Leftover Glamour
EMERY, NOEMIE
Leftover Glamour The politics of women's magazines. BY NOEMIE EMERY Except perhaps for academia, the publishing and entertainment industries are the most left-leaning portions of American...
...Myrna Blyth spent thirty years in the sisterhood of the women's magazines, rising to become editor of Ladies' Home Journal...
...And among them sit the women Myrna Blyth calls the "Spin Sisters": an axis of kvetching, pouring tales of woe, victimhood, and the nefarious nature of Republicans into the small, shell-like ears of American women...
...Glamour, perhaps the most egregious, beat the drums for Gore all through the autumn, coming out in September with a dire warning that abortion rights were at stake and quoting Sarah Wed-dington, the lawyer who argued the Roe v. Wade case, as urging a vote for the Democrats...
...They were stunned when their cab driver said he agreed with it, and they concluded the fool had been duped...
...Barbara Walters gave Kati Marton, wife of Clintonista Richard Holbrooke, her award...
...BY NOEMIE EMERY Except perhaps for academia, the publishing and entertainment industries are the most left-leaning portions of American culture—as well as the most cheerfully insular and relentlessly smug...
...The Spin Sisters, by contrast, went into a spasm: "Listening to the wailing and keening...
...But this is a good example of the respect with which they view a large part of the national public...
...Unless it's after a tornado in a trailer park, and she's crying about the Tupperware blowing away...
...She recalls a trip to Washington with three other editors, made at the behest of Hillary Clinton, at which they 'proceeded to trash Newt Gingrich and his vote-winning Contract...
...Hillary Clinton— she gives it all up for a lout who betrays her, and still becomes senator!—is the greatest Lifetime movie of all time...
...Blyth doesn't object to these people having opinions or even expressing them...
...Polls show that only about 2l percent of the American public calls itself liberal (as opposed to 43 percent that thinks itself moderate and 33 percent that tilts to the right...
...From the 1930s to the early 1960s, Hollywood, radio, and other parts of the media reflected the social and political mood of the country...
...More likely, the sisters were spinning their wheels...
...The television hostesses celebrate the actresses, while the magazine editors interview the hostesses, and all of them join in a choir to extol as feminine models such people as Hillary Clinton and Anita Hill...
...From television divas like Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, and Barbara Walters, to Vogue's Anna Wintour and the other editors of the glossy fashion and food magazines, to the women who produce, write, and star in the four-Kleenex weepies in the movie theaters, they form a friendly circle...
...Meanwhile, Robert Redford gave an award to his publicist...
...Katie makes her likes and dislikes very obvious even if you are watching with only one eye...
...In fact, in the period in which the spin sisters (and brothers) have been most aggressive—say, 1980, up to the present—conservatives have been making gains...
...She invokes the chasm that exists between these media stars and their audience, who on numerous subjects are far more Republican, far more religious, and far more pro-life...
...and the second, that the "opinion-leaders" are not very good at leading opinion, and that their power is less than is feared...
...printing opinions is what these magazines do...
...In this world, there is only one kind of political woman, and only one way for a woman to think...
...Winners are permitted to pick their presenters, and the pairings tell everything: "During the past few years, Hillary gave Katie Couric her award...
...The Matrix Award, for female achievement in media, sponsored by the networks, advertisers, and magazine companies, is a "sold-out spring event at the Waldorf-Astoria...
...She objects to dishing out these opinions in venues that address a general audience under the pretense of being objective, where differing views are seldom permitted or even acknowledged as real...
...Indeed, Glamour "ran a blockbuster combination of anti-Bush features," Blyth writes...
...Though Blyth herself says that she once got a Matrix, back in the days before it got quite so posh (and before she herself was an open conservative), there has been a shut-out since then of women who aren't manifestly liberals...
...We have problems with using hicks...
...agreeing it was just a dumb PR stunt to lure gullible voters, . . . especially enraged that the Contract endorsed prayer in schools...
...Anita Hill and Hillary Clinton are their main heroines, as their stories have everything: ambition, sex, suffering, and persecution by nasty conservatives...
...But now, with the publiNoemie Emery is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...None of this would be objectionable if run in the Nation or the New Republic...
...It made a special pet of Karenna Gore Schiff, Gore's good-looking but tiresome daughter, and ran a picture of Gore and his daughter together under the statement: "A vote for Gore is a vote for you...
...Cregg, the fictional press secretary on television's West Wing, got a Matrix in one of the show's scripts...
...This is the view of Spin Sister Gail Collins, a long time contributor to feminist glossies, whose most recent book concerned gossip and scandal, and who now runs the editorial pages of the New York Times...
...They are instead Women We Can't Figure Out, women who, despite all their advantages, insist on backing wrong causes...
...Walter Cronkite gave one to Helen Thomas, who thrilled the audience by launching into a Bush-bashing tirade...
...Marie Claire's get-out-the-vote piece was written by Miramax czar Harvey Weinstein, a fundraiser and friend to the Clintons, who urged a vote for Vice President Gore...
...But, in fact, the New Republic publishes much more dissent than Glamour does, though the women's magazine presumably speaks to a more diverse audience...
...Of course, women's magazines are always promoting involvement by readers, suggesting organizations and running petitions and websites...
...Mary Landrieu gave an award to a woman who helped elect Democrats to the Senate...
...For example, polls show that majorities of white women and married women (presumably the bulk of the magazine's audience) supported the Contract With America and the Republican Congress that came in the 1994 midterm elections...
...This state of affairs suggests two different analyses: the first, that there is potentially a much greater store of conservative sentiment that is now undermined by this kind of press bias...
...Insulated by one another from the world outside and the lives of at least some of their readers, the Spin Sisters live in a state of self-congratulation, in which they endlessly cycle awards...
...But they made it clear only one kind of vote was wanted, and that wasn't one for Bush...
...And yet others watch and read, but simply ignore the political message, having factored the biases in...
...The answer was that women should donate money to left-leaning and feminist lobbies...
...Longtime feminist activist Marlo Thomas handed the prize to Carole Black of Lifetime" (the cable channel that runs endless movies of victimized women...
...you'd have thought Lucifer himself had been elected," Blyth says...
...After all its heavy lifting on behalf of Al Gore and his daughter for many months before the 2000 elections, Glamour took a poll and found that its readers evenly split for Al Gore and George Bush, correctly reflecting the split in the country...
...Now and then they are forced by circumstance to spotlight some other figures—Elizabeth Dole, Condoleezza Rice, or Lynne Cheney—but it always appears that their hearts are not in it...
...Apparently conservatives never achieve quite enough, or quite the right sort of achievement, in a round-robin world in which hosts, writers, actors, and activists endlessly interview themselves and one another, plug their movies, campaigns, causes, and programs, and reinforce their own view of society: a world where women are victims, men are the enemy, a government program is the favored solution, and the greatest enemy is the repressive right wing...
...Perhaps Glamour's readers—all younger women—were really in the beginning in favor of Bush, and had their minds realigned by the magazine's hysterics...
...Others still read and watch, but no longer believe it (press credibility also has suffered...
...As a result, some people have tuned out parts of the media (the networks seem to be losing millions of viewers...
...cation of her book Spin Sisters, she has become a Benedict Arnold in skirts...
...In the world of the feminized media, it is more like 99.9 percent...
...Cosmopolitan's was by Christie Brinkley, the ex-model and delegate to the Democratic convention...
...Somehow or other, they are never named Woman of the Year and never make the list of Women We Love...
...We have trouble with religious hicks," an unnamed television producer told Blyth...
...But since then the media have been turning against it...
...This attitude informs the content of the morning and magazine television programs, on which Katie, Diane, Barbara, and others express themselves not quite as brashly as Glamour, but to much the same end...
...But somehow, Blyth notes, those are never on the pro-life or the right-leaning sides...
...Katie does not so much state her views as imply them, with a look, a gesture, or asking tough questions to some, usually conservatives and even moderate Republicans, and tossing softballs to others...
...After the election, it turned to Karenna again, for advice on "How to Make George W.'s Term a Lot Less Scary...
...So, for instance, as Blyth points out, the women's magazines all put on their good-government hats during the 2000 election and urged women to get out and vote for their candidates...
Vol. 9 • April 2004 • No. 29
