High life
Spying the phoneys
Taki
But before I go on, perhaps I ought to declare an interest. I write a column for SPY, one that gives me almost as much pleasure — as well as latitude — as the one I write for the sainted Spectator. The reason I'm going gung-ho over Spy is easy to guess, and it has nothing to do with being a contributor. It has to do with its ethos, which is to expose humbug among the high and the mighty, and to poke gentle fun at the rich and famous. (Note that I said gentle fun.) It is neither a scandal sheet, nor does it go out of its way to deliberately destroy lives by printing lies and half-truths. It is a humorous monthly that is irreverent about the kind of people the rest of the press take extremely serious- ly — in fact almost as seriously as they take themselves.
Now as everyone who has ever heard of Conde Nast knows, the glossies in this town are in the business of stroking the nouveaux riches who make it possible for, say, dress designers, interior decorators and furniture salesmen to advertise in their expensive pages. In fact it is not unusual to find a major advertiser such as Calvin Klein on the cover of a major glossy like Vanity Fair. Or to offer primers in manners for yuppies, as well as celebrating caterers, exclusive fat farms, and the like. They are all crass, nouveau riche in tone, and as vulgar as Ivan Boesky. Yet I find the strength of Spy lies not in its negative reporting, but in the fun it pokes at editors of such American institu- tions as the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and some women's magazines whose titles I truly cannot remember. Here is an example of its review of my old friend Tina Brown: 'Brown bedecks herself with the tin-pot pomp and hauteur of a head of state. "Once in a while I meet someone who intrigues me enough to want to write about them myself . ." Tina defines vulgarity. Consider November's introit: "Sometimes a magazine is in the thrilling position of making history." A Helmut Newton picture of Salvador Dali with a feeding tube in his nose. . .
Well, some of you may think it a bit heavy, but I don't. Although I like Tina, the person who intrigued her enough to want to write about her herself was Gay- fryd Steinberg, wife of Saul, a lady whose rocket-like rise has scientists the world over scratching their heads in disbelief over her ability to avoid the bends. Gayfryd is the quintessential socialite of our times. She is married to a man whose compulsion to amass vast amounts of money is equal- led only by the fact that he has created as much wealth as, say, Jeff Bernard and yours truly have.
The best stuff, however, is reserved for the paper that takes itself more seriously than Moses did the Ten Commandments. Spy gives the New York Times a full page each issue, written by a certain mole within the Times whose nom de plume is Huntley Haverstock. (I'll give you a clue. It has something to do with a Joel McCrea film about foreign correspondents.) HH knows his stuff, that's for sure, and what else is for sure is that if the big shots ever find who he or she is, there will be a murder on West 43rd Street. Because of him we now know all about the bum-kissing that goes on while greedy and ambitious hacks try to claw their way up the Times's pole. The frenzied jockeying does not surprise me. Nor the tendentiousness of the reporting.
But enough about unpleasant subjects. I hope Spy sticks around so I can write in its pages about that other egregious phoney, Amy Carter, after I return from my Lon- don holiday starting this week.
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