A poll conducted by 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair? Oh, sure.
Whenever I see the name of that magazine, I think of the passage from Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” after which it was named, and never more aptly than in recent years:
Then I saw in my dream, that, when they were got out of the wilderness, they presently saw a town before
them, and the name of that town is Vanity; and at the town there is a fair kept, called Vanity Fair. It is kept
all the year long. It beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where it is kept is lighter than
vanity, and also because all that is there sold, or that cometh thither, is vanity; as is the saying of the Wise,
“All that cometh is vanity” (Eccles. 1; 2:11, 17; Isa. 40:17).
This fair is no new-erected business, but a thing of ancient standing. I will show you the original of it.
Almost five thousand years ago, there were pilgrims walking to the Celestial City, as these two honest persons
are; and Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion, with their companions, perceiving by the path that the pilgrims
made that their way to the city lay through this town of Vanity, they contrived here to set up a fair; a fair
wherein should be sold all sorts of vanity, and that it should last all the year long. Therefore 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 whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants,
lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not.
And, moreover, at this fair there are 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, and that of a bloodred
color.
I wouldn’t believe anything that came from Vanity Fair magazine.