Different from you and me

Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and (disasterously) Talk, has a new weekly column in the Washington Post. Many have assailed it, saying it's vapid and silly. But I find this kind of stuff fascinating (from a column about Martha Stewart and her appearance on a Barbara Walters interview):

These lapses were reminders of the offense that really got Martha into trouble in the first place -- a crime of lifestyle. Her mistake was all about how rich, driven people behave on the eve of the Christmas holidays. They take off on private planes for fashionably secluded destinations in a frenzy of personal shoppers, shouting into their cell phones at their assistants with last-minute instructions while simultaneously stabbing at their BlackBerries with orders to buy and sell stock. At such moments, bad decisions are made -- especially when the only guy left in the broker's office is the terrorized party boy Douglas Faneuil, who swiftly flipped to become a witness for the prosecution.

Martha's crime of lifestyle was then compounded by her crime of character. Like most CEOs, she has a hard time admitting a mistake, all perfectly understandable if you move in the circles of, well, Barbara Walters. This was implicitly emphasized when the TV diva asked the domestic diva, "Do you feel that some people are delighted by your downfall because, as one reporter put it, 'Little Miss Perfect has fallen on her face'?"

"I haven't fallen on my face yet," replied Martha, a little too swiftly.

"I thought it was brilliant," Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro told me at a Manhattan event to celebrate the creation of a David Boies Professorship at Yale Law School. "The statement upfront in the show that she couldn't talk about her case is the best thing you can have for a criminal defendant if you have an interviewer who will throw you softballs. Today's world is not about facts, not about evidence. It's about whether or not the jury likes you. The media is getting to be more important than the court system. People thought of Martha as arrogant, controlling and cold, and she had everything to gain by going on with Barbara in her big sweater and her clogs."

Of course, this is interesting not only because of what it says about media and Stewart, but what it says about the writer, Tina Brown -- especially what she leaves in and out when she quotes someone. That last bit about the "big sweater and clogs" is a coded message to women (and gay men) everywhere: frumpy equals human, therefore sympathetic.

Then there's that tossed-off social reference: "....Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro told me at a Manhattan event to celebrate the creation of a David Boies Professorship at Yale Law School." Just so you are sure to notice, Brown assures her readers that she's not just popping off about a television show; she's still in the swing of things, because she went to some society event. While a reception at a law school doesn't sound quite as glamorous as the Cannes Film Festival or New York Fashion Week, the inclusion of a D.A. is actually a signifier: true crime is glamorous these days, as you can tell by the obsessive attention being paid to celebrity trials, Martha Stewart's tsuris being only one example.

Finally, there's the phrase "the only guy left in the broker's office is the terrorized party boy Douglas Faneuil." Now probably this Faneuil character is the son of some prominent socialites; otherwise he wouldn't be a "party boy," would he? In any case, the image of some quivering rookie-cum-Master of the Universe "swiftly flipping" (!) to betray the Queen of Clean is priceless.