Celebrity photographer Anne Leibovitz, who's convinced everyone from John Lennon to Miley Cyrus to get naked for her camera, is allegedly as greedy as she is increasingly trite. To wit:
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Remember that Vogue-King Kong controversy that ambushed the media chattering classes back in March? Anna Wintour and Annie Leibovitz were gouged by politically correct knives for repeating a racist and stereotypical image of King Kong and a lady of liberty, making cover star LeBron James look like a screaming ape next to a helpless (though smiling!) Gisele Bundchen. Now that the dust has settled, it's time to look at how Americans at large viewed the issue. In a word, poorly.
Miley Cyrus, hellion and Hannah Montana, says she believes her now infamous "My First Cheesecake" photo shoot for Vanity Fair did nothing but make her "even more relateable":
I don’t think people will look at me any differently because they’re like, "You know what, I’m going to do stupid stuff too."
Yes, because what little girl can't relate to being made a sex object by the nation's most revered modern photographer in one of the nation's most widely read magazines. It's this American life!
Billy Ray Cyrus stopped by The Today Show to speak about raising a famous daughter, but he seemed more interested in spewing off as many analogies as humanly possible. Our favorite: "The turkey with the longest neck's gonna be the one everybody's shootin' at." We're thinking of getting it crocheted on a pillow to pass down from generation to generation. CONTINUED »
Here’s a World War I enlistment poster (via) from 1917, famous from its era, that encouraged men to sign up with the army to fight the German enemy. (Interestingly, the Germans found it so convincing, they Nazis used the same concept for their own World War II poster.)
It’s hard to imagine Wintour or Leibovitz, or their staffs, in all their years studying photos and imagery, never came across this poster, or understood its racial ramifications with the ape carrying the helpless Lady Liberty.
J.NO "Not only has Jennifer Lopez sold her baby pics to People mag for a cool $6 mil — she got the mag to agree to stop calling her J.Lo! … We're also told J.Lo instructed People, in addition to the loot and the name thing, that her hubby, Annie Leibovitz wannabe Marc Anthony, has to be the one to shoot the photos."
The photo spreads are in from Vanity Fair's article about funny women. We don't care enough to read the entire piece, because we already know what it says.
The pictures do plenty of talking: Some of today's most popular female comedians — including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Chelsea Handler, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig and Jenna Fischer — are featured in ground-breaking photos … dressed up as celebrities. Clever.
Last year, when I mentioned on this site Christopher Hitchens' Vanity Fair article "Why Women Aren't Funny," the backlash was great, in many senses of that word. "YOU ARE AN IDIOT, CORD," a commenter calling herself A FUNNY WOMAN wrote to me. As it turns out, women don't take kindly to men saying they can't do things well, nor do they like men mentioning men that say women can't do things well.
Such feminine rage was probably the impetus for Vanity Fair's latest cover story, "Who Says Women Aren't Funny?" Penned by drab New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley, the rebuttal piece gets by with a little help from top comediennes like Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig and Wanda Sykes. And it could have been great, had it not included passages like this:
It used to be that women were not funny. Then they couldn’t be funny if they were pretty. Now a female comedian has to be pretty—even sexy—to get a laugh.
At least, that’s one way to view the trajectory from Phyllis Diller and Carol Burnett to Tina Fey.
Hey now! Isn't tacitly calling Phyllis Diller and Carol Burnett uglier than Tina Fey the same hierarchical bullshit chauvinists pull? Is this supposed to be a joke, lady?
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Vanity Fair is this month running yet another celebrity photo shoot and, guess what? For once, it's cool!
The concept was to recreate famous scenes from Alfred Hitchcock films and some of the resultant shots are beautiful. Finally, an idea good enough that it makes Annie Leibovitz and her dozen assistants seem interesting.
• This is the best thing we've ever seen on YouTube. That's not hyperbole. Ever. It's perfect. [Queerty]
• Dog the Bounty Hunter doesn't hate niggers, he just don't want his kids dating no niggers because he's afraid one of them niggers might hear him saying nigger, and then they'd go running their nigger mouth to the Enquirer and he loses his business. See how that's not racist? [DListed]
• More charity balls for Africa! I hope they appreciate all the hard work everyone's doing for them. [PS]
• Celebrity fairy tales (besides their real lives). [INO]
• Woman sues Paris Hilton for "stealing her style." We're watching the world fall apart, people! Ain't it exciting? [ICYDK]
• Milk still hasn't come up with a better marketing plan? [HT]
• Owen Wilson finding reason to live with Jessica Simpson. [Yeeeah]
• Hollywood monster Photoshop. [CityRag]
Generally, like the industry with which it is fused, fashion portraiture is a scheme. Love Leibovitz all you'd like, but the truth is, with several thousand dollars, six assistants and 10 hours, you could take this picture (many times over, in fact). However, to make the melted, ghostly Michael Jackson look not just human, but even huggable, is a feat worth talking about. Congratulations, Bruce Weber.
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