Photojournalism

When I was a  young person in the 1980s, I was a big fan of Tina Brown’s Vanity Fair. It was very glamorous and sophisticated, showing a world of beauty and luxury populated by brilliant and talented and interesting people. That world was mostly in New York, but VF also took us to London and LA and Paris and St. Bart’s and Aspen. I knew that I would never live in this rarefied world, but that was what made it so appealing. It was like reading fairy tales. I bought each new issue as soon as it hit the newsstand, and read it from the front of the front cover to the back of the back cover, including the masthead and the editor’s notes and the ads. 

It’s honestly been years - decades - since I’ve read Vanity Fair, but the entire internet was talking about the Susie Wiles interviews, and I had to read the article, so I subscribed. The subscription, a holiday special, was cheap:  $12 for a year, renewing at $36 a year. I’d have paid more than that just to read the Susie Wiles article and see Christopher Anderson’s incredible photos. 

The brilliant thing about this article (it’s really two articles; parts 1 and 2) is that it absolutely does not read as hostile or even especially critical of Wiles or even Trump. Chris Whipple just lets Susie Wiles speak for herself, and what she says is far worse than anyone could have written about her or her colleagues. Ms. Wiles comes across as polite and friendly and perfectly at ease with herself. She probably never thought for a single moment that she couldn’t charm a seasoned reporter into printing a puff piece about her. She probably also never thought for a moment that a reporter and photographer might be smarter than anyone in the White House. Either Chris Whipple and Christopher Anderson are geniuses, or the core of the White House senior staff and the Secretary of State are all idiots. How could Susie Wiles have spoken so freely and not realized that the resulting article would not show her or her boss in a good light? How could Marco Rubio and JD Vance and Stephen Miller and Karoline Leavitt have posed for that photographer and not realized that he wasn’t there to make them look pretty? 

The whole crusty crew are in damage control mode now, but the damage is done, and I’m here for it. I don’t feel sorry for Susie Wiles or for any of the rest of them, not even a tiny bit. For all the chaos and misery and destruction they’ve wrought, an unflattering feature story and some stark photos are the very least they deserve. I’m glad that the White House had a bad day yesterday. And I’m really glad that there are still some journalists out there.