Vanity Fair

'Superstar' Knut: No Longer Media's Poster Bear for Warming Dangers
By Julia A. Seymour | March 23, 2009 | 12:43 PM EDT

Maybe he'll fare better than other aging child stars, but for now, he's something of an embarrassment. Cute and cuddly sold climate panic. Predatory and perilous does not.

Two years ago on March 23, Knut the polar bear cub who was saved by zookeepers debuted at the Berlin Zoo.

According to "Good Morning America," "he was one of the biggest stars in the world." Knut was "big business" for the zoo, but also for environmentalists and their global warming alarmist agenda.

But now that Knut isn't so cuddly, but is in fact a "killing machine" the media and alarmists have shifted the spotlight away from him.

Initially, Knut morphed into a celebrity and a tool to spread awareness of global warming. Vanity Fair put Knut on the cover of the May 2007 "Green Issue" along with climate change combatant, Leonardo DiCaprio. That same issue attacked Rush Limbaugh for enabling "environmental destruction," and warned that "almost every move you make affects the health of the planet."

Coming Soon: Hollywood Analysts Predict 2009 the Year of the Wall Street Villain at the Box Office
By Jeff Poor | December 30, 2008 | 12:25 PM EST

Get your popcorn ready - that is if you like seeing the rich portrayed as bad guys and getting punished for their indiscretions.

According to CNBC contributor Michael Wolff, a Vanity Fair contributing editor, that's what's in store for movie fans in the upcoming year. On the Dec. 29 "CNBC Reports," Wolff told CNBC Business News managing editor Tyler Mathisen that Hollywood is greenlighting a spate of films featuring Wall Street heavies, and these projects are coming sooner than later.

"I think as fast as possible," Wolff said. "Every script in the business is now recasting itself - rich people are bad people."

Vanity Fair Attempts Comprehensive Bush Hit Piece, Misfires Badly
By Tom Blumer | December 29, 2008 | 11:26 PM EST

BushTeam2001Well, it seems that the folks at Vanity Fair realized that they won't have George W. Bush to kick around any more. So they decided to launch the journalistic equivalent of thermonuclear war against him in an attempt to get its shot at a "draft of history."

In a 14 web-page tome (the photo at the top right is at its beginning) that fancies itself an "oral history," the magazine hauls out every criticism, real or imagined, hurled at the president during the past eight years. It reminds everyone that the media's favorite stereotype of conservatives and Republicans is that they're dumb (I guess Ike's orchestration of D-Day was some kind of accident, and George W. Bush's MBA -- he is the first president to hold one -- was some kind of gift from Poppy).

Sadly, the magazine finds a few former administration officials to pile on. One of them likens Bush to Sarah Palin (that's supposed to be an insult). We're left with the long-discredited meme of Dick Cheney as puppet master and Bush as impotent since Katrina (then how did Bush get that Iraq Surge past everyone and make it stick anyway?).

All you really need to know to spare yourself a truly painful read is what is in the tease paragraph after the headline. Brace yourself:

Hitchens and Walsh Battle Over Secretary of State Clinton
By Noel Sheppard | December 2, 2008 | 1:24 PM EST

Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens and Salon's Joan Walsh squared off Monday evening on MSNBC's "Hardball," and things deliciously got personal.

The topic on host Chris Matthews' mind was president-elect Barack Obama's choice for Secretary of State.

Hitchens was none too pleased with the nomination of Hillary Clinton for this position, while Walsh defended Obama's decision with all her soul.

With that as pretext, let's get ready to rummmmmmbbbbbble (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, photo courtesy Huffington Post):

CNBC Reporters Draw 'Scary' Comparisons Between Lehman, Bear Stearns
By Paul Detrick | September 12, 2008 | 2:18 PM EDT

In light of their reporting on the failure of investment firm Bear Stearns Companies Inc. (NYSE: BSC), it seems CNBC reporters aren't "tip-toeing around on eggshells" when reporting about problems at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (NYSE: LEH).

On CNBC's "Squawk Box," reporter Charlie Gasparino told co-host Joe Kernen, "I will say this about the Bear Stearns thing when you compare that [Lehman] with this. I think our reporting was incredibly responsible. It was so responsible ... and you know we went out of our way with Bear Stearns ... We just report on how feckless management is and I can't help that Bear Stearns was feckless. [Lehman] was feckless too and that is the scary part."

"They're going to parse every ‘is' that a journalist said," said Kernen. "We don't hammer the stock. We watch the stock get hammered and then we talk about it."

Vanity Fair Offers 'Trig Palin Conspiracy Timeline'
By Tim Graham | September 7, 2008 | 8:39 AM EDT

In the magazine world, Vanity Fair may be known as a glossy, trendy magazine for the rich and the aspiring rich. But conservatives know it as a hopeless, scandalous, left-wing Democratic rag with no journalistic principles -- it's Vanity Unfair. Exhibit A: Vanity Fair's website now hosts a supposedly "Authoritative Trig Palin Conspiracy Timeline," complete with "research" thanks to the Daily Kosmonauts at the bottom. What a triumph for the noble "Fight the Smears" Obama campaign! Or it's simply a Vanity Fart. The blog post with graphics, authored corporately by "Vanity Fair," playfully offered:

The McCain campaign won’t countenance it, and Barack Obama has even declared it off-limits, but the question of Trig Palin’s parentage—whether his real mom is Sarah Palin or her five-months pregnant, 17-year-old daughter Bristol—has transfixed the blogosphere. To settle the matter once and for all, VF.com presents this handy timeline juxtaposing both the official narrative and the wingnut conspiracy theories. Vote for the most likely scenario after the jump.

At posting time, with 7,000 votes logged, 69 percent checked the tinfoil-hat box and said Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy.

Obama and Fox News: 'Tentative Truce?'
By Jacob S. Lybbert | September 3, 2008 | 5:20 PM EDT

As Fox News prepares to interview Barack Obama tomorrow night, during prime time, TV journalist Michael Wolff details a meeting between Barack Obama, Fox News president Roger Ailes, and News Corporation president Rupert Murdoch in which the Fox execs promised to lay off the Democratic presidential candidate.

According to Wolff's telling, this was more than a mere tete-à-tete, this was a full-on diplomatic meeting (initiated at Murdoch's request), conducted only after preparation and with preconditions from the Obama campaign.

The apparent purpose? To smooth things over in the event that Obama defeats John McCain:

Vanity Fair Cartoonist Cribs from Seattle P-I's Anti-McCain Cartoon
By Ken Shepherd | July 23, 2008 | 1:00 PM EDT

Update below.

Vanity Fair magazine thought it amusing to have artist Tim Bower work up a mock magazine cover that lampoons the now-infamous satirical depiction of Sen. Barack Obama as a Muslim and his wife as a gun-slinging leftist radical (h/t Marc Ambinder). In Bower's cartoon, McCain clutches a walker while his wife waits with vials of prescription medicine. A George W. Bush portrait hangs above the fireplace in which the U.S. Constitution is ablaze. Hmm, sounds really familiar for some reason.

I'm not sure if its because leftists lack originality or Vanity Fair doesn't read West Coast publications, but the parody heavily cribs from Seattle Post-Intelligencer David Horsey's July 15 illustration.

Here are the illustrations side by side:

CNBC's Gasparino Fires Back at Bear Stearns Rumor Charges
By Jeff Poor | July 9, 2008 | 10:32 AM EDT

Although the collapse of Bear Stearns happened back in March, the debate still rages as to what led to the failure of the 85-year old investment bank that had survived years of previous turmoil, including the Great Depression.

After JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon appeared on PBS's "The Charlie Rose Show" July 7 and commented on an August 2008 Vanity Fair article alleging that CNBC reporting could have been part of Bear Stearns' downfall, the cable channel's on-air editor Charlie Gasparino criticized what was claimed in the article and Dimon's reaction on CNBC's July 8 "Power Lunch."

"Well, you know, he [Dimon] said one thing that I'm just - listen, I didn't watch it," CNBC's Charlie Gasparino said, "I'm just going by what appears to be a transcript here: ‘Where there's smoke, there's fire.' Oh really? Sometimes where there's smoke, there's no fire, Jamie. I've got news for you."

CNN’s Phillips Deplores Sexist Attack on Hillary, Quotes from The Nation
By Matthew Balan | June 6, 2008 | 3:39 PM EDT

NewsBusters.org - Media Research CenterFollowing Veronica de la Cruz’s use of the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos as sources for a story on Thursday, CNN’s Kyra Phillips read an excerpt from a recent piece by The Nation’s Betsy Reed during a segment on Friday’s "American Morning" about Hillary Clinton’s future. After her guest Gail Sheehy of Vanity Fair argued that Clinton "spoke so strongly, so -- with such assurance about world affairs and who was a tough warrior," Phillips lamented, "And it wasn't easy. Just to take -- Betsy Reed put this together for ‘The Nation.’ I want to get your reaction.... ‘She’s been likened to Lorena Bobbitt, a hellish housewife, described as witchy, a she-devil, anti-male, a strip teaser. Her loud and hardy laugh has been labeled the cackle, her voice compared to fingernails on a blackboard. And as one Fox News commentator put it, when Hillary Clinton speaks, men hear take out the garbage.’"

Tyrrell: Todd Purdum's Plagiarizing My Latest Clinton Book
By Tim Graham | June 4, 2008 | 12:09 PM EDT

Bill Clinton’s attack on former New York Times reporter Todd Purdum for his anonymously-sourced attack piece in the usually liberal-pleasing Vanity Fair magazine was greeted as strange by the liberal media elite. They might have thought Purdum was being attacked like he was writing Clinton-bashing stories for The American Spectator. So maybe it’s not surprising that American Spectator editor-in-chief R. Emmett Tyrrell is charging that Purdum is plagiarizing material out of his latest book The Clinton Crackup: The Boy President’s Life After the White House. From his press release:

Clinton Calls Vanity Fair Writer 'Sleazy' 'Slimy' 'Scumbag'
By Noel Sheppard | June 2, 2008 | 11:36 PM EDT

Bill Clinton's hysterical response to Todd S. Purdum's Vanity Fair exposé hit a fevered pitch on the campaign trail Monday when the former president called the author "sleazy," "dishonest," "slimy," and a "scumbag"

Even better, he blamed the whole article on "the national media's attempt to nail Hillary for Obama."

This followed a statement revealed by FoxNews.com Sunday from the Office of the former president claiming the Vanity Fair piece to be "journalism of personal destruction at its worst," as previously reported by NewsBusters' Tim Graham.

Clearly, Clinton hadn't cooled off by Monday, for at a campaign stop for his wife in Milbank, South Dakota, the former president went on a bit of a tirade after being asked about the Vanity Fair piece by the Huffington Post's Mayhill Fowler (must-hear audio available here, emphasis added throughout, picture courtesy Huffington Post):