High life
A perfect pair
Taki
Gstaad hehe silly season arrived earlier than usual this year, and it was the eclipse of Tina Brown that brought it on. Yes, yes, I know, she resigned and all that, but, I reck- on, the writing was on the wall. Si New- house had had enough.
Reading her professional obituaries last week, you'd think she had discovered and civilised America. The creation of buzz and hoopla as the highest good is what brought on the kudos. Her greatest achievement was to bring down market two literary mag- azines into celebrity roll-calls.
Tina Brown is a perfect example of our age. We are living at a time that is so debased, we now regard beauty as offensive and the truth as a crime. For example, she is physically plain but is referred to by the hacks as glamorous. She has lost millions upon millions but she was considered a resounding success. She introduced literary and artistic garbage into the magazines she edited, yet is seen as an almost Classical scholar by the celebrity-mad American media.
The irony is that at the end it is the bot- tom line that counts. For all the celebrities she tirelessly puffed, for all the billionaires she assiduously cultivated, for all the brown-nosing (pun intended) fashionable politicians that she indulged in, Si New- house's profit margin proved to be more important than she was.
Mind you, Newhouse is no angel. He is the only man I know who buys two tickets when he visits the zoo: one to get in and one to be allowed out. He is a multi-bil- lionaire whose father — now in that sauna- like place below — never paid any taxes, and whose media empire has consistently taken an almost anti-American, lefty line. (I guess if I looked like Newhouse I, too, would feel anti-social.) Perhaps because of his looks or his background (he was a laughing stock before he got his moolah) Newhouse was terribly impressed by Tina and Harry. They knew how to smooze a bil- lionaire and they did it in an English accent to boot. Si had finally found his Beatrice. The rest is history. She lost countless of millions with Vanity Fair and another 120 million big ones with the New Yorker.
Tina's most amazing publicity coup was to persuade the world that she was an edi- torial genius. Newhouse gave her limitless funds. Although a humble little Greek hack myself, it really is not difficult under such circumstances to hire the best writers in the world, the best photographers, the best art directors. You just splash out with other people's money. Where it gets tricky is when it comes to turning a profit.
You might ask, profit for whom? Easy. Tina Brown profited greatly by being the editor of two enormous money losers. She is the one who named a Clinton toady as the New Yorker's Washington correspon- dent — the grotesque Sid Blumenthal thus gaining access to the House of Shame. It was la Brown who wrote about the Draft Dodger: 'He is a man with more heat than any one star in the room . . . his height, his sleekness, his newly cropped, iron-filing hair and the intensity of his blue eyes . . Just imagine what she would have written if she wasn't dealing with the kind of slob that Clinton really is.
Tina was a toady to superiors, but never took on the big boys who would fight back. She arse-licked Hollywood in order to have access. She had a glint in her eye that was reminiscent of a Stalinist commissar. She has now found the not so perfect partner. Harvey Weinstein is the kind of vulgarian who makes Alan Rusbridger seem almost a gentleman. His pock-marked face makes Noriega look like Farley Granger — a 1950s pretty boy. I do not profess to know anything about this unholy alliance, but one thing is for sure. Weinstein went to the same school of what-have-you-done-for- me-lately as Tina Brown did. He, too, boot- licks upwards. They make a perfect pair.
Previous page
