03 May 2007 The Green Hypocrites of Vanity Fair

Our Peyton Knight took on the green hypocrites at Vanity Fair magazine in the Examiner this week:

Eco-hypocrisy is all the rage.From Al Gore’s carbon-spewing mansion to John Travolta’s backyard air force, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do elites are putting dinosaur-sized carbon feet in their mouths. And so it is with the magazine that caters to them, Vanity Fair, whose self-titled “green issue” gives a finger-wagging lecture on living green — yet while it does so, its editors are too busy kissing up to luxury merchants to hug any trees.

In a hysterical eight-page spread, Vanity Fair editorial assistant Adam Spangler takes America to task for just about anything we can conceivably use or touch throughout the course of a normal day. He derides toilet paper use, nightstand lights, battery-powered toothbrushes, anti-perspirants, razors, showers, newspapers, non-organic milk, corn, coffee, sugar, automobiles and SUVs, fish, beef, computers, printers, bottled water, grocery bags, handbags, plasma TVs, excess square feet in our houses, and anything made of plastic, to name a few.

“You answer the cell phone, not realizing that the popularity of this device is helping kill some of the last wild gorillas on Earth,” says Spangler, before embarking on some six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-like explanation that finally links saying hi to mom to gunning down apes — with Kalashnikov rifles, no less…

…Give Spangler credit for having nerve, because his meal ticket is contributing more than its fair share to this sucking.

The “green issue” is just over 300 pages of slick, glossy, un-recycled paper. But that’s not all. The magazine devotes almost half (149 and 1/3 pages to be precise) of its arboreous cadaver flesh to — you guessed it — ad space.

And these aren’t ads for common everyday necessities that average Joes might buy. These are ads aimed at hypnotizing readers into dropping cash on unessential luxuries such as designer clothing, handbags, sunglasses, jewelry, luxury SUVs, resort hotels, alcohol, cigarettes, and, just in case we can’t afford it all, credit cards.

Incredibly, Spangler even picks on The New York Times because its Sunday edition alone “eats up 62,860 trees.” He then preaches about paper consumption and the need to recycle. But how many trees had to die so Vanity Fair could seduce Americans to buy Cadillac Escalades, Louis Vuitton handbags and Prada sunglasses?

A phone call to a representative at Vanity Fair’s New York office revealed that the magazine is not printed on recycled paper because it’s “too expensive.” Guess 149-plus pages of ad space for the likes of Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Cartier doesn’t buy what it used to. Heck, it doesn’t even buy a token, and one would think obvious, gesture for the annual green issue…

Read it all here.