“I Mean…What?!?” – Abe Gurko

There’s nothing like a rainy Saturday afternoon, curled up on the couch with the new issue of Vanity Fair. It has been a favorite pastime for years…especially since we get so much freakin’ rain. Lately though, some of the subjects and stories featured in VF are getting as pedestrian as punch. Case in point: the issue with the Tiger Woods‘ cover, thrown in there for good measure, to garner some newsstand action. I understand that need for Graydon Carter to want get in on the greatest media obsession on Earth, but that cover was nauseating and frankly, above Vanity Fair. The follow up to that story is the upcoming expose featuring my favorite Gross Baboon of the Year, Loredana Jolie. This is something I would expect from the National Enquirer not VF. Oh right, the tables have turned. The National Enquirer is being considered for a Pulitzer Prize whereas Vanity Fair is busy wining and dining hookers for their inside scoop. Are we living in Seinfeld’s Bizarro World?I wonder if the above photo of Loredana will be a centerfold, as in…Vanity Fair takes on Playboy. Why not? Any way you slice it, there is something wrong with this picture, plenty. Now that Mr. Carter is a restaurateur, and he is in the mindset of filling seats…any seats…this may have impacted his judgment.

And (B) somebody tell me the difference between this Mark Seliger photograph of Jolie, (my favorite Gross Baboon above), and the shot that Mark Seliger recently took of Rielle Hunter, yet another nominee for Gross Baboon of the Year, for GQ. Has S.I. Newhouse become the newest collector of Gross Baboons imagery? Maybe he should be the sponsor for the upcoming awards presentation that I have planned…you guessed it…The Gross Baboon of the Year Award.

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