Vanity Fair

Saturday

Travis Aaroe

How the ‘deep state’ enabled Epstein to operate

How do characters like Jeffrey Epstein come about, really? One way to find out is to read his emails, 20,000 of which were released by the House Oversight Committee in November. What they show us is that people like Epstein were a product of the second half of the 20th century, their existence more or less impossible outside this era and its conditions. After World War Two it was decided that majoritarian democracy was too dangerous and had to be replaced by international law, human rights and expanded bureaucracies. Epstein took this state of affairs for granted. In a 2016 email to the New York Times journalist Landon Thomas Jr., he talks blithely about the existence of what we would now call a “deep state”: “In politics the USA meant the white house. now there is pentagon.

Jeffrey Epstein
Taki

Taki’s life as a writer

It was roughly 55 years ago, at the tail end of the 1960s, that I took the monumental decision to become a writer. It wasn’t exactly an agonizing one. By then I’d been on the European tennis circuit for a decade, and was kaput. Joining the circuit at 19, I traveled nonstop seeing the world. I was never tired or hungover no matter how much I partied – and I partied relentlessly. And, needless to say, there were constant thump-thumps in the heart, as at every opportunity I pursued beautiful women. I had a great advantage in this regard. As one of the worst players on the circuit, I was usually free to chase the fairer sex by the second day of the tournament. To the losers go the spoils! Except in those days the females who followed tennis looked more like losers than the losers.

Friday

Cockburn

Trump, tariffs and IQ: the feud inside the Heritage Foundation

The transfer from wonk-world to the White House is usually cause for celebration – a bragging opportunity for the think tank that just got their guy or gal into the administration. Yet the nomination of E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been met with a rather quiet response from lots of his colleagues on Massachusetts Avenue. Cockburn noticed the crickets. Why isn’t Heritage pushing the appointment more, and leaving Team Trump to do most of the work (there is, indeed, some convincing to do)? Cockburn understands one event last year has made some staff hesitant to publicly endorse Antoni: a presentation delivered by Antoni to Heritage interns last summer was sidetracked when he was asked a question about IQ.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Taylor Swift engaged – thanks, quite frankly, to ‘TRUMP’

It’s a love story, baby just say ‘yes’ Despite her shilling for Kamala Harris last November, Taylor Swift has evidently not had a Cruel Summer. Everything Has Changed for the singer, despite President Trump’s declaration that she is “no longer hot.” If things go as planned, the Gorgeous Swift will live evermore with Travis Kelce, her boyfriend of two years to whom she is now engaged. Cockburn is waiting with bated breath for the President to claim credit: she was never going to get married under Biden or Obama, clearly. This afternoon, Trump said, “I wish them a lot of luck… I think he’s a great player, a great guy. I think she’s a terrific person. So, I wish them a lot of luck.

taylor swift engagement

Friday

Alexander Larman

Is Cormac McCarthy finished?

During his lifetime, author Cormac McCarthy was renowned for being one of literature’s most retiring, even reclusive figures. Although his books and original screenplays were adapted into high-profile films by the likes of the Coen brothers and Ridley Scott, he barely gave interviews and preferred to lead a quiet and low-key existence in his own home own Santa Fe. Most believed that his solitude simply came about because of his desire to be left alone, but now an explosive new Vanity Fair feature has put a metaphorical rocket under McCarthy’s posthumous reputation. The article, written by Vincenzo Barney, reveals that, when McCarthy was forty-two years old, he fell in love with a sixteen-year-old girl, Augusta Britt, who he met by a motel pool.

cormac McCarthy

Saturday

Cockburn

Ron DeSantis is scarier than Trump, says Vanity Fair

Cockburn has noticed a trend over at Vanity Fair, that once-esteemed publication. They write about Ron DeSantis, a lot. Obsessively, even. Searching “Ron DeSantis” on the VF site brings up ten articles concerning the Florida governor, published in the first half of February alone. VF correspondent Molly Jong-Fast, who the New York Times recently said “wasn’t a political expert” but found a following among Democrats for her “Trump-era angst,” is particularly panicked by DeSantis. Jong-Fast made hate-tweeting Trump her bread and butter, and the unimaginative collector of colorful eyeglasses (Cockburn counted three hues in this spread) is recycling her ire for a new era.

ron desantis

Monday

Cosmo Landesman

My Tina Brown fantasy

I met my first wife at a party. I met my second wife at a party — and I’m convinced that I will meet my third wife at a party too. As I write, London is awash with parties, so my chances of finding my next wife are looking good. So far, I’ve met a sweet, bisexual marine biologist, a German curator — I’m not sure of what, but then everyone is a “curator” these days — a beautiful art critic who is famously bad in bed and one living legend. Her name is Tina. Tina Brown. Yes, that Tina Brown. Younger readers might be scratching their heads wondering: who’s that? (That’s like when young people say, “who are the Doors?”) She was the editor of Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and Talk magazine. (Gen-Z readers will be wondering: were they bands too?

tina

Tuesday

Cockburn

Hell hath no fury like a restaurateur scorned

How does the saying go? Is it ‘fool me once, shame on me. Fool me four times, I’ll shame you on social media’? It’s a lesson someone like Graydon Carter, the legendary former Vanity Fair editor who now runs an ambiguously successful digital magazine called Air Mail, should know by now. Yet Carter has managed to infuriate his fellow bon-viveur, Keith McNally, the restauranteur and Instagram enthusiast. Carter has, McNally claims, booked and not shown-up at one of his New York restaurants not once, not twice, but four times. To rub salt into an empty place setting, Carter didn’t call ahead in his latest no-show, at Morandi in the West Village, for a reservation for 12 people.

graydon carter