 20-year-old, which nearly left her a widow.
square SARAH BAXTER Trump's love-bombing has worked with leaders - for now
Read More
The US first lady proved in her eponymous memoir, Melania, published last year, that she was willing to break with her husband over abortion rights and criticise the tech giants over the corrosive impact of social media on young people. It’s madness for any publication to brush her off as an unworthy subject.
It’s also laughable because Conde Nast, the parent company of Vanity Fair and Vogue, played a vital role in creating the legend of Donald Trump and, subsequently, that of his third wife.
Si Newhouse, Condé Nast’s late owner, was at school with Roy Cohn, the “sorcerer” to Donald Trump’s “apprentice”; the man who taught the President everything he knows about stiffing your enemies, never apologising and seizing the levers of power.
The former schoolboys remained friends and Newhouse personally commissioned Trump’s 1987 bestseller, The Art of the Deal, at Random House, which he had just acquired for the Conde Nast stable. The disdainful Wintour also flattered and encouraged Melania at Vogue. In her memoir, Melania writes that “Anna” invited her to fly to Paris to assist her in buying a wedding dress, accompanied by the legendary fashion editor, Andre Leon Talley.
The result was a strapless Dior gown, adorned with 1500 pearls and rhinestones and weighing nearly 60 pounds. “‘This one is incredible,’ I murmured to Andre,” Melania gushes in her book.
Not only did Vogue cover Melania’s wedding in 2005, but she was also photographed by Annie Leibovitz descending from a private aircraft practically starkers and heavily pregnant with Barron (something of an homage to Vanity Fair’s famous cover with the actor Demi Moore).
Yet after Donald Trump’s political rise, there was a noticeable volte-face. Having banned Melania from Condé Nast magazines during Trump’s first term, the company then went overboard in featuring dreary coverage of First Lady Jill Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, as well as the wedding of Naomi Biden, the daughter of scandal-ridden Hunter Biden, during Joe Biden’s presidency, so they’ve really no excuse.
This has left Vanity Fair and much of the liberal media floundering, as they try to find the elusive sweet spot that satisfies their old school elitism, the demands of activist staff and the interests of new readers. Certainly, they are not the arbiters of taste or the starmakers they once were.
But now, the tentative cover offer may be futile anyway. Melania has reportedly let it be known that after so many snubs she “laughed off” Vanity Fair’s approach and declined it immediately.
Where she once would have jumped at the chance to appear in their pages, she doesn’t need them anymore. To paraphrase Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, she probably thinks: “I am big. It’s the magazines that got small.”
Sarah Baxter is director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting
Hence then, the article about snobs need to realise melania is the ultimate cover star was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Snobs need to realise Melania is the ultimate cover star )
Also on site :
- Five killed in helicopter crash on Africa’s highest mountain (VIDEO)
- transcosmos and V, Inc. launch metaverse creator services for VRChat via Geek Jack, transcosmos's cross-border e-commerce site for entertainment items
- The Christmas Day Storm