The second-highest-rated comment on "Can Anna Wintour Survive the Social Justice Movement?/A reckoning has come to Bon Appétit and the other magazines of Condé Nast. Can a culture built on elitism and exclusion possibly change?" by Ginia Bellafante (NYT).
The first-highest-rated comment: "It's kind of rich when a newspaper that oozes white privilege and credential worship, prints endless real-estate stories about zillion-dolllar properties, and covers celebrities endlessly in its style magazine and arts pages goes after Anna Wintour."
The NYT is going after Anna Wintour — not because she said anything arguably racist or got caught in blackface or anything like that, but simply because she is powerful and imperious and because, apparently, Vogue is a fashion magazine.
They also have this quote from André Leon Talley, "a black man and longtime former editor at Vogue": "I wanna say one thing, Dame Anna Wintour is a colonial broad; she’s a colonial dame. I do not think she will ever let anything get in the way of her white privilege."
A colonial broad, whatever "colonial" is supposed to mean. As for "broad"... it's a blatantly sexist word, but sexism was last year's concern. This year it's race, and for some perverted reason, we can't concern ourselves with both at the same time.
She is literally a "Dame" — I'm reading that at Wikipedia, where I also learn that she lives in Greenwich Village, rises before 6 a.m., "rarely stays at parties for more than 20 minutes at a time and goes to bed by 10:15 every night." For lunch she eats "a steak (or bunless hamburger)" but years ago it was "smoked salmon and scrambled eggs every single day." She wears sunglasses all the time because they are "actually corrective lenses" but also (as one acquaintance says) "you know, really, armour."
Politically, she's a big supporter of Democrats. They say if Hillary Clinton had won, Anna Wintour would have become the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom. And now, look what she gets. The NYT coming after her for nothing. You can't devote your life to fashion for the sake of fashion in the Social Justice Regime.
ADDED: From "Anna Wintour Isn’t Going To Cancel Herself/Vogue’s editor is now promising to do better for Black employees and readers. Does she not realize that she, largely alone, had all the power all along?" (BuzzFeed News):
Wintour has built her entire career on the foundation of fetishizing white-woman meanness... Wintour’s persona isn’t just of a boss that’s tough to please, but of a woman boss who’s just as awful as a man could be. It’s an earlier, less PR-optimized incarnation of the Nasty Woman/Girl Boss modus operandi: the idea that being authoritarian or contemptuous at work is feminist, because if men get to do it, why can’t women?Feminism is so last year. This year is all about race. Wintour is white, so she's out.
Wintour embraces a version of femininity that says you have to be skinny, white, elegant, aloof, and rich..... Wintour found power in being icy, while third-wave “feminist” bosses learned to hide their harshness behind public displays of feminist solidarity....
Posts
59 comments:
Interesting to watch the Left eat its own.
THEOLDMAN
"You will be made to ...have a positive impact on lives"
Yeah, but does she see the sunrise every day? I think not!
"This year it's race, and for some perverted reason, we can't concern ourselves with both at the same time"
It's always race first. Feminists misunderstood. The "perverted reason" is prog power. We can't concern ourselves with both if it blocks prog advances.
But it's not race uber alles: sometimes politics matters more, as Bill Cosby found out, and all those uppity blacks who presume to think for themselves.
As Weinstein and now Wintour illustrate, even the right politics offers no protection. But then, nothing does: the Gleichschaltung continues.
How long before the most proggy progs go after the NYT as an institution? Owned by rich people, serving rich people, publishing all the news that's fit to print, having a bunch of white op-ed writers--if that's not the kind of white privilege that needs to be squashed, what is?
So, Althouse, you do see what you are observing, right?
Would it make sense for us to have a British subject and a member of a British chivalric order be our Ambassador to the court of the British monarch? Seems like it misses the whole point.
There are no reasons that she is now a target. She exists. She is prominent. Therefore the Leftist Collectivists will try to demolish her.
This is not a reasoned fight.
It is a fight against everything as a sacrifice to remake the world. Soviet Man is perfectable. But first everything in perfect must be destroyed.
Quit trying to make it make sense.
And give not one inch toward your own destruction.
When your white privilege can't hide behind your leftist privilege, life gets complicated.
So you have a theme.
Tearing down successful people.
Just as conservatives have always observed. Equality never claims to raise all to riches, The only realistic out come is all devolve to poverty.
Sunglasses are cheaper than surgery.
There are actually two separate Colonial Dames organizations: CD of America and National Society of the CD of America.
I'm pretty sure my grandmother was in the second. They're both tiny compared to the DAR, but they were all 3 founded in 1890-1.
When LeBron James made history as the first black man to grace the cover in 2008, he shared the space with a white supermodel, Gisele Bündchen, who appeared as a damsel in his clutches, an unmistakable reference to King Kong.
Had to look it up.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XtlKPoyjma8/VjhHT9r-RhI/AAAAAAAAAAM/s-dOnNUAsfM/s1600/cover-vs-kong%2B%25281%2529.jpg
"Vogue is a fashion magazine"
Pssst, each issue is really one humongous collection of ads.
Time to pull out Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers.. The more things change, etc.
So, how's that lifelong support of the left looking now Ms. Vogue?
Early ecological laws would have clauses like zero detectable dioxin. Sounds good, right. But the ability to detect chemicals became so much better that virtually ALL water samples held detectable levels of dioxin.
Wokeness is similar. A year ago I'd bet Ms. Wintour would be held up as a shining example of being woke. But then some Karen was sweeping her looking-for-the-bad-person searchlight around and HEY look at Ms. Wintour!
THERE is a name I can shame for the fame I'll claim.
Again, how dare she not echo the thoughts and feelings of everyone who benefited from her work!
By the way,Ms. Wintour is being held to the ever changing ,relentless standards of the ever changing looney left?
Good.
It might finally dawn on others that the progressives are only tolerating them for now.
Professors,for example, should revisit the history of how they have been treated after the revolutions the help bring about.
First they came for the fashion icons...
Bon Appetite is definitely a declasse rag. "Gourmet" was a really great magazine about food and travel. I had a file of travel articles I had clipped out and saved over the years for trips, especially to Europe. It ended some years ago and that was too bad. I kept my file until the last few years when I gave up European travel after 2015.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm enjoying watching the left eat its own.
The future is now. JPG
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing
The Devil is in the Pradas.
Althouse, I'm curious.
I recall that ages ago you had a job reading magazines. Did that effort change the way you look at magazines? And how different are they today?
The left isn't going to make a dent in the gun-owning deplorable demographic, so they have to find someone else to attack.
good grief, they have gone stark raving, miranda in the crosshairs,
Why Didn't The Store Just Let Oprah Buy The $38,000 Handbag?
Again I'll say it. The totalitarian Left always eats its own. No one is absolved from impure thoughts, words, or actions. And if those thoughts are not so apparent, we'll make some up and project them onto you. You are all guilty. It's just a matter of time before you are brought to justice.
Except of course for those in power.
I'm not entertained whatsoever with the left eating it's own. There's people I love who are serving in law enforcement and thus in harms way; I hate that.
Frowning while glaringly white.
The New York Times is no less a fashion publication than Vogue.
One is about fashionable clothes, the other, fashionable ideas.
Neither is of substance.
Reading her Wikipedia page was a delight. She seems to have failed constantly as an editor, destroying Home and Garden magazine, but that didn't matter. The right people liked her, her father had been editor of the London Standard, so she her career was an unstoppable upward rise to the top.
We then get this:
She supported Hillary Clinton's 2016 Presidential Campaign.. serving as Clinton's consultant on her wardrobe choices for key moments of the campaign.
Ha. Does anyone think Hillary with here horrible pants suits, was well dressed? Of course when you put lipstick on a pig, you can't blame the lipstick for the ugliness.
Fashion is just a front for capitalism. Too many choices, as Bernie pointed out. More efficient to settle on an updated Mao jacket and intimidate everyone into wearing theirs all the time. Then Anna can toil in the agricultural sector.
Eleanor said...
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm enjoying watching the left eat its own.
I just wish they'd eat faster!
I know who Anna Wintour is, but so far as I can tell she has had no impact on my life. I can't recall ever reading Vogue magazine. I might have thumbed through it looking for lingerie ads, but no more than that....She's apparently good at her job. I know this because I saw that movie with Anne Hathaway. Well, that's how the wheel of fortune turns. One year, you're memorialized by Meryl Streep and the next year you're cancelled.....I'm rooting for J.K. Rowling, but I can't get worked up, one way or another, for Anna Wintour. Apparently she's no fun to work for but has good taste when it comes to clothes. So what.
This year it's race, and for some perverted reason, we can't concern ourselves with both at the same time.
That's small-mindedness for you, and the loudest, most grating myrmidons decrying these absurd shibboleths have the tiniest brains in Nature.
"I recall that ages ago you had a job reading magazines. Did that effort change the way you look at magazines? And how different are they today?"
I was in my early 20s when I was reading magazines for a living (1973-1976). I interpret your question to refer to change going forward rather than backward. The main thing is that I was reading maybe 100 magazines a month, month after month, for 2 years. No one would do that on their own. I read all the women's magazines: Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, Woman's Day, Family Circle. And the fashion magazines: Vogue, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Harper's Bazaar. I read True Confessions and whatever the other "confessions" magazines were. I read a bunch of men's magazines — not porn, but Field and Stream, Sports Afield, Outdoor Life, Esquire, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science. Lots of other stuff too — like Grit. I would have never even heard of Grit.
But I was critical of magazines from long before that. I read Glamour and Mademoiselle when I was in high school, then turned on them with hippie arrogance. I rejected materialism and shopping and fashion long before I started that magazine job. I rejected Ms. Magazine when it first came out because I viewed it as middle class and more bullshit for women.
After that job, I went to law school and had 2 babies. I didn't have room in my life for reading any magazines. At some point, as a law professor, I was interested in magazines that had a mixture of subjects: Utne Reader, The Atlantic, Harpers, The New Yorker. Not anything about fashion, decorating, or cooking — all the women's magazine stuff. I just never became a person who read that stuff. I had seen so much of it already.
And when we did that magazine-reading job, we were always making fun of it. So I never really read that stuff seriously. Any big change that I had in magazine reading happened in the mid60s when Glamour and Mademoiselle didn't keep up with the hippie philosophy.
Politically, she's a big supporter of Democrats. They say if Hillary Clinton had won, Anna Wintour would have become the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
Strange women dealing in cattle futures and uranium mining rights is no basis for a system of government.
Any big change that I had in magazine reading happened in the mid60s when Glamour and Mademoiselle didn't keep up with the hippie philosophy.
Hippy philosophy. Well, chasing a greased pig is, for the most part, a less than rewarding endeavor.
It's not surprising at all that they turn on Wintour, although I am startled it happened so soon.
The Left has always aggressively promoted ugliness and drabness. Think of those baggy Mao pajamas and the concrete blocks of Eastern Europe. The media is gushing about how wonderful and fun CHAZ is, but nobody states the obvious - how ugly the graffiti and boarded up buildings are. DeBlasio's daughter was once a normal looking young woman. She now looks like she escaped from an asylum. Robert Stacy McCain used to put up pictures of women before and after they became involved with Third Wave feminism. The after pictures are hideous.
And Vogue has applauded radicalism for many years, while feeling safely ensconced in its' elite Manhattan lair. I don't feel one bit sorry for Wintour.
My question is, if fashion itself is now evil and passe and elitist, what reason does a rich New Yorker have for remaining in NY? Flaunting their wealth while supporting fashionable causes has always been a favorite pastime of the rich; hence the Met ball, and all the balls and dinners supporting abortion rights, AIDs research, etc. Take that away from them, along with all the "elitist" restaurants and clubs and boutiques and poof! There goes the tax base.
Politically, she's a big supporter of Democrats. They say if Hillary Clinton had won, Anna Wintour would have become the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
At least she'd have been forced at last to abandon that stupid do-and-googles look. Sunglasses are not permitted at the Court of St. James.
BLM and Antifa may promote communism but as their looting followers illustrate they are not against elitism - they just have a problem with who gets to be the elite. Beyonce, Mrs Obama, and Kaepernick are all about the designer duds.
Reign of Woke Terror
I read all the women's magazines:
I wonder why the CIA was interested in those particular magazines.
For nothing? What’s that got to do with it? Twitter mobs come after people for nothing all the time. Worse than nothing is a low standard.
Real-time evolution of the Democrat party by trashing the elite. Is the left adopting Trumpian tactics?
a propos the old quote about appeasers hoping teh crocodile will eat them last--The crocodiles are working their way up the food chain.
Wintour's job is to help move the schmattes. That has a positive impact.
I despise, detest, and distrust the NYT. The WaPoo, too.
Once again, run, don’t walk, to watch the Vogue documentary The September Issue. Last time I looked it was free on YouTube. You’ll learn Wintour is about one thing over all else: Uncompromising excellence, a value that has gone out of fashion. Its enemies even call it colonial.
Wintour is part of the aristocracy. The French Revolution was chocked full of aristocracy and other hangers on who supported the revolution, and either was guillotined or exiled to Guiana. There is nothing new under the Sun.
Thanks for answering, Althouse.
I don't know if anyone ever got "magazine analyst" as a profession on their aptitude tests in high school. Remember those tests? Do the still have them?
I wouldn't consider "broad" sexist, beyond the fact that it refers only to women. I looked it up once. A stage star was given a "broad" spotlight, brighter than a regular stage light. If you were important, if you rated, you were a "broad". Nowadays I take it to mean an important star, not an ingenue, whose seen a bit of life and lived it well. Bette Davis, Kathleen Turner, Glenn Close.
You can call me a broad anytime you like. I would question whether Anna Wintour qualifies.
Positive impacts on lives is one thing. Fashion is another. Some overlap, maybe, but not necessarily. Fashion is an industry that makes and sells things. That is all it is.
I used to love the September issue of Vogue, back when I worked retail. That was the season when all the fur ads would come out. I always preferred the classic offerings but it was interesting to see designers like Fendi use fur in ways that were more like fabric. Alas, when fur became anathema I said sayonara.
"I know who Anna Wintour is, but so far as I can tell she has had no impact on my life."
Ahem: "And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns, and then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent who showed cerulean military jackets, and then cerulean quickly shot up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it filtered down through department stores, and then trickled on down onto some tragic Casual Corner where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs, and it's sort of comical how you think you made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff."
:-)
Too bad Tom Wolfe is still not around and in his prime.
Too bad Tom Wolfe is still not around and in his prime.
Too bad Trollope is still not around and in his prime.
The rich, powerful, icy female boss can be Asian (dragon lady). Isn't there a black woman on "Empire" who's rich and ruthless?
Reminiscent of the Chinese Red Guards, no?
Thanks Ann. Perfect piece-de-resistance for my reluctantly agreeing to watch The Devil wears Prada, the night before
Ah yes Anna... she never will recall those days she and I spent working for Penthouse and Viva back at the beginning of her "career."
Post a Comment