Posted on 09/30/2007 9:22:33 PM PDT by KDD
Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion ... contrived here to set up a fair; a fair wherein should be sold all sorts of vanity ... at this fair are all such merchandise sold as houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures; and delights of all sorts, as harlots, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not. And moreover, at this fair there is at all times to be seen jugglings, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every kind. Here are to be seen, too, and that for nothing, thefts, murders, adulteries, false-swearers ...
--John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (1678)
Fifteen or so years ago, I subscribed to Vanity Fair--Tina Brown was editing it then--and enjoyed it for two or three months till I felt the repetitiveness of its stories: Almost all, whoever the subject--they were almost all profiles--movie star, magnate, couturier, athlete, politician, rose spectacularly, balanced on the razor edge of triumph, then fell more or less catastrophically, the chief component of falling a form of vanity or hubris.
Yesterday, my wife brought home the October issue of the magazine, hundreds of sleek pages of young beauties advertising clothes, perfumes, resorts, yachts, planes (there were wealth-beautiful Buffett and Gates at ease on a Netjet sofa--cf. this post). Within this paradise of merchandise were articles about the beautiful and famous, all sprinkled with some hitherto secret sadness, but essentially aglow in triumph. There was also an annotated list of the 100 rulers and shakers of fashion, industry, trade, building, news, news-making and digitalized (virtual) pleasure-giving. The net worth of this editorially-crowned 100 must equal the GNP of all but a dozen or so nations. (The richest of all, a Mexican named Slim Helu, was unknown to me; I felt as I do not knowing calculus or Greek.)
There are also at least--I haven't finished reading the issue-- two articles on President Bush, one on his comedic gift, his failure to use it and to use his wife and daughters as a way of stemming his declining popularity.
I don't know whether the president, Rove, or Rove's successor read the piece or whether they/he had decided independently to trot out the suggested artillery, but last night, just after I watched the Chicago Cubs win their division title, my wife and I watched Diane Sawyer interview and go on the road with Jenna Bush, the President's 25-year-old blonde daughter. The road went through the shack-lined slums, AIDS-darkened alleys, and bare schoolrooms of Jamaica and Haiti where Jenna has been teaching. (Her secret service protectors were blended in as inconspicuously as possible, but my terrible thought was that a more alert Al Qaeda brigade could have secured a huge prize here.)
Jenna is a dear young woman, poised, sensible, good-hearted, well-spoken, an enthusiast and sympathizer. When Diane, with the aged reporter's intrusive coarseness, ever in search of some emotional or behavioral twist, informed a 16(?)-year-old AIDS-suffering girl who talked with quiet despair about losing her good job, her neighbor's respect, her hope, indeed her life, that the Miss Jenna to whom she talked was the daughter of the American president, crooked white teeth bucked out of the dark face. A shy, amazed smile preceded a timid plea for help, for a visa. All Jenna could do was hug her, perhaps a redemptive moment in a tragic life.
The N Y Times this morning indicated that the Sawyer interview was the opening salvo of a publicity tour for a book, Ana's Story, Jenna's written about another tragic, AIDS-blighted girl. Jenna is donating her share of the profits to UNICEF.
Such generosity augments the grace, sweetness, and quiet intelligence of this daughter about whom till now most knew little but sophomoric hi-jinks and a sense that she was Antoinetting around while the world burned, a kind of Pirate Jenny. The Sawyer interview altered this view and may do for Jenna's father what nothing short of his announcing the end of the Iraq War would. Next to Sawyer's itchy professionalism, Jenna was fresh, modest, unspoiled, a model of good upbringing, a large credit to her parents. In her way, she was a modern pilgrim passing beyond the temptations of Vanity Fair on the road to what stands in media terms for the Celestial City, the abstention from the jewels of privilege, the reaching down and helping pull up a few of the blighted billions born and raised far from the "preferments ... kingdoms ... precious stones and what not" of Vanity Fair.
Jenna Bush has been busy teaching and helping the poor and people with AIDS. Jenna has also written a book about her experiences and is donating the book profits to charity.
Chelsey Clinton, meanwhile, is busy working for a New York hedge fund. Chelsey’s dad, Bill, just wrote a book called “Giving”, but I’d say, actions, and children, speak louder than words.
Anti-Clinton Sarcasm Torpedo ARMED. FIRE!!
If Bill Clinton wrote a book called "Giving..." ...
...I'd expect Monica Lewinsky to be the co-author, and you can guess the missing second word of the title!
Lewinsky?
Jenna sounds like a lovely and loving young woman. It will be nice to hear more about her.
Either way, we need photos.
She is the chubbier blonde. I believe that both girls got in trouble in Austin a few years ago for trying to buy drinks using fake IDs. It seems that a waitress who was a rabid Dumbocrat or MoveOn member had her arrested for what thousands of Teasips do every sememster.
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