Caitlyn Jenner: I'm Free

Debbie Harry For Vanity Fair

From Blondie's Facebook page: "Debbie photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair, February 2014. We always thought Deb should play Boudica anyway."

Photoshop Of The Day

I almost passed on posting this Photoshop job on what is alleged to be a page from Mitt Romney's high school yearbook. But since so many of Vanity Fair's readers are willing to believe that it's real, that alone is an indictment of what people think about Romney's character.

Red Meat

Vanity Fair has some photoshop fun with leading wingnuts in their Red Meat: Vanity Fair's Official Republican Beefcake Calendar. Stand by for the teabagger backlash.

(Tipped by Wayne @ World Of Wonder)

Gay-Baiting, Not Gay-Baiting

The Advocate wonders if Sarah Palin's blow-up at Vanity Fair over their hit piece on her wasn't deliberately loaded with words meant to attack the sexuality of its author.

Is Sarah Palin using code words to slam gay journalist Michael Joseph Gross, a frequent Advocate contributor who wrote the much-buzzed-about profile of the former vice presidential nominee in this month’s Vanity Fair? Palin didn’t mention Gross by name while talking Thursday on Sean Hannity’s WABC radio show, but she seemed to be referring to the article — and pointedly used emasculating words that have long been used as euphemisms for homosexuality — when she called reporters who publish “rumors” about her “impotent,” “limp,” and “gutless.”

GOProud director Chris Barron rushes to Palin's defense.

"It is The Advocate, not Sarah Palin, who is guilty of ‘gay-baiting.’ I don’t think most people associate the words ‘impotent,’ ‘limp,’ or ‘gutless’ with being gay – I know I certainly don’t. If the folks at The Advocate think these words are euphemisms for being gay or lesbian then I think that speaks volumes about their own internalized homophobia. Governor Palin was absolutely right to use the words she chose to describe the pathetic hatchet job penned by Mr. Gross."

Sarah Palin: Lamestream Yellow Journalists Are Impotent, Limp, Gutless

That epic Vanity Fair slam piece really must have hit home with Mama Dizzily, judging by how hysterically shrill she's gotten about it. Enjoy beginning at 4:00.

A Sad And Moldering Strangeness

You've got to read Vanity Fair's just-published profile of Sarah Palin. An excerpt:

Palin has often stated that the strokes of luck propelling her political success were divinely ordained: “There are no coincidences” is a favorite maxim. In Going Rogue, Palin casts herself as a reluctant prophet, accepting providential election against her wishes. The reluctant prophet is a character trope found throughout Hebrew and Christian scripture. (Jesus prays, “Father, if it is Thy will, let this cup pass from me.”) The opening scene of Going Rogue, at the 2008 Alaska State Fair, ends with Palin’s BlackBerry ringing. As she reaches to answer, Palin prays, “Please, Lord, just for an hour, anything but politics,” only to find John McCain on the line, “asking if I wanted to help him change history.”

Whenever I heard Palin speak on the road, her remarks were scored with code phrases expressing solidarity with fundamentalist Christians. Her talk of leading with “a servant’s heart” is a dog whistle for the born-again. Her dig at health-care reform as an expression of Democratic ambitions to “build a Utopia” in the United States is practically a trumpet call (because the Kingdom of God is not of this earth, and perfection can be achieved only in the life to come). But it is Palin’s persistent encouragement of the prayer warriors that most clearly reveals her worldview: she is good, her opponents are evil, and the war is on.

Read the entire thing. It's epic.

And The Conde Nasties Weep

After weeks of rumors, today the New York Times confirms that Conde Nast is ready to ink a deal to move its fleet of aspirational magazines and their accompanying army of snooty clackers away from their present midtown location and into One World Trade Center. Where they will be miles away from anything remotely hip! Oh noes!

The deal to bring Condé Nast to the building once known as the Freedom Tower would signal a remarkable turnaround for a project that had been considered a marketing nightmare. The 1,776-foot-tall skyscraper will be the tallest building in New York when it is completed in 2013. If the deal goes through, employees of Condé Nast — publisher of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Vogue and 15 other magazines — would move in 2014 from their current home in Times Square. The company, which currently occupies 800,000 square feet at 4 Times Square, notified its employees in a memo Tuesday morning that it was in “active negotiations” to move to 1 World Trade Center but a final decision was several months away. After years of delay, the steel latticework for the $3.2 billion building is rising hundreds of feet into the skyline. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the building, recently renamed it 1 World Trade Center. The authority is hoping that Condé Nast will bring the same kind of cachet to a rebuilt trade center that the publisher brought to a dowdy Times Square in the late 1990s.

Conde Nast would occupy more than one-third of the massive tower. Quick, somebody get three thousand feet of velvet rope to Ground Zero, stat!

An Oral History Of Disco

Vanity Fair has published a lengthy series of quotes from people who were around during the early years of disco, including Judy Weinstein, Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Ian Schrager, Gloria Gaynor, Nile Rodgers, and Fran Lebowitz. The piece by Lisa Robinson opens:

It became known, and ultimately reviled, as Disco. But the music that surged out of gay underground New York clubs such as the Loft and 12 West in the early 70s was the sound of those who wanted to dance, dance, dance—blotting out everything but their bodies and the beat. The author hears from Donna Summer, Ian Schrager, Gloria Gaynor, and others who helped create the strobe-lit, sex-driven, amyl-nitrite-fueled scene, the phenomena of Studio 54 and Saturday Night Fever, and the songs that reverberated into a new millennium.

Although NYC's gay nightclubs are widely credited as having been the birthplace of disco, few gay men are quoted in the piece. We know why that is.

The Comeback Id

Interesting timing:

A new Vanity Fair article is ruffling feathers with statements implying that former President Bill Clinton has engaged in a series of extramarital affairs with high-profile women. The feature notes rumours of questionable relationships between Hillary Clinton’s husband and actress Gina Gershon and billionaire heiress Belinda Stronach, among others.

In the Vanity Fair story, writer Todd S Purdum delves into what he calls Clinton’s "post-White House escapades, from the dubious (and secretive) business associations… to the private-jetting around with a skirt-chasing, scandal-tinges posse."

Purdum claims Clinton’s "episodic friendship" with billionaire auto-parts heiress and Canadian Parliament member Belinda Stronah has long served as fuel for tabloid rumours. More recently, "high-end Hollywood dinner-party gossip" has linked the former President to actress Gina Gershon.

In addition, Purdum says there has been talk of several other ‘female friends’ Clinton has been rumoured to be associating with. While Purdum states that "none of these wisps of smoke have produced a public fire£ yet, he says that at least one unidentified Clinton aide was worried enough about the rumours going around to stage an "intervention," because he believed "Clinton was apparently seeing a lot of women on the road."

In a 2,476 word memo released on Sunday, Bill Clinton’s office vehemently attacked the Vanity Fair article’s commentary on his private relationships, his business connections and his health status.

Here's the Vanity Fair story. And HERE is Bill Clinton's tirade against Vanity Fair reporter Todd Purdum, caught on tape yesterday. Keywords: scumbag, slimy, sleazy, etc. Oh my!