Monday, June 06, 2005

Graydon Carter   One thing stuck out in the Guardian's description of Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, in their profile on him and the Deep Throat scoop ("I was terrified").  They called him "a dandy of the old school".  This struck me as mildly hilarious.  For one thing, just twenty years ago, he was absolutely nobody; he hadn't yet started up Spy magazine, a magazine of irreverence and audacity with no respect for class and celebrity, a tone set by its two co-editors, one of which was Royce.  In Britain, he just recently married the daughter of the Crown's equerry, which is pretty much a glorified term for a horse trainer.  The Guardian talks about how he never spends more than 5 minutes at parties in Britain, and doesn't drink at them.  This may be more a reflection of British parties than on Royce.  In Hollywood, of course, he has Vanity Fair underwrite the most expensive and prestigious party on Oscar night, and I believe he's been known to linger for considerably more than 5 minutes. In recent years, Graydon Carter's image has seemed to become Graydon Carter's major concern, as well as his primary creative outlet.  For more than a decade now, who the real Graydon Carter is, and whether there even is a real identity behind all of his re-invention, has largely been a matter of conjecture.  One thing, however, is sure:  he's not a dandy of the old school.  Not too long ago, he couldn't have gained admission to the old school. 4:30:25 PM    comment []

A New Flu Review (Coming Right at You)   Last year, Barack Obama gave the best political convention speech heard in decades, and won a Senate seat with what I suspect was the most votes to spare ever.  After that, the most dazzling introduction to the national public by a politician since Abraham Lincoln lost the Illinois Senate race to Stephen Douglas, Senator Barack Obama has kept a relatively low profile this year.  But that may be about to change.  Today, he co-authored an op-ed with Richard Lugar that appeared in the New York Times, “Grounding a Pandemic”. It's about a singularly unsexy issue, one over which there should be no partisan divide:  the health risks of the avian flu.  This flu does not yet have a cure, is deadly, has already shown the ability to cross over from birds to other species, including humans, and may be showing signs of adapting so it can spread from human to human, the only trait lacking for it to become a global health threat.  And just how big a threat is it?  60% of all people who have gotten this flu are already dead, with more on the way.  So, the threat is pretty big. Obama and Lugar argue that this disease and other biological threats form a  threat that may well prove far graver to national security, personal health, and the world economy than terrorism or nuclear weapons, and that we ought to spend the money necessary to defend the public against these threats before the threat becomes extreme.  I think maybe we ought to hear them out on this one. 12:03:16 PM    comment []

Quote for the Day, 6/6/2005   "I think I think; therefore, I think I am."   -Ambrose Bierce 4:32:36 AM    comment []