"All three of these magazines are, you know, a few years on either side, 100 years old and we've been through many ups and downs," he said.

Ha, yes. Vanity Fair was founded in 1914 and it's been around ever since! Except for a brief 48-year-long Great Depression-induced hiatus.

VF was the original Men's Vogue!

[NYO; pic via Conde Nast]

From his childhood days in Germany, Chris/Clark was always intrigued by high society and the finer things. Prone to big dreams and imaginings, at seventeen-years-old he fled his family for the New World. The sleepy town of Meriden, Connecticut, to be exact, where he stayed with a family he'd met on a train in Europe some time earlier. From there he proceeded to a run a thirty year con, changing names several times and going from the toasted It Boy of San Marino, to fake USC film buff, Wall Street big wig, fake art collector, pretend Rockefeller, church owner, celebrated demagogue of Beacon Hill Brahmin high society, and, finally, a man named Chip Smith, arrested by a swarm of armed authorities on a Baltimore street. He's been kind of a terrible person who, you know, maybe murdered a young couple back in California, but compelling facts like these just keep us glued:

• He floated around the country for 30 years without one single piece of official documentation.
• Learned his rich boy drawl from none other than Thurston Howell III, the Gilligan's Island millionaire character.
• When in California as Christopher Chichester, XIII Bt, he made up a Chichester family crest: "a heron, its wings spread, with an eel in its beak."
• Said he was the descendant of a former viceroy of India. And people believed him!
• Was given his own public access television show, Inside San Marino.
• Lived with a drunk old lady named Didi Sohus. Later, probably, killed her son and daughter-in-law, buried them in the backyard. When asked why the whole yard was dug up, he said he was having plumbing problems. He kept Didi from worrying by posing, on the phone, as a State Department official and telling her that the kids were working for the government and were on a secret mission overseas. This case was later on Unsolved Mysteries, and Christopher Chichester was mentioned by name and a photograph was aired. He avoided it by fleeing back East.
• When in Greenwich, and reinvented as Christopher Crowe, had the initials CCC embroidered on everything he wore.
• Used David Berkowitz's (the "Son of Sam" killer) social security number when applying for a job.
• Managed to get two high-profile Wall Street jobs with absolutely no experience or credentials.
• When that went bust, reinvented himself again as Clark Rockefeller. Fooled much of New York society, dazzling them with his rococo stories about secluded mansions and regal dinners, jingling his "key to Rockefeller Center," and dazzling collectors and connoisseurs with his impressive works of art (which later turned out to all be fakes).
• "At the end of many a meal of beef ribs and succotash at the armory, Rockefeller would exclaim, 'Isn’t this grand!,' and if it was an extra-grand evening, he would add, 'It’s a peach-melba night!' Quigley recalls, 'And then he would order peach melba, and here we were, two grown men, sitting there eating parfaits.'"
• Played the didgeridoo.
• Rumored to speak five to seven languages.
• Sent text messages like: “In a submarine. Crowded. Strange. Thought of you a minute ago.” and “Sipping strange tropical drinks on Nantucket now. Would love to see you. This coming week perhaps go to Central Park and kiss. Sound good?”
• At five years old, his daughter Snooks drew the entire Periodic Table of Elements on a Boston sidewalk in chalk.

Srsly, just read the whole article. It's fascinating. And we were just saying that there are no good hoaxes anymore.

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit [VF]

Seth just had a big story in Vanity Fair about Bloomberg, so he was surprised enough to transcribe the entire message he got:

"Hi Seth, [name] calling from Bloomberg. I just wanted to give you a quick call, I was actually forwarded your information from one of my colleagues and I definitely understand you’ve been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair for some time and provided a lot of insight on Dan Brown’s book and a lot of details that events that have occurred at The New York Times, but the reason that I’m calling is that we’ve actually been reaching out to a lot of public relations firms showing them the great tools that we have on Bloomberg to scan for news content relating to Vanity Fair or of course its peers as well so I definitely want to reach out to you and see if you were possibly interested in taking a look Bloomberg. I’ve met with a lot of other publishing firms also, AMI [American Media, Inc. - publisher of The National Enquirer, Flex, and Fit Pregnancy] being one of them, and thought that you as in, as a PR representative at Vanity Fair would definitely benefit from a lot of tools that are on Bloomberg also, so definitely feel free to give me a call and I will follow up with you. Again my direct again is 212-xxx-xxxx, and again we’d be more than happy to stop by and provide you with a little demonstration of all the news functionalities that are available. Again, [name] calling from Bloomberg."

Okay, that's pretty convoluted. And embarrassing. But where is your spirit of Christian charity this holiday season, Seth Mnookin? Are you secretly upset that your beloved Boston Red Sox suck big time? AW YEA. [Seth Mnookin; pic via I Want Media]

Here's the full list of cultural references from Wolcott's piece: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dracula, Vampire Academy, Gossip Girl, The Morganville Vampires, Vampire Kisses, The Vampire Diaries, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, Into the Wild, Mary-Louise Parker, Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries, Six Feet Under, Harry Potter, Debussy, Rudolf Nureyev, Chris Isaak, Michelangelo, Chopin, Superman, the gays, Sarah Palin, James Dean, David Lynch, Bob Dylan, Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, and Brideshead Revisited. An impressive array, to say the least.

Even the books themselves are part of the Twilight phenomenon, says Wolcott: "The physical properties of the books themselves may explain their popularity. They’re thick, chunky, promising a fat read—you don’t so much curl up with them as gulp them down." Salon's Laura Miller also noted the chameleon-like qualities of the series written by Mormon housewife Stephenie Meyer:

Bookstores have been known to shelve the Twilight books in both the children's and the science fiction/fantasy sections, but they are — in essence and most particulars — romance novels, and despite their gothic trappings represent a resurrection of the most old-fashioned incarnation of the genre. They summon a world in which love is passionate, yet (relatively) chaste, girls need be nothing more than fetchingly vulnerable, and masterful men can be depended upon to protect and worship them for it.

Add nostalgia for a time you can't remember to the rest. While the quality of the Twilight series isn't particularly high, the subject matter makes for compelling fun. What does the popularity of the book and film have to say about kids? Probably nothing too interesting, as we found out when the young author revealed the actual inspiration for the book, which includes the band My Chemical Romance. I can't blame James Wolcott for not getting that one.

We should just be thankful kids are still reading — soon we may have to discover emerging cultural trends from actual observation and research. Here's the new TV spot for the flick:

The Twilight Zone [Vanity Fair]

Prue, Murdoch's eldest daughter, is a weirdo, says Wolff. But at least she didn't want to marry her mom, yuck!:

Still, Prue, at 50, feels free enough to have morphed into the official Murdoch-family wing nut. She gets away with saying what the others won’t, even things that the others won’t think, and she takes the various family members much less seriously than they do themselves. This involves, not least of all, seeing her three oldest half-siblings—Elisabeth, Lachlan, and James—as, each in his or her way, master-race prototypes. Where Prue is short, plump, unfashionable, and rather disheveled, her half-siblings are each striking, precise, intense—almost too good to be true, at least at first glance. (Both of her half-brothers married models, each of whom bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the boys’ mother, Anna—striking, precise, intense—and hence to their sister Elisabeth, who is her mother’s clone.)

Classic Wolffian zingers! He runs through all the kids' thumbnail life stories, which are about par for the course for the children of a famous billionaire. Funniest is Murdoch's son James, a spoiled Harvard kid who started an underground hip hop label before morphing into a robotic News Corp. exec:

A bleached-blond hipster, with various piercings, he drops out of Harvard in his junior year, after spending time in Rome, vaguely thinking about a career as an archaeologist. Instead, he decides to make the hip-hop label he’s started in college, Rawkus Records, his full-time career. He swaps out the bleached-blond hair and earrings for a rugged beard and eyebrow stud.

Rawkus is a critical if not quite financial success, with Mos Def and, early in his career, Eminem on the label. His father agrees to buy Rawkus in 1996, and James goes to work in News Corp.’s music-and-tech division.

Now he's best known for being a vociferous apologist for the oppressive Chinese government. You see? This is why hip hop still can't trust white people. [VF; Pic via SMH]

According to an eyewitness, Gaston and Cyrus - who was there with her mother, Leticia, and her manager - "were all over each other backstage." The heat extended to the runway where, every time Gaston walked, he would blow a kiss and wink at his teenage girlfriend, who in turn, "licked her lips seductively as he passed her."

My my. When will the runway photographers at this fashion show apologize for using mind control to sexualize Cyrus?! And since when does the Post traffic in child porn? Outrage!

It's hard to say. But it's worth noting, as the Observer does, that one month before jumping on board with Carter, Lewis and his wife, onetime MTV News reporter Tabitha Soren, were treated to their first dinner at the bon vivant's West Vllage restaurant Waverly Inn. That sort of thing shouldn't matter to a writer who reportedly nets $30,000 for each of his Times pieces. But then one shouldn't be able to get away with charging $55 for a plate of macaroni and cheese, however adorned, and people still jam the secret phone lines for a Waverly reservation.

It is not only Wall Street that is susceptible to the whims of fashion, or to panicked flights from troubled institutions.

Upon being shown the evidence, Tierney, who had never read the book, concluded it was plagiarism. More bemused than angry, he remarked, "It's at the very least unattributed lifting..."

Young did in fact footnote Tierney's article in the book, however. "I don't think it's a sort of mealy-mouthed or weasely defense to say that the standard that British journalists are expected to hold themselves to are not as high as the standards that some American journalists hold," he explained to Intel.

Hah. A mere cultural misunderstanding, then—British foreign correspondents, for example, are notorious for their rewrite jobs. In America, however, this is the sort of reasoning that can and will get you fired, Toby!

[Daily Intel]
[Photo: Nikola Tamindzic/Home of the Vain]

—

Their efforts soon drew the backing of prominent educators and downtown residents: Bob Kerrey, the president of the New School, and his wife, Sara Paley, a television and film writer; the actor and writer John Leguizamo; Richard Robinson, the president and chief executive of Scholastic; Jonathan Mintz, the city's consumer affairs commissioner; and Ms. Bell's boss, Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair and an owner of the celebrity hangout the Waverly Inn.

All the hottest educational trends are represented — think of "hands-on learning and community involvement" as Greenwich High's truffled macaroni and cheese. There will even be excursions to Chinatown to learn about the poors.

If you time things right, your precious young creation may be able to matriculate from Greenwich High (and it's award-winning student newspaper!) to Carter's exclusive (and surely forthcoming) little West Village university. Once there he'll earn pocket change as a Waverly bus boy, which he will blow at Carter's Monkey Bar, where he'll schmooze his way into a Vanity Fair internship and then staff position that should see him nicely through the rest of his days.

[Times]

With all of the journalistic luminares on the VF roster, you'd think the magazine had all the talent it could handle. You'd be wrong. According to the October issue, former Viacom CEO Tom Freston, and Carter pal, is now "Our Man in Kabul," while restaurateur and Waverly Inn habitué Brian McNally is now "Our Man in Saigon." So, in addition to mentioning his cronies in the magazine, Graydon has taken to hiring them (these are assuredly paid positions, not just dilettantes on parade, right?). Fair enough, this is the privilege of power, but, the question remains: Why does the White-Haired Wonder have to sound like he's running Her Majesty's Foreign Service rather than editing a glossy?

Nonetheless, one can just imagine Freston (above right), after tea with the mujahideen, riding on the back of a mule high into the Hindu Kush, and maybe, just maybe, finding You Know Who...

"I think it’s probably tougher to make it [in New York media] now than it was 13 years ago, particularly in the print media. I don’t envy young Brits crossing the Atlantic to make their fortunes today….Probably the difference is I’d rent somewhere in Brooklyn rather than in the West Village. I probably wouldn’t be working for Vanity Fair, I’d probably be working as Nick Denton’s slave at Gawker and being paid nothing. I’d probably be sleeping on Euan Rellie’s floor."

This is uncomfortably accurate, except we do too get paid! But for the record I was sleeping at the Malibu Hotel SRO during my first few weeks in the city, not Euan Rellie's floor.

[WWD]

It should be no surprise that the lords of private equity like Stephen Schwarzman, Steven Cohen and Henry Kravis are among the biggest losers; they're dragged down by the credit crunch. Nor will Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly of Fox News be that surprised to have been marked down by Bush-hating Graydon Carter. But the Vanity Fair editor will have a harder time explaining why his irascible movie producer friend Harvey Weinstein, a regular at Carter's Waverly Inn, has been knocked back 46 places. Nor should he expect to get George Clooney (down 28 points) on the cover any time soon.

• Marc Jacobs is "returning?" Well, if the designer can leverage his sex life into a New Yorker profile, he's probably a decent fit here, in the pages of the New Yorker's more fashion-conscious corporate sibling.
• Movie moguls Harvey and Bob Weinstein plummet to 87 from 41. But they're so used to sinking feelings they probably barely notice them anymore.
• Venture capitalist (and godfather to Google and Yahoo) Michael Moritz fell to 88 from 56. Is the shine off Google that badly?
• What an odd time to add Walter Mossberg to the list. The grossly overpaid Wall Street Journal technology columnist was recently replaced on CNBC by the Times' David Pogue, whose theater background and hammy stage personality make him by far the more interesting gadget czar in the era of Web video. (Mossberg moved over to Fox Business, owned by his paper's new owner.) Pogue doesn't make the list, probably because he doesn't have a big power conference like Mossberg's D - All Things Digital.
• Conceptual artist Damien Hirst debuts all the way up at 31??
• Bill Keller of the Times is hip now! Wait, what?
• Ha ha, nice knowing you, hedge fund guys! Wait, no, not "nice," the other thing. Awful!

Your comments on further strangeness are welcome in the comments, although really it's best not to think too hard about these things, which publishers change at random basically just to screw with you.

THE VANITY FAIR 100:
2007 ranking in parentheses

1. Vladimir Putin, Russian Prime Minister (new entry)
2. Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. (1)
3. Sergey Brin (3), Larry Page (3), and Eric Schmidt (new entry), Google
4. Steve Jobs, Apple, Disney, and Pixar (2)
5. Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway (5)
6. Jeff Bezos, Amazon (23)
7. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai (new entry)
8. Roman Abramovich, Millhouse Capital (30)
9. Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt, actors, activists (new entry)
10. Al Gore, eco-warrior (19)
11. Bill Clinton, Clinton Foundation (6)
12. Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, Bloomberg L.P. (9)
13. Bernard Arnault, LVMH (8)
14. Steven Spielberg, DreamWorks SKG (7)
15. Ralph Lauren, Polo Ralph Lauren (13)
16. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft (returning)
17. François-Henri Pinault, PPR (new entry)
18. Barry Diller & Diane von Furstenberg (15), IAC; Diane von Furstenberg (15)
19. H. Lee Scott, Wal-Mart (12)
20. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs (new entry)
21. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase (new entry)
22. David Geffen, DreamWorks SKG (16)
23. George Lucas, Lucasfilm (40)
24. Jerry Bruckheimer, Jerry Bruckheimer Films (26)
25. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook (new entry)
26. Ronald Perelman, MacAndrews & Forbes (31)
27. Jeff Bewkes, Time Warner (22)
28. John Lasseter (66), Andrew Stanton (new entry), and Brad Bird (new entry), Pixar, Disney
29. Herb Allen, Allen & Co. (21)
30. Miuccia Prada, Prada S.p.A. (44)
31. Damien Hirst, conceptual artist (new entry)
32. Sumner Redstone, Viacom, CBS (70)
33. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California (50)
34. Tom Hanks, actor, director, producer (32)
35. Robert Iger, Disney (36)
36. Bono, singer, humanitarian (28)
37. Larry Ellison, Oracle (20)
38. Larry Gagosian, Gagosian Gallery (84)
39. Howard Stringer, Sony (17)
40. Peter Chernin, News Corp. (24)
41. Philippe Dauman, Viacom (68)
42. Vivi Nevo, NV Investments (59)
43. Oprah Winfrey, Harpo Productions (14)
44. Jon Stewart, The Daily Show (89)
45. Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report (87)
46. Carlos Slim Helú, Teléfonos de México, América Móvil (11)
47. Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel (52)
48. Giorgio Armani, Armani Group (37)
49. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Kingdom Holding Company (new entry)
50. Mike Nichols & Diane Sawyer, director; ABC News anchor (42)
51. Jacob Rothschild, financier (33)
52. Mickey Drexler, J. Crew (55)
53. Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation (38)
54. Leslie Moonves, CBS (25)
55. George Clooney, actor, producer, director, activist (27)
56. Jay-Z, hip-hop (47)
57. Oscar & Annette de la Renta, Oscar de la Renta (53)
58. Judd Apatow, producer, director, actor, writer (new entry)
59. Robert De Niro, Tribeca Enetrprises, Tribeca Productions (34)
60. Bill Keller, The New York Times (new entry)
61. Mick Jagger, the Rolling Stones (60)
62. Bruce Wasserstein, Lazard; Wasserstein & Co. (43)
63. Ted Forstmann, IMG Worldwide (new entry)
64. Anna Wintour, Vogue (new entry)
65. Brian Roberts, Comcast (57)
66. Brian Grazer & Ron Howard, Imagine Entertainment (65)
67. Mukesh & Anil Ambani, Reliance Industries, Reliance ADA Group (new entry)
68. Jeff Zucker, NBC Universal (returning)
69. Jeff Skoll, Participant Media (61)
70. Jonathan Ive, Apple (83)
71. William McDonough, William McDonough & Partners (new entry)
72. Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard (new entry)
73. Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo (new entry)
74. Matt Drudge, the Drudge Report (new entry)
75. Donatella Versace, Gianni Versace S.p.A. (77)
76. Diego Della Valle, Tod’s (63)
77. Henry Kravis, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (51)
78. Marc Jacobs, Marc Jacobs, Marc by Marc Jacobs, LVMH (returning)
79. Jean Pigozzi, investor, art collector (86)
80. Paul Allen, Vulcan Inc. (71)
81. Charlie Rose, Charlie Rose (80)
82. Frank Rich, The New York Times, HBO (82)
83. John Galliano, Christian Dior, Galliano (new entry)
84. Jann Wenner, Wenner Media (74)
85. Joel & Ethan Coen, movies (new entry)
86. John Malone, Liberty Media (69)
87. Harvey & Bob Weinstein, the Weinstein Company (41)
88. Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital (56)
89. Steven Rattner, Quadrangle Group (97)
90. Arianna Huffington, the Huffington Post (98)
91. John Paulson, Paulson & Co. (new entry)
92. Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures (62)
93. Jerry Weintraub, Jerry Weintraub Productions (76)
94. Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s (new entry)
95. Tom Brokaw, NBC News (returning)
96. Doug Morris, Universal Music Group (99)
97. Jimmy Buffett, Margaritaville (96)
98. Jeffrey Sachs, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Millennium Promise (new entry)
99. Steven Cohen, S.A.C. Capital Advisors (45)
100. Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal (new entry)

[Vanity Fair]

All right, he’s not quite a liberal. He remains a militant free-marketeer and is still pro-war (grudgingly, he’s retreated a bit). And there was the moment, one afternoon, when over a glass of his favorite coconut water (meant to increase electrolytes) he was propounding the genetic theory that the basic problem of the Muslim people was that they married their cousins.

Other hints that Murdoch is still an unpolished, rough-and-tumble media mogul: He is a terrible mumbler, has alienated many of his children from his business and likes to personally report dirt on his foes (Wolff observers him trying to nail down gossip about a Hillary Clinton adviser).

But is no longer the unwavering backer of Fox News that he once was. After begging an audience with Barack Obama, Wolff writes, Murdoch arranged a "truce" with the Democratic presidential candidate and Fox News. Also, he's no fan of Fox shouting head Bill O'Reilly:

Fox has been his alter ego. For a long time he was in love with the Fox chief, Roger Ailes, because he was even more Murdoch than Murdoch. And yet now the embarrassment can’t be missed—he mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it; he barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly. And while it is not possible that he would give Fox up—because the money is the money; success trumps all—in the larger sense of who he is, he seems to want to hedge his bets.

And Murdoch would "really like to own" that temple of liberal New York respectability, the Times:

Now, everybody around him continues to tell him that buying the Times is pretty much impossible. There will be regulatory problems. The Sulzberger family would never … And then there’s the opprobrium of public opinion.

But it’s obviously irresistible to him. I’ve watched him go through the numbers, plot out a merger with the Journal’s backroom operations, and fantasize about the staff’s quitting en masse as soon as he entered the sacred temple.

Given his history with the Journal, it would be a mistake to write off Murdoch's ambitions for the financially-troubled Times. And given his savvy, it would also be a mistake to assume the mogul walked through his acquisition fantasy with a media reporter for any reason other than to broadcast it to the entire world, in particular the Sulzberger family, whose dividend payouts are crippling the newspaper they supposedly would never relinquish.

[Vanity Fair]

Winners:

• The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post — they get 50-yard-line seats. It's noteworthy the Journal wasn't made to pay for its rabidly right-wing editorial page. Likely explanation: Murdoch is an "Obahh-mer" booster these days.
• Megan Carpentier, at the convention on behalf of Glamour and Jezebel (and formerly of Wonkette!). "One very pleased writer, Carpentier... couldn't be happier to be a few seats closer to the front of the podium than Mother Jones' David Corn and Portfolio's Matt Cooper, both writers sitting to her left... 'This is amazing! It's so completely random."
• Politico. Parity with Time and ahead of the New Yorker and New Republic is not at all bad for an 18-month-old publication.

From the press box, via Jezebel's liveblog:

9:00 ET: Michael McDonald is killing the crowd, and not in a good way. Most common journalist question: "Who the hell is that guy?" The New York Times David Carr comes in with the assist from down the row: Doobie brothers.

[Observer]

Not only will bloggers have Internet access, workspaces and couches for napping in the "Big Tent" headquarters, they will be provided food and beverages, Google-sponsored massages, smoothies and a candy buffet. On the final night of the convention, Google is co-sponsoring a bash with Vanity Fair magazine for convention-goers and journalists that has become one of the hottest party invites.

A candy buffet — that's so perfect. Perhaps it could be located in a mocked-up "Parents' Basement" zone to make the bloggers feel just slightly more condescended to.

And a fancy Vanity Fair party. Welcome to the Establishment!

Granted, the bloggers each paid $100 for access to their "Big Tent," but that just makes their participation a waste of time, energy and money. And, as the Journal said, Google is still sponsoring many perks, so it's not like the $100 buys a claim on total independence. (If you don't think bloggers can be bought with candy and massages, you just haven't met that many bloggers!)

[WSJ]

• DO have neighborhood clout. The president of the local block association, Marilyn Dorato, has her own table at the restaurant, which she occupies weekly. Graydon wouldn't want to much of a fuss over the limos and paparazzi and drunken revelry and so forth.
• DO NOT complain about your food. "The reservations system has miniprofiles on clients: the number of times they have eaten at the restaurant... whether they complained about the food, whether they yelled at a waiter..."
• DO NOT work in reality TV or hedge fund management. "'For that reason, we screen calls from the 203 area code,' [Carter] said, poking fun at chateau country in the Connecticut suburbs."
• DO NOT notify the paps of your reservation. "Mr. Varda admits that there is one group [blacklisted]. 'B-list stars who call the paparazzi from inside the restaurant... They are not invited back.' (Privacy is so sacred at the Waverly that Mr. Varda says he has stopped a major film star from photographing his own family at dinner.)"
• DO NOT take a seat in the garden. It is Siberia. Carter claims it's great but "no one is buying it."
• DO NOT sit out front, oh God: "There is also a tiny outside area out front with tables in summer, but that is irrelevant — one frequent diner called it 'tragic.'"
• DO NOT brag about hanging out at the bar. No one cares, because that is also Siberia.
• DO perhaps try just asking at the front desk. It worked for the Kaufman. Go figure.
• DO be Harvey Weinstein, a very close personal friend of Mr. Carter. "Weinstein, for example, lives nearby and, according to Mr. Varda, frequently arrives for dinner without calling ahead to reserve. 'He is family,' Mr. Varda said, 'so we make room anyway.'"

Or just wait for the restaurant to become less fashionable, or for your ego to stop caring, both of which will happen eventually. (Until that day, you can scour the restaurant's blog for still more tips.)

[Times]

(Photo by Pistols Drawn on Flickr, who managed to do what the Times could not and get a picture inside the theatrically secretive restaurant.)

We had our own presidential campaign cover in the works, which explored a different facet of the Politics of Fear, but we shelved it when The New Yorker’s became the “It Girl” of the blogosphere. Now, however, in a selfless act of solidarity with our downstairs neighbors here at the Condé Nast building, we’d like to share it with you. Confidentially, of course.

It's like the football frat decided to post the collective GPA of the computer frat all over campus. OK, I more or less stole that image from Marc Ambinder, who points out that VF 'toonist Tom Bower stole his from the Daily News's Bill Bramhall.

[Vanity Fair]

[Photos: San Francisco Sentinal]

"Why, just some weeks ago Christopher Hitchens and his camera-ready conscience went and got themselves waterboarded for the pages of Vanity Fair, which are anyway torture enough." Zing!

"There are many things that might be said about such a stunt—that moral understanding is not arrived at by means of the senses, or by personal acquaintance with evil; that ordinary intelligence and ordinary imagination are quite sufficient to establish the foulness and the folly of such procedures, which is why judges who have not dressed up in Guantánamo drag have been able to rule persuasively against them; that the victims of waterboarding do not commonly towel down and head for the Waverly Inn" Zing!!

"but I have no intention of dignifying this high clowning with serious reflection. I hope only that Hitchens next tries rendition." ZING!!!

Anyway Chris ought to respond in kind, as he usually does, soon enough. Then they'll trade funny quips in various magazines for a month or two until Hich decks Leon at a Lally Weymouth party. (IF ONLY)

Bohemian Grove has been arguing amongst themselves for the last few years about a plan to cut down and harvest some of the trees in their forest, ostensibly to prevent forest fires. Member John Hooper resigned in 2004 because of the plan (even though he owns his own forest, which also harvests trees.) Hooper asked Vanity Fair's Shoumatoff (they are former Harvard classmates) to write about the tree-cutting for Vanity Fair, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The connection between Hooper and Shoumatoff pissed off the pro-harvesting club members. They sent a letter to VF editor-in-chief Graydon Carter, but Shoumatoff didn't quit the story. In fact, he told the club's PR flacks to talk and quit hiding information. (Spy magazine infiltrated Bohemian Grove in 1989, when Carter was editor there.) An excerpt from that article, written by Philip Weiss:

"At this point some hamadryads (tree spirits) and another priest or two appeared at the base of the main owl shrine, a 40-foot-tall, moss-covered statue of stone and steel at the south end of the lake, and sang songs about Care. They told of how a man's heart is divided between "reality" and "fantasy," how it is necessary to escape to another world of fellowship among men. Vaguely homosexual undertones suffused this spectacle, as they do much of ritualized life in the Grove. The main priest wore a pink-and-green satin costume, while a hamadryad appeared before a redwood in a gold spangled bodysuit dripping with rhinestones. They spoke of "fairy unguents" that would free men to pursue warm fellowship, and I was reminded of something Herman Wouk wrote about the Grove: 'Men can decently love each other; they always have, bur women never quite understand.'"

Anyway, Shoumatoff was captured in the woods by a plumber moonlighting as a security guard on the night of July 13th. Update! We hear that he got into the club briefly before being thrown out, contrary to the SF Chroncle reports that he was caught while sneaking in.

After all, Vanity Fair's position in Hollywood—where the magazine throws the hottest Oscar night party and has its pick of Hollywood stars for cover shoots—is hardly threatened by a one-year-old and troubled business magazine. Vanity Fair and Portfolio are part of the same company, for chrissake; and both deny the story—all be it half-heartedly. But petty infighting at Si Newhouse's publishing group is always plausible.

Ever since Alex Liberman's tenure as editorial director of Condé Nast, the group has been a collection of rival territories managed only by pitting the barons against eachother.

Vogue's Anna Wintour was installed as creative director under Grace Mirabella, the legendary editor to whom she was the anointed successor. Wintour and Vanity Fair's Tina Brown—both kicky English imports—fought for the favor of Liberman and Newhouse, and over stories; Brown wrote up a lunch with Princess Diana that Wintour had arranged as a private affair, and later ran a nasty exposé of her former colleague's businessman boyfriend. And Tina Brown was so put out by when shifted to the New Yorker that she sabotaged her successor, Graydon Carter.

Writes Judy Bachrach in Tina And Harry Come To America: Graydon Carter arrived at Vanity Fair the following week and found—nothing. There was a backlog of stories that had been sitting in a kill pile, articles previously considered by Tina or her editors that were, for one reason or another, deemed unfit for the magazine. But aside from this cache, Carter was left with no immediate resources: there was no indication of what pieces might go into succeeding issues, no drawerful of ideas. Vanity Fair always planned moths ahead, even if those plans never materialized. "Nothing, nothing, nothing," was the description of what had been left behind.

So, yes, Waxman's story—that Graydon Carter has prevailed on Hollywood friends such as Brian Grazer, Jim Wiatt and Brad Grey to keep Portfolio from any big Hollywood gets—is entirely plausible. Portfolio's lead Hollywood correspondent Amy Wallace is “being blacklisted a little bit," a former editor tells Waxman. Wallace declined to comment, which means she probably confirmed the suspicion to her friend Waxman.

Apparently, Graydon Carter made him do it, which raises the question: Who was responsible for the two-part series on day spa makeovers?

[Vanity Fair]
[Video]

It started at noon when CNBC anchor Bill Griffeth remarked on the drop in Bear’s stock by more than $7: “There are rumors out there that some unnamed Wall Street firm might be having liquidity problems." He then brought on Dennis Kneale, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, who announced, “The speculation at this point is that it’s Bear Stearns. They’re down the most in the market today. Supposedly, a couple of weeks ago, they started looking at a way to try to shop their clearing operations [They] couldn’t find a buyer. At least that’s what one guy says.”

According to Burrough, this precipitated a Wall Street frenzy that resulted in Bear's stock price falling to $2 per share, and its eventual sale price to J.P. Morgan going for less than the estimated value of its Manhattan office building.

However, the Columbia Review of Journalism doesn't buy the "CNBC Did It" argument:

"While it doesn’t make for nearly as good story-telling, it shouldn’t be so hard to believe that a firm—especially one with its reputation as a gunslinger and with a CEO who was a combination of Nero and Michael “Brownie” Brown—could suffer a crisis of confidence that would wipe out its billions of dollars in cash in a week?"

Though CRJ does find one aspect of Burrough's coverage convincing — namely, that after the first mutterings about a hemorrhaged cash flow were made on the air, Bear's mode of damage control was confined to determining which of the CNBC screaming heads it wanted to alienate least:

All the network’s talent—Gasparino, Maria Bartiromo, Faber, Larry Kudlow—had requested the interview, and whoever didn’t get it, Schwartz feared, might retaliate on the air. “Each of these correspondents has his own producer, and they all seem to hate each other,” one Bear executive told me. “If you choose Faber, you know Bartiromo will bash you the next day.” Schwartz directed Russell Sherman to identify the CNBC executive who supervised the correspondents, explain the situation, and ask that the correspondents who didn’t get the interview refrain from attacks. Sherman, however, couldn’t identify a single CNBC executive who seemed to have control over the correspondents. “Everyone on Wall Street knows the joke,” says another Bear executive involved in the discussions. “At CNBC, there is simply no adult supervision.”

On a related note, my ex-girlfriend managed to furnish my apartment with the hand-me-down Ikea of a (former?) Bear vice president who actually did work in collateralized mortgages. Every time there's a knock at the door, I worry it's him come to collect.

[Vanity Fair]
[Columbia Review of Journalism]

Can someone explain Emma Roberts to me? She starred in the failed Nancy Drew movie and in a film about a mermaid alongside something called JoJo (not a monkey.) And yet, everyone keeps hooting and hollering about how she's going to be the next movie star to eat the planet. She must have the best PR people in the business.

Another misstep is the inclusion of Christopher Mintz-Plasse, the squiggly McLovin' nerd from the bawdy teen sex fest Superbad. Sure his character was funny in the movie, but the kid wasn't really acting. He's kinda like Michael Cera—awkward in real life and on screen—in that he's probably not really acting. Mintz-Plasse is a one trick pony, and once everyone wises up and stops casting the abominable Jon Heder in movies, they'll get rid of ol' McLovin' too.

So yeah, look at the article and ogle the pretty pictures. Youth certainly fades, but maybe these photos won't, as long as they kick around the internet. Hopefully these colts will be able to look at these photos many, many years from now and smile and wistfully remember a time when the world patted their heads and, however briefly, told them they were special.

Oh, and thanks for the Gawker shout-out, VF! "Celebrity garbage-disposal unit," eh? Hell, we'll take it.