Vanity Fair UK 09.2021

working as an aspiring actor to subsidize Whether that was untrue by the time he door in order to celebrate the Jesmyns
your true passion, waiting tables. said it or had never been true or stopped and Sallys. More likely, the Jonathans
being true because he said it, the culture saw the writing on the wall and got one
As in Vegas, there are still a few of fiction has been shifting ever since. foot out of this godforsaken business,
winners. But recent jackpot strikers have Book clubs, overwhelmingly comprising following the money west to Hollywood.
had to provide the people shelling out women, are still one of the biggest Lethem enjoyed an adaptation of
for their books with a “platform,” a social drivers of American fiction sales, and Motherless Brooklyn in 2019 and is still
media following or a sound-bitey while the books they choose now aren’t churning out genre-inflected literary
backstory. The Jonathans didn’t have to always by women, they’re certainly less novels every few years, but it’s probably
contend with that. Wunderkind emeritus likely to be by Jonathans. his faculty position at Pomona College
Safran Foer aside, they published that’s paying the bills. Safran Foer’s
apprentice books that didn’t sell oodles Books by people other than straight early novels became forgettable
but weren’t required to, and then hit it big white men have lately dominated prizes movies, and his emails with fellow
with more mature novels. Now, a literary and review coverage to such an extent plant eater Natalie Portman, his
author’s highest advance is often their that think pieces are asserting things like coproducer of the documentary based
first, ginned up by hype and hope and, “Female novelists replaced white male on his nonfiction best seller Eating
crucially, a lack of past failure. The authors in the 2010s” and, much less Animals, are legendary. The sale prices
Jonathans’ career model is the literary credibly, that men are being “shut out” of his lavish Brooklyn homes speak
equivalent of working at the same firm of publishing. It’s true that the U.S. volumes about the cash he’s bringing
for 50 years and retiring with a gold paperback of Sally Rooney’s Normal in; the volumes in question are not in
watch and a pension. People sold more than 325,000 copies in any sense literary.
just over a year, and during a pandemic.
Because of all this, it’s easy to Louise Erdrich took home the Pulitzer The odd man out is Franzen, whose
see why the Jonathans’ mere continued Prize for fiction, the first time a woman collaboration with Noah Baumbach
existence makes novelists and the has done so since 2014. But novelists on a Corrections miniseries was killed by
people who love them go absolutely are still fighting over crumbs of a smaller HBO in 2012 after shooting part of the
cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs—and why they and smaller pie. Last summer, Jesmyn pilot. Luckily, he is the only Jonathan
can’t get over Franzen’s primal sin. still wholly vested in writing enormous,
The JONATHANS risky novels. Crossroads, his newest out
Most people who care think that occupied this fall from FSG, is the first in a
Franzen refused to appear on Oprah to planned trilogy. In the announcement,
promote The Corrections, but what that SLIVER OF his publisher deemed Franzen the
actually happened was worse. The novel “universally recognized…leading
was anointed a book club pick (an honor THE MARKET novelist of his generation.” Twitter
that, when the show was on network lost its mind. But I defy even his
television, could conservatively increase where literary staunchest haters to read this symphonic
book sales by a factor of 10), and fiction and intergenerational saga and disagree.
preparatory B-roll was shot in Franzen’s
hometown of St. Louis. Then, in a huge cash cow This is the problem with dismissing
preceding Fresh Air interview, he said, the Jonathans: Franzen, at least, is really
“I had some hope of actually reaching a OVERLAP. great. His nonfiction is pessimistic and
male audience, and I’ve heard more snobby, but his fiction is passionately
than one reader in signing lines now at Ward revealed that the advance for her inclusive. His main trick, which never
bookstores say, ‘If I hadn’t heard you, follow-up to the National Book Award– gets old, is to reveal his characters’
I would have been put off by the fact that it winning Salvage the Bones was a mere inner lives at the moment of their most
is an Oprah pick. I figure those books are $100,000—for Sing, Unburied, Sing, visceral humanity. He follows them
for women. I would never touch it.’ Those which also won a National Book Award. into the bathroom and bedroom
are male readers speaking.” Oprah’s It’s telling that you can win American and confessional and we all emerge
response: “Jonathan Franzen will not publishing’s highest honor and still together, exalted and disgusted. Lethem
be on the Oprah Winfrey show because (after taxes and agent fees) make not and Chabon also have their moments,
he is seemingly uncomfortable and quite enough up front on your next but their early-’00s books feel musty
conflicted about being chosen as a book book to buy a late-model Lexus sedan. now. The Corrections holds up, a 2001 hit
club selection. It is never my intention to that bangs as hard as Is This It. If you’re
make anyone uncomfortable or cause It might be too optimistic to think trying to write a sprawling, ambitious
anyone conflict.” No one has ever been that we’ve shown the Jonathans the book with dozens of vividly drawn
told to fuck off and die more politely. characters, you could do worse than use
it as a model. But why would you want to
In that Fresh Air interview, Franzen do that? Writing novels is for suckers! n
said the quiet part out loud: Serious
novels were by—and for—men like him.

SEPTEMBER 2021 49

Vanities /Theory & Practice

Critical MOMENT said it would prevent teachers from
indoctrinating students to hate
Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who cocreated America. A month later, Oklahoma
critical race theory, now finds herself at the roiling center governor Kevin Stitt followed suit.
of the culture wars By Rita Omokha Since then, several more red states have
introduced similar measures.
K She’s traversing the moment with GUARDIAN/EYEVINE/REDUX.
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW IS tucked in her humility, watching misinformation I ask Crenshaw what she’d say to
UCLA office with ceiling-high shelves. steer the country astray. Friends reach her critics. “I don’t think this is about
Behind her, two men enter the frame of out, up in arms about Republican a real difference in opinion, nor is it a
our video call and bend and lift, packing efforts to bar her teachings from debate that is winnable,” she says.
stacks of books. “I’m moving offices,” schools. She asks them, “Are you “This is about a weapon they’re using
she explains. “To one with a view of the worried about how deep this to hold on to power.”
lawn.” Crenshaw triaged her packed disaffection with our democracy is
schedule to speak with me; she’s been in when playing by the rules creates Most frustrating for Crenshaw has
even higher demand than usual. She’s outcomes that many white people are been watching the GOP reduce critical
receiving, and declining, media hits left unhappy with?” Because if the race theory to a cudgel to attack progress
and right, mostly because she’s working overblown bans are what’s drawing in the guise of protecting democracy.
on three books, all set to be released by focus, then we’re all being recruited “In the same way that anti-racism is
May 2022. She’s a law professor at as actors in a misinformation campaign framed as racism, anti-indoctrination is
Columbia University and UCLA. She changing the rules we live by. framed as indoctrination,” Crenshaw
finds time to run the African American says. Conservatives have long embraced
Policy Forum, the social justice think This recent campaign began roughly the idea that America is a color-blind,
tank she cofounded 25 years ago, and to last September, when Christopher Rufo, equitable society where hard work
host a podcast on a term she coined in a right-wing think tank fellow, went explains who succeeds. “What could
1989: intersectionality. All this as on air with Carlson to warn viewers be more indoctrinating than that?”
Conservatives from Fox News’s Tucker about critical race theory. Saying he’d As an example of the systemic nature
Carlson to Texas senator Ted Cruz melt spent months researching how the of racism, she points to the history
down over another academic framework theory had infiltrated American behind traditionally white and Black
she helped mint more than 30 years systems, Rufo called on then president neighborhoods: how federal money went
ago—critical race theory—landing her at Donald Trump to take action. Trump, toward developing segregated suburbs
the roiling center of the culture wars. an avid Fox viewer, ordered federally while Black people were denied those
She’s felt “grumpy and annoyed” funded agencies to stop teaching critical opportunities. And how that denial
watching the right bastardize her race theory and white privilege because extends to today’s economic disparities.
decades of work, which includes a the concepts lead people to believe—
pivotal 2001 paper on race and gender incorrectly, he said—that America is Crenshaw breaks it down. “Critical
discrimination for the United Nations, inherently racist. With months left in his race theory is based on the premise that
a foundational book on the mistreatment presidency, Trump launched the 1776 race is socially constructed, yet it is
of Black girls by police, and articles in commission—a rebuttal of “warped” real through social constructions.” In
various law reviews and news outlets. and “distorted” social justice teaching other words, ask yourself, what is a
But “dogs don’t bark at parked cars.” concepts like the New York Times “Black” neighborhood? Why do we call
magazine’s 1619 Project, spearheaded “the hood” the hood? Labels like these
by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, were strategically produced by American
which aims to reexamine America’s policy. Critical race theory says the
history through the lens of slavery.
“I don’t think this
President Joe Biden rescinded is about a REAL
both ban and commission on his first DIFFERENCE in
day. By that point, though, the issue opinion.... This is
had become a live wire. Following about A WEAPON
Biden’s reversals, many Republicans they’re using to
pushed bills to outlaw Crenshaw’s hold on to POWER.”
academic framework in schools. In
April, Idaho became the first state to
pass such a bill; Governor Brad Little

50 VA N I T Y FA I R P H O T O G R A P H BY PHILIP CHEUNG

“You can’t fix a problem you can’t name,”
says Kimberlé Crenshaw of examining
racism’s ripple effects.

idea of a Black person—who I am in term at a workshop. The label was book project. Afterward, she plans
this country—is a legal concept. “Our happenstance. “We were critically to write a chapter for her memoir-
enslavability was a marker of our engaging law but with a focus on race,” manifesto Backtalker, which chronicles
degradation,” Crenshaw explains. “And she says, recalling a brainstorm the development of some of her ideas
our degradation was a marker of the session. “So we wanted critical to be in that have shaped the discourse around
fact that we could never be part of this it, race to be in it. And we put theory gender, race, and social justice. “I see
country. Our Supreme Court said in to signify that we weren’t just looking my work as talking back against those
this”—in the Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling at civil rights practice. It was how who would normalize and neutralize
of 1857—“and it wasn’t a close decision.” to think, how to see, how to read, how to intolerable conditions in our lives,” she
grapple with how law has created and says of the title, which she may change
Critical race theory pays attention sustained race—our particular kind of as the chapters build. “Social justice
to the ripple effects of such decisions. race and racism—in American society.” writing, scholarship, activism is not
It asks us to scrutinize how and talking into a vacuum; it’s talking back
why society looks the way it does. What those on the right describe as against the systems of thought, against
“These are the kinds of questions the a threat to democracy in fact promotes the assumptions, against the power
other side doesn’t want us to ask equity. It’s how we’ve become, that has lined up throughout history to
because it wants us to be happy with historically, who we’ve been—how the tell us that some of us are not worthy
the contemporary distribution fiction of race is made real. Crenshaw of being full citizens, some of our
of opportunity,” Crenshaw says. bets none of the Republicans fighting to dreams are not worthy of being realized,
maintain the status quo have taken the and some of our lives are not worthy
CRITICAL RACE THEORY grew from time to understand her work, because of improvement through collective
what Crenshaw calls the post–civil it was never about understanding. commitments to change the terms upon
rights generation: those who watched (When an Alabama lawmaker who filed which we live.
the movement play out, learning a bill to outlaw critical race theory
from demonstrations that forced the in schools was asked by a reporter to “I say things and I think about things
government to pass laws intended to define the term, he couldn’t.) “You that make people have to confront
protect the rights of African Americans cannot fix a problem you cannot name,” stuff,” she says. “And that’s what back
but that failed to address the root of the Crenshaw says. “You cannot address a talkers do. We don’t obey those who
problem. In 1989, during her third year history that you’re unwilling to learn.” command silence.”
as a law professor, Crenshaw—alongside
four thought leaders, two white allies, Crenshaw’s days are never identical. We’ve been speaking for close to
and three organizers—introduced the Before our chat, she had three three hours, and every time we try
meetings, one discussing an ongoing to wrap up, we dive down another rabbit
hole. At one point Crenshaw swings her
head slightly out of frame, brandishing
her trademark warm smile as she tells
the movers she’s almost done. (We talk
for another 40 minutes.) Later, we
message back and forth, discussing our
shared anxieties over the 2022 midterms
and 2024 presidential election. We
appreciate each other in so many words
for a candid, cathartic conversation—for
me a veritable master class.

In the wee hours of that early June
morning, she sends a new video by
Rufo, the right-wing think tank fellow,
launching a fresh attack on critical
race theory, telling viewers it’s a
Marxist ideology and a threat to the
country. “My great talk with you
has been bookended with this,” she
writes. “To say this is worrisome is
an understatement.” n

SEPTEMBER 2021 51

The
Birth

Does it count as nostalgia if it never really went away? The turn of the century
may feel like ancient history—obscured by the fog of 9/11 and now the collective
crisis of a pandemic—but the cast of characters is still very much with us. From
red pills and blue pills to the millennial red carpet, from Fight Club to Florida,
Rudy Giuliani to Donatella Versace, this special issue traces the influence of
then on now, the ways in which those icons and enemies from two decades ago
set the stage for the present, and maybe for the future.

I LL U ST R AT I ON BY COLORING BY
S H AW N M A RT I N B R O U G H C H R I S T O P H E R S O T O M AYO R

of the

52 VA N I T Y F A I R

SEPTEMBER 2021 53

54 VA N I T Y FA I R

BY PHOTOGRAPHS BY STYLED BY
TRESSIE McMILLAN COTTOM CARLOS “KAITO” ARAUJO JUNE AMBROSE

HE WAS THE ORIGINAL INFLUENCER. NOW THE ARTIST AND

MOGUL FORMERLY KNOWN AS PUFF DADDY IS DEFINING HIS NEXT

ERA. CAN LOVE CONQUER ALL?

With Love,
Sean Combs
SEPTEMBER 2021 55

waits for you to appear hungry. Music streams overhead, first from like a gymnast or dancer. Combs is wearing the classic hip-hop
Nigeria’s Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, then Michael Jackson’s Off uniform that he helped enshrine in our popular imagination:
the Wall album. I dub the playlist “Global Black Dopeness” in my white tee, track pants, and diamonds. A nameplate necklace
mind for how it broadcasts the man who lives here. As I wait for with “Love” in bejeweled rose and white tones glimmers like
Combs to join us, a steady flow of casually dressed people attend neon pop art. He welcomes me and my assistant with a bear
to my comfort. The hospitality is both overt and inconspicuous. hug. When I mention it is one of my first hugs since COVID-19
You will enjoy yourself here or someone will die trying. made human contact feel dangerous, he comes back in for
another. Sean Combs likes to spread the love.
We are meeting on a blustery West Coast day, a Friday. Mr.
Combs is hard at work. Emergency calls keep him from joining After taking a few more calls and offering a sincere apol-
us right away, and I wonder what constitutes an emergency for ogy for keeping me waiting, Combs moves our chat outside.
a global celebrity businessman. People scuttle up and down the His instincts for mise-en-scène are on full display. We sit on a
staircase with a deceptive lackadaisicalness that feels more L.A. wooden bench at the edge of his infinity pool like sweethearts
than the Harlem hustle that produced an ambitious young man as he instructs his staff to make the setting “sexy.” That means
the world would first meet as Sean “Puffy” Combs. His publicist moving a centerpiece of pink tea roses from inside to our feet,
for ambience. He calls for an ebony pashmina—not a blanket,
ALL ABOUT he specifically asks for a pashmina—to help me ward off the chill
THE LOVE in the air. I am settled, but he thinks I could be more comfort-
Sean Combs, able. He wraps me in the massive woolen throw like a burrito,
photographed in Los fixing the edges to his satisfaction. His hands are elegant and
Angeles July 8, 2021. competent, much like the man himself. I tell him he was obvi-
ously raised right, and he concurs easily. “I love the company of
Jacket by Baja East; women and I take care of you,” he says. It is his way.
pants by Tom Ford;
shoes by Paul Stuart; Warmed inside from the wine and outside by the worsted
necklace by J & F wool, I get down to business. Combs is not hesitant. He knows
Jewelry; watch by what he wants to talk about. “I actually sit here every morning,
Cartier; ring by it’s where I come and I meditate.… I’m not going to lie; this ocean
Lorraine Schwartz. saved my life, changed my thinking,” Combs tells me.

56 VA N I T Y FA I R

The man who turned hip-hop culture into a global lifestyle and Combs was one of the first mega-celebrities to turn music,
brand in the go-go 1990s has a lot to think about during the art, fashion, and branding into a content machine.
cultural upheaval of the 2020s. “I am the happiest I’ve ever been
in life, I laugh the most, I smile the most, I breathe the most,” he A search for Puff Daddy’s peers on Twitter, Facebook, or
tells me. In a word, Combs has love on his mind. TikTok GIF archives turns up little for his 1990s cohort of cul-
tural ambassadors. Suge Knight, Tupac, and Dr. Dre are direct
“LOVE” IS COMBS’S latest nom de plume. Born Sean Combs in comparisons, but broader cultural icons like Michael Jordan and
Harlem in 1969, the 51-year-old businessman has had several Leonardo DiCaprio are also examples of celebrities whose star-
names through the years. His staff talks about these as eras. I dom seems fossilized in the medium of that time: outdated gossip
ask Combs if that is how he thinks of them. “Yeah, I do,” he says blogs, periodicals, and Gen X memory banks. Bad Boy–affiliated
without hesitation. The name changes are about the almost- artists are an exception. There are clips of Junior M.A.F.I.A. and
billion-dollar brand he built. Each one signals an ideology and Lil’ Kim and Biggie and Puff himself all over social media. They
a strategy. Combs calls them off easily enough. “You have the look as modern as celebrities who were being born the year that
Puff Daddy era, that’s like this young, brash, bold hip-hop, the East Coast–West Coast wars were at their peak. Audiences
unapologetic swagger on a million and just fearlessness and have dragged the Puff Daddy analog iconography into the digital
really doing it for the art and rooted, the only thing I know is content era because the image that Puff built still looks fresh.
hip-hop. I don’t know about changing the world or anything That speaks to Combs’s cultural prescience and to his hustle.
like that as possible.” The Puff Daddy era is not just Combs’s
cultural foundation, it is also a defining moment for pop culture. Combs talks a lot about being a hustler. It is the bedrock of
his first eras. It is how a young Black man, raised by a single
As the late 1990s were giving way to the 21st century, Sean mother at a time when that overdetermined how little the world
“Puff Daddy” Combs had taken hip-hop iconography to scale. expected from you, turns himself into a global lifestyle brand. “I
Much has been made about the shiny suits and over-the-top vid- always was a hustler, always. My father, my first paper route was
eos that made Bad Boy Records, Combs’s eponymous record when I was 12 years old because my mother said she couldn’t
label, a massive hit factory. Perhaps too much has been made get no sneakers and I wasn’t old enough to work,” he says. His
of it, at the expense of understanding what Combs meant in the father was murdered when Combs was two. Still, his father’s
culture. It is something to which his team is very sensitive—what legacy of making ends meet by any means necessary is founda-
they might think of as his rightful context. In fairness to the audi- tional to Combs’s autobiography. It’s a well-worn vignette, but
ence, it was hard not to be distracted by the shiny things. They his father’s legacy feels very tactile when he tells it. We are sitting
were designed to distract. The visuals, the braggadocio, and the at the edge of an ocean, and yet Combs can still reach back and
drama kept us entertained in the 1990s and early 2000s. But touch the hunger that shaped his outlook on the world. At one
beneath the showmanship was Combs the innovator. He under- point during our leisurely afternoon together, he takes me into a
stood hip-hop as a lifestyle at a time before “influencer” had small studio in the back of his home. There is a massive picture
entered our cultural lexicon. His image looked larger than life in of 22-year-old Puffy and 19-year-old Notorious B.I.G. standing
1999, when consumers watched music videos on television and in pre-gentrified Harlem. He points to himself and says, “Look
bought clothes at shopping malls. We were still sending SMS mes- at him. He was hungry. You can’t beat a man who still has that
hunger but now I got all these resources. He can’t lose.”

Loss is something Combs knows about, even as he tries to
stand down the inevitable toll that losing brings into every life.
The Puff Daddy era ended with violence, loss, and trauma for
the culture and for Combs, the man. “Puff Daddy had just got
through East-West war. Nobody wanted to get in the room with

“LOVE IS A MISSION…. We have the internet, we have the power,
we have a culture, I have us on a FIVE-YEAR PLAN.”

sages on our cellular phones and two-way pagers as Combs was me. They thought they was going to get shot.” That is when
making hip-hop art that predated visually driven social media Combs started to think of himself in eras: “When I changed
culture. He was a GIF machine before we knew what a GIF was names, I put periods on those eras.”
or how, 15 years in the future, making viral content could turn any-
one into a celebrity. Most of the celebrities from the Puff Daddy The Diddy era was an homage to his brother Biggie, who
era are locked in a social media liminal space. Try to find, as I clowned him about his rhythmic “diddy bop” swagger. “Then
did recently, an Insta-quality image of your defining pop culture after Biggie, I just, and after all of that, I wanted to get into other
memories before 2010. There may be some YouTube video or a businesses. And so Biggie had called me Diddy because of my
few grainy GIFs. You will remember the moments as important, bop, the way I walk, my swagger, and they got something called
the actors as celebrities, but they were massively huge before we the diddy bop, that just, it just happens to, it’s not me, it was
had the technology and taste for content. Content is now king, something before me. That’s the diddy bop. It’s the way a brother
would walk around, walk down the street.” The diddy bop story

SEPTEMBER 2021 57

brings to mind the famous Gwendolyn Brooks poem “We Real describes Porter as the love of his life. His daughters want him

Cool.” The poem is about that certain brand of Black masculine to settle down and get out of these streets. He knows what you

cool that looks like rebellion when it is really a desperate plea are thinking, but he says there is no reason to expect a redux of

for belonging. Brothers bop to prove that they have value in a the Diddy-Lopez romance. He and J.Lo are just friends. Of the

world that measures a man by his economic value. Combs put social media post that set tongues wagging over the summer,

the period on his drama-laden Puff Daddy era when he ushered he says that it was just a throwback post from a great time in his

life. I push him gently on this because the

streets want to know. “It wasn’t no trolling

In many ways, DIDDY WON. He proved that he involved, that’s just my friend. And I don’t
have nothing to say about her relation-
ship or her life.” Over the several hours

we spend together at Combs’s home and

was more than a “music guy” who got lucky. later on Zoom, it is clear that if any wom-
an was going to tie the renowned playboy

down, it would have been Porter. “And so,

in his entrepreneurial era in 2002. Diddy was a moniker based you know, I had to start to deal with it when I lost Kim. ’Cause

on an idea of Black cool that, like Combs, wants to prove to the I was like, man, you had it. I’m not saying I would do any of it

world what its possessor is worth. differently. God willing—I would have had more time,” he says,

The turn to businessman Diddy is steeped in Combs’s hustler then adds, “I look at my life as I got a second chance. I’m on my

lore. In actuality, the Diddy era is more akin to neoliberal cor- second mountain.” Losing Porter brought home for Combs that

porate hustling—branding, acquisitions, and mergers—than it is not only life is fleeting but so is public acclaim.

to street hustling. As hip-hop became the de facto multicultural As private traumas brought Combs closer to God, the public

youth culture at the turn of the century, Combs expanded his traumas that define the 2010s—police brutality, civil disobedi-

definition of the culture to include lucrative deals with liquor ence, and political retrenchment—forced him to take a hard look

companies, an elite fashion brand, Sean John, founded in 1998, at his legacy. I am amazed when he brings up #MeToo before

and branded partnerships. For a younger generation, Diddy is mentioning Black Lives Matter. “If you living on this earth and

known for at least a half dozen things other than music. Busi- you trying to keep on dealing with this shit, that ain’t the way

nessman. Celebrity host. Reality television judge. In many ways, we going to live. And people out there that are tired of it. And

Diddy won. He proved that he was more than a music guy who it’s not just a Black and white thing. You know what I’m saying?

got lucky. He translated his cultural dominance into economic It’s just tired of the way that it doesn’t have to be. Like when they

power, with all the complexities that entails. (Though he didn’t said it was over—when they said in the #MeToo, when it was

discuss it, a former employee sued him for sexual harassment and over, it was over,” he says emphatically.

other work-related claims in 2017; they settled the case two years Combs sees #MeToo as a qualified sign of progress and

ago. At the time, a Combs representative said, “This is a frivolous evidence that celebrities can change the world. “The #MeToo

lawsuit by a disgruntled ex-employee who was fired for cause.” A movement, the truth, is that it inspired me. It showed me that you

lawyer for the former employee did not respond to Vanity Fair’s can get maximum change,” he says. What Combs wants now is for HAI R , MARC U S P. HATC H ; G RO O M I N G, LU C IA RO D R I G U E Z ( S E AN CO M B S ) . HAI R , S HAN NA AN I S E T H O MA S S O N ; MAK E U P ,
A S H L I E D OX E Y ( C H A N C E C O M B S , D ’ L I L A S TA R C O M B S , J E S S I E J A M E S C O M B S ) . TA I LO R , TAT YA N A C A S S A N E L L I . S E T D E S I G N ,
inquiry.) Along the way, he reinvented himself for new audiences that maximum change to come for his tribe. Enter the Love era. BE TTE ADAMS. PRO DUCE D O N LO CATION BY WEST Y PRO DUC TIO NS. FOR DETAILS, G O TO VF.COM/CRED ITS.

while building successful businesses in competitive industries

like fashion, telecommunications, and technology.

Despite keeping him relevant and making him a lot of money,

something about being in those rarefied spaces did not sit com-

pletely right with Combs. Personal loss shakes him. The mother

of three of his six children, Kim Porter, died in 2018. His mentor

and friend Andre Harrell died in 2020. He talks freely about how I ROLLED MY EYES when I first heard about Combs’s new name,

private losses moved him to reconsider his life’s work. Combs Love. He announced it in a social media statement in May and

followed it up with a picture of the driver’s license that lists Love

as his legal middle name. It is easy to be glib about the rebrand-

ing. On a lesser man it sounds like an anthropomorphized “Live

DADDY’S GIRLS Sean Combs’s coat products by MAC Laugh Love” sign from a discount decor store. But this is Sean
Combs with his by Alexander (Sean Combs). Hair Combs we are talking about. He does not ask his people to
daughters. From left: McQueen; sweater by products by Aunt bring us snacks. He asks them to set us up a “sexy situation.”
Chance Combs, Valentino; pants Jackie’s Curls & His instinct for elevating the mundane into an experience is part
Jessie James Combs, by Dolce & Gabbana; Coils and Dope as of his charm and his success. What does he have planned for the
D’Lila Star Combs. shoes by Clarks Fresh; hair extensions Love era? Oh, just a little justice and a lot of Black capitalism.
Originals; necklace by Outre; makeup For Love, those are one and the same.
Chance Combs, by David Webb; products by AJ
Jessie James Combs, rings by L’Enchanteur Crimson (Chance, “Love is a mission,” he tells me with all seriousness. Combs is
and D’Lila Star (left) and Lorraine Jessie James, on a mission to lead a five-year takeover of…something. Perhaps
Combs styled Schwartz. Chance’s, D’Lila Star). of everything? The details are, shall we say, a little murky, but
by Bryon Javar. Jessie James’s, and the passion is there. “I feel like that’s one of the biggest missions
D’Lila Star’s dresses by that will actually shift things. But besides that, we—the world—is
Maria Lucia Hohan;
jewelry, their own.
Throughout: grooming

58 VA N I T Y FA I R



different. We have the internet, we have the power, we have a cul- dedicated to something. But whereas young Combs’s dedica-
ture, I have us on a five-year plan.” That plan is for Black people, tion was to family, friends, and making enough money to buy the
although Combs is careful to say that he loves everyone. He says kind of freedom he felt like the world was denying him, the elder
many times during our talk that Love is about moving from “me Combs is dedicated to making that freedom possible for others.
to we,” and he has a very clear idea of who is included in that we. He says he looked through “history” and at his own biography
during his journey to the Love era. In that excavation he saw the
“My people taking time to feel like it’s all right to love. Take time makings of someone destined to save his people. “The person
to huddle up your tribe, take time to communicate and know your that was able to go and do Bad Boy, if he’s in charge of bringing us
power. Take time to heal. You know what I’m saying, [taking care together, it sounds like, ‘That’s the right motherfucker.’ ”
of] yourself without feeling like, oh, you’re going to be labeled a
racist now because you talk about taking care of yourself.” He is I believe Combs. I also believe the women in church who say
on a roll. This isn’t the Black preacher elegy. It has more fury and God told them someone else’s man is their husband. If they like
a faster cadence. It is like a taut hip-hop verse. Combs wants to it, then I love it. Still, if I could ask the women in church one
model what loving oneself can do for collective Black action. In thing, it would be the same thing I tried to ask Combs with little
the wake of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, Combs went looking success: I believe God told you that you have been chosen…but
for guidance. He jumps up during his recitation on Black love to did he tell everyone else?
retrieve a small journal. It looks out of place in the home’s curated
opulence. The tan, embossed cover has a tiny lock, like a teen- SEAN “LOVE” COMBS is a man standing at the crossroads of sever-
ager’s first diary. The unlined pages have quotes written on them al sea changes. He is a not-so-young man whose legitimacy as a
in large block letters. Combs flips to the first page. It is a James cultural icon hinges on his power to gate-keep youth culture. The
Baldwin quote: “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to influencer culture has taken the prototypes that Combs helped
think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” innovate and mixed commerce with social consciousness. It
is no longer enough to look slick or create the newest dance.
Growing up for Combs has meant coming back to God. Diddy Today’s celebrity has to have a position on climate change, white
had “gotten so far from God,” Combs tells me. He had hunger supremacy, LGBTQ+ equality, and politics. Combs is also a girl
and vision but it was “so small.” Now, Combs believes he is step- dad. He has six children, three of whom are 14-year-old girls at
ping into his purpose. “It clicked in and went from me to we, the time we speak. He wants his daughters to inherit the keys
that [I] was sent here not to just do those things that are kind of to his kingdom in equal parts with his three sons. Raising a trio
rooted in personal success but to be able to transfer to we, and of girl bosses tunes a dad into the #MeToo movement. Combs
do things that are real change and communal success.” He drops is looking back at the international playboy of his youth and a
the journal on the table as he tells me this. The wind catches the near future where his daughters become young women. And
pages to reveal that most of them are blank, as if he has only above all, Combs is trying to do the brand iteration that made
started to figure this thing out. That made me wonder: Who is him successful in a climate that is openly hostile to what his
guiding Combs’s growth in his Love era? brand represents. Combs’s “Black excellence” is, in practice, a
celebration of Black capitalism. And, if you have not noticed,
“I feel like God sent me, God, put on my heart, ‘What’s your a lot of people have labeled capitalism as enemy number one. It
purpose?’ I was looking at all these things, it’s preachers and just is a cultural high wire perhaps too thin for a diddy bop.
different people talking about purpose because I was like, man,
purpose is something deep. Have I really found my purpose? I That won’t stop Combs from trying. He launched a diversity
know I’m making money and I’m successful and I’m changing training program with the powerful Endeavor this summer.
the game so called, but is that my purpose? And then I really The six-week course is dubbed, in true Combs fashion, “the
prayed on it and God told me, ‘Your purpose is to play a part in Excellence Program,” and is designed to support aspiring
saving the Black race.’ And then I immediately, I was like, I need entertainment executives hailing from underrepresented com-
to talk to Harry Belafonte.” munities. It comes at a time when the entertainment agency
model has come under fire for its lack of racial diversity. It is part
Harry Belafonte was Martin Luther King Jr.’s confidant and of Combs’s desire to use his platform for collective good. But his
is a bona fide celebrity. Belafonte used his celebrity status to understanding of what constitutes good may be at odds with
raise money for civil rights actions and organizations. He has the communities from whom he draws some of his inspiration.
been vocal about his disillusionment with modern celebrity’s
lack of social responsibility, especially among Black celebri- In the spring of 2021, Combs published an open letter to “cor-
ties. Belafonte’s 2012 comments that “high-profile artists” have porate America” in which he demanded that companies increase
“turned their back on social responsibility” called Combs’s peer their spending with Black-owned media businesses, saying that
Jay-Z out by name. (Belafonte and Jay-Z have since reconciled “incremental progress” in ad-spend parity is unacceptable.
their public differences.) The critique could just have easily been Combs sees himself as advocating for the Black consumer in
lobbed at Combs. Or, rather, at Puff Daddy and Diddy. He does the “If You Love Us, Pay Us” missive. But critics were quick to
not name this critique directly, but Combs seems aware of Bela- say his callout was hypocritical, in part because Combs owns
fonte’s penchant for critique. That is, in part, why Combs called Revolt, a cable TV network that courts advertising dollars. Rap-
Belafonte when God spoke to him about his purpose. per Noname is the kind of artist who would have been difficult

Combs says Belafonte was a model for the kind of activism
he envisions for this next stage of his public life. “I was like, we
were in similar situations. You know what I’m saying? Coming
from where we were having a position of power, being celebri-
ties, and I was wondering, how did [Belafonte] get so dug into
[social action]? And really dedicating his life.” He has always been

60 VA N I T Y FA I R

to imagine in Puff Daddy’s heyday. Noname is a fiercely inde- responses to a hostile social order that has left millions of people
pendent rapper who, along with other contemporary artists like behind. That kind of moment requires a different kind of story
Chance the Rapper, rebuffs the traditional record-label deal as and maybe a different kind of storyteller. It isn’t that the hustle
both an artistic and political statement. is dead, but that valorization of the hustle culture is surely on the
ropes. Hip-hop’s core constituency wants to debate the veracity
Former Bad Boy artists The LOX and Mase have publicly of hustling when predatory mortgages, student loan debt, rising
criticized Combs for trapping them in what they felt were unfair rent, flat wages, and surveillance police states choke the very life
deals in the past. Black capitalism, Noname alleges, would have out of Black lives, Black hopes, and Black hustle. Combs speaks
one celebrate Combs’s individual success as social progress. reverently about Black Lives Matter, calling it “part of the Black
She said on Twitter that Combs was “shaming white corpo- Renaissance” and very much a “part of the Love era.”
rations for a capitalist business model he almost completely
replicated.” This is not an isolated critique. It is a generational The biggest challenge to the Love era is the death of the Black
one. Younger audiences are rejecting uncritical boosterism of capitalism joie de vivre that produced Diddy’s first two acts. That
capitalism. And in a wider swath across pop culture, consumers doesn’t worry Combs. He thinks the revolution is foretold and his
are demonstrating a willingness to demand more from their place in it has already been written by God. He is more worried
para-social besties. That instinct is quite strong among young that we have talked so much about serious stuff that we forgot
Black audiences, many of whom participated in Black Lives to have fun. Fun is Combs’s real bag, and he does not want audi-
Matter protests over the last two years. Hip-hop artists can still ences to forget that above all, Love is supposed to feel good.
make a song like “Party and Bullshit,” for sure. But they can- God didn’t just give him a purpose. God also brought Combs
not make it without the audience pushing back on whether the into alignment with his highest frequency. “The fun part is the
bullshit was consensual and if the party had a purpose. frequency,” he exclaims. “The fun part [of the Love era] is the
music, the beat, the style, the rhythm, the walk, the talk, the fash-
For his part, Combs tells me that he is not worried about ion, the joy, the travels, the places we have never been before.”
bringing along those who disagree with him. “I can’t get caught
up in that. I know where my heart is at, and you can’t just do it As we are winding down our time together, Combs keeps
alone with just Black people. You got to have all types of allies. returning to the frequency. He wants to create a vibe for the
And that’s one thing I’m good at, I’m good at being a unifier, world to groove to. He invites me back for a Soul Food Sunday
but I’m not going to be in a room with other tribes that protect brunch, calling it an example of the Love-era frequency he is
themselves and make sure that they straight and not make sure all about creating. He emphasizes that the soul food is healthy
that we straight. But also, I’m not a politician, I’m not trying to and the vibe is next-level. He looks pointedly at the recorder
be the king or the dictator of somebody. I’m a boy from Harlem that has been between us all day, always part of his awareness.
that came here to make a change. We all have our story.” “I’m coming back into music, you know?” The room pauses for
a dramatic beat. Combs obviously wants this on the record, and
Combs’s story is a hood Horatio Alger tale. He started from it is also clearly news to his team. Ever in control of his narrative,
the bottom and now he is here, as it were. It was a hero’s tale that

“[I] was SENT HERE not to just do those things that are kind of rooted in
personal success but to be able TO TRANSFER to we, and do things that
are REAL CHANGE and COMMUNAL SUCCESS.”

made sense for where the culture was in 1999, even where it was he issues the final word by telling me that he is starting a new
in 2005. The 15 years before the 2008 Great Recession were a record label. It will be an all R&B label because that is the music
period of unbridled economic optimism. It was the era of the that makes Love Combs happy.
hustle, and Black youth culture translated it into an ethos, an
identity, and an ideology. Lester Spence is a professor of politi- As his publicist looks alarmed at the unplanned disclosure,
cal science and Africana studies at Johns Hopkins University. Combs tells me R&B is where he started. It is time that he comes
In his book on Black neoliberalism, he calls this hip-hop ethos home, not just for himself but for the culture. “Yeah, all R&B label,
the “Can’t Knock the Hustle” mythology of modern Black capi- because I feel like R&B was abandoned and it’s a part of our Afri-
talism. That myth made sense in the year 2000, when Black can American culture. And I’m not signing any artists. Because if
America, in particular, was battling the war on drugs by extract- you know better, you do better. I’m doing 50-50 partnerships with
ing every ounce of opportunity from Bill Clinton’s expanding pure transparency. That’s the thing. [The new label is so that] we
economy. Before financial bubbles started bursting in rapid suc- can own the genre; we don’t own hip-hop right now. We have a
cession in the 2000s, hustling felt democratic. Anyone with the chance to—and I’m going to make sure that—we own R&B.” And
right dream and the right grind could make it out of the hood, there’s the crux of Sean Combs, the man and the culture maker.
sometimes literally but usually metaphorically. In 2021, hustling He believes winning is his birthright, and he wants to share that
doesn’t sound fun. It sounds like the drudgery it is, a set of coping with the world. It has worked before, and Combs is betting that he
can make it work again. To hear him tell it, all we need is love. n

SEPTEMBER 2021 61

BY PHOTOGRAPHS BY
JOE HAGAN BRUCE GILDEN

Postcards
From
 the Edge

THE CRUCIBLE IN WHICH OUR CORROSIVE POLITICS WAS

FORGED HAS A NAME, AND IT IS FLORIDA

62 VA N I T Y F A I R

TABLOID STATE
Over decades,

Roger Stone helped
turn Florida into a
paragon of the
American right.

SEPTEMBER 2021 63

IT’S LATE AFTERNOON, and the palms of to your mother,” he smiles, greeting more campaign guru Brad Parscale, last seen
Fort Lauderdale are swaying as Roger fans. “How you doing? How are you?” drunk and shirtless and getting tackled
Stone—dirty trickster, convicted felon— by police officers after his wife reported
glides across the boulevard in short sleeves A few blocks from this bar, Stone him for acting erratically. Stone claims
and a linen jacket, ready for his first cock- informs me, is the home of former Trump Parscale, currently advising Caitlyn Jen-
tail of the day. We’re approaching the ner on a run for governor in California,
Elbo Room, a decrepit party bar on the SWAMPLANDIA is a regular at the Elbo Room. “He likes
spring-break beach strip that’s packed Trump supporters are to tell women that he’s a professional
with revelers and blaring Daft Punk’s “Get flocking to Florida. basketball player,” says Stone. (“Total
Lucky.” “If you’re 18 and trying to get laid, bullshit,” Parscale later tells me.)
this is the place to go,” observes Stone, who
is shadowed by a neatly dressed young Just then, a drunk guy staggers over,
man who calls himself Eddie and whom gets in Stone’s face, and calls him an “old
Stone describes as his aide-de-camp. man,” infuriating Stone and sparking a
brief confrontation that for a moment
This isn’t Stone’s usual watering hole, seems like it’s going to spin out of con-
but it seemed like an appropriate stop: trol. Stone’s lower teeth are now jutting
It’s the site of an anti-mask, pro-Trump out like a barracuda’s. “I’ve been boxing
rally last April called the Million Maskless for 30 years,” he growls. “I hit the heavy
March; the tabletops are decorated with bag every weekend for two hours. I could
sun-bleached photographs of seminude have killed him with one shot.”
spring breakers in rubber Trump masks.
As Stone steps to the corner, the bar crowd The cocktail will have to wait. We
immediately recognizes the snow-white retreat to the convertible Camaro I rented
hair and comic book villain sunglasses,
perhaps from cable news, where Stone was MAGNUM PHOTOS.
last seen mobbed by TV cameras follow-
ing his conviction for perjury, obstruction
of justice, and threatening a witness in the
Robert Mueller investigation.

A thin, lantern-jawed young man cov-
ered with tattoos emerges from the bar,
eager for a picture. “I have a following of
a bunch of Republicans who are going to
die!” he exclaims, posing next to Stone
with his phone. He just moved to Florida
from Boston, he says, because of “the
weather and Governor DeSantis.”

Others come out, wide-eyed. A Black
woman says her mother is a fan, and she
wants a photo for proof of celebrity contact.
Stone shootsme avictoriouslook—a Black
woman who likes a Republican! “Say hello

64 VA N I T Y FA I R

for the occasion, and Eddie squeezes into creditors in the event of bankruptcy. It’s lawyers and party functionaries, dressed
the back seat. “The people who liked me also a safe space from liberals. “If you’re in suits, to storm a voting center in Miami-
outnumbered those who didn’t,” Stone Sean Hannity, you can’t walk down the Dade County and disrupt the 2000
says. “Which is the way it usually is.” street in Manhattan, you get punched recount, claiming fraud, in what became
in the face,” says Tucker Carlson, who known as the Brooks Brothers Riot. That
Behold Florida, the state that reshaped started taping his Fox News show part- stunt established a new threshold for
the conservative vision of America in the time from Florida after protesters came political performance art by turning a
age of Trump. Over four tumultuous years, to his house in Washington, D.C., in 2018. dull civic event like vote counting into just
the former president turned Florida into another spectacle for cable news.
the de facto homeland of the GOP, site But long before Trump, Florida had
of the “Southern White House,” and transformed the modern right, starting Today, you can buy a baseball cap that
haloed himself in Floridian allies and cour- with the wrenching battle royale over declares “DeSantis 2024: Make America
tesans: Florida congressman Matt Gaetz; hanging chads in the 2000 election, the Florida.” Following the Trumpian script,
Palm Beach–based Laura Ingraham, Lou media spectacle that broke the spirit of the Governor Ron DeSantis, who has made
Dobbs, and Ann Coulter; Jupiter-based previous political age. This was the dawn successful political theater of bucking
Mark Levin; Boca Grande–based Tucker of Fox News, the Drudge Report, Rush mask mandates and shaming the media,
Carlson; Palm City–based Dan Bongino; Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Ann Coul- declares that Americans who “think like
as well as Sean Hannity, who has a condo ter, a loud and belligerent new breed of us” are coming in droves to the Sunshine
in Palm Beach, and newly minted Florid- media pugilists that Beltway observers— State and becoming Republicans. And
ian émigré of the right, Ben Shapiro. They old media—used to call “the Freak Show” maybe it’s true, though tragedies like the
come for the weather, to avoid income until the freaks multiplied and the term collapse of the Surfside condo in Miami
taxes, and sometimes for Florida’s Home- lost all meaning. Roger Stone was in the can challenge DeSantis’s upbeat visions
stead Act, which shields a house from vanguard, organizing a group of GOP and expose the rot within.

Florida has always been the “sunny
place for shady people,” to quote Roger
Stone quoting Somerset Maugham, the
traditional haven of mobsters, drug king-
pins, Ponzi schemers, and Joad-like last
chancers on the road to salvation or meth
addiction. Pablo Escobar had a home
here, and Fox News chief Roger Ailes
escaped here after News Corp. fired him
for rampant sexual harassment. Stone’s
first condo in Key Biscayne was pur-
chased with help from Richard Nixon,
who dubbed his own retreat the “Florida
White House” years before Mar-a-Lago
was a twinkle in Trump’s eye.

This is the state that gave us the Florida
Man meme and the rogue weekly National
Enquirer, precursor to the paranoid and
factually challenged style of Fox News and
Newsmax, and a crucial ally in Trump’s
political ascent. A tabloid state for tab-
loid people. And now the place is lousy
with comers. As Laura Loomer, a friend
of Stone’s and radical right-wing activist,
tells me, “Every grifter and their mom now
wants to move to Florida and establish
themselves as the new conservative media
network or new conservative publication.”

IT’S WEDNESDAY MORNING in Palm Beach,
and the sprinklers hidden in the Augus-
tine lawns are wetting the sidewalks
along the hedgerows. Laurence Leamer,

SEPTEMBER 2021 65

author of Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of One afternoon, I drove over to North and viewed the spartan bedroom: a single
Power at Donald Trump’s Presidential Pal- Palm Beach to see Larry Haley, a craggy bed, a big-screen TV, and shelves groan-
ace, is sitting in his condo across from the 34-year veteran of the Enquirer who in ing with VHS tapes of Hogan’s Heroes and
ocean, still in his tennis whites. 1987 published the infamous photo of Gilligan’s Island. “This is where his head
Senator Gary Hart and model Donna was at, which is pretty much where our
“I’ve lived here 27 years,” he says. Rice aboard the Monkey Business yacht readers’ heads were at,” he says.
“This is the most incredible year I’ve ever off Miami that helped torpedo Hart’s
seen. It’s a whole generation coming here presidential ambitions. Three years lat- That same year, Stone, in an interview
with money.” er, Haley was at Trump Tower meeting on C-SPAN, argued that Trump, whom
the Donald, a new fixture in the paper’s Stone met in 1979 through Cohn, would
During the pandemic, waves of 1 per- pages. Trump offered his cooperation in be “a credible candidate” for president
centers from Manhattan escaped to Florida turning his bitter divorce from Ivana and of the United States. “What you don’t
and snapped up havens in Miami and Palm affair with Marla Maples into a tabloid understand,” Stone recalls saying, “is the
Beach. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump story line. “Most of [the meeting] was political world and the pop culture worlds
prepped a luxury preserve on the private him joking around and saying absurd have fused. It’s all entertainment.”
Indian Creek Island (following in the foot- shit about Marla, that her mother’s tits
steps of Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen), were better than Marla’s,” Haley recalls. In the 1990s, Haley was a guest at
and Sean Hannity bought a condo around “We published stories on Trump’s affair Trump’s Mar-a-Lago parties, and Trump
the corner from Trump for $5 million. It and divorce, which lasted for many, many became a regular Enquirer source, tipping
was an old story, rich New Yorkers escap- issues. They’d fight, they broke up—a con- off the paper when Michael Jackson was
ing to the sunny “Sixth Borough.” Back stant saga that went on for a long time.” coming to the property for a rendezvous
when Trump was still a Page Six B-lister with Lisa Marie Presley, or inviting Haley
and the Manhattan elite laughed behind Trump and the Enquirer were fated for to his wedding to Maples so the Enquirer
his back, he sought a kingdom of his own each other. The tabloid’s founder, Gener- could cover it. “We got an exclusive first
and found it in the gilded history of Mar- oso Pope Jr., was a childhood friend of Roy picture of the baby,” says Haley. (It was
a-Lago, the estate built by cereal heiress Cohn, the Joe McCarthy aide and Nixon Tiffany Trump.)
Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1927. He lawyer who mentored a young Trump
also imagined himself a version of the (and Roger Stone) in the art of political Trump, meanwhile, was learning from
real estate baron Henry Flagler, who built warfare and media manipulation. Pope the Enquirer how to communicate with
a railroad through the Florida swamps called Cohn the smartest man he ever a mass audience. “We taught Donald
in the 19th century and turned Palm met, and Cohn credited Pope’s father, Trump how to talk in buzzwords,” Haley
Beach “into the most desirable resort in Generoso Pope Sr., a politically connected explains. “He was a good student, he
America,” recounts Leamer, “building concrete magnate in New York, with help- paid attention. I was amazed how much
the biggest hotel in the world on this land ing get him his start in politics. Pope Jr. attention he paid, because I didn’t have
and filling it up with these people who bought the original New York Enquirer in a strong sense of that at the time, except
come down here. And marrying his mis- the 1950s with money borrowed from a that he seemed amused by it. But he was
tress. That’s the classic Palm Beach story.” looking for a way to use buzzwords to get
the attention of our readers.”
For four years, the peck-
ing order in Palm Beach was “Drudge and I are both LEAVING Florida
defined not just by yearly fees and we’re not TELLING anyone WHERE we’re
to exclusive clubs but by loy-
alty to Trump—or at least public going this time.” —ANN COULTER
silence on the matter. There was
the cautionary tale of Lois Pope, family friend, the mobster Frank Costello, The Enquirer’s interest in politics was
a prominent philanthropist and and in 1971 moved to Lantana, Florida, mainly of the salacious variety—the Hart
member of Mar-a-Lago who to remake it into the supermarket bible of affair, or the revelation in 1996 that Stone
wrote an op-ed in Time maga- UFOs and dubious gossip about Liz Taylor. and his wife were swingers, which got
zine in 2017 expressing disgust Like Trump, Pope Jr. grew up in privilege Stone fired from Bob Dole’s presiden-
with Trump after he suggested but thumbed his nose at the Manhattan tial campaign and thrust him into the
the white supremacists in Charlottesville elite, preferring instead to titillate the world of behind-the-scenes politicking.
were “very fine people.” Pope, now 88, lumpenproletariat with a garish mélange Then came the big kahuna: Bill Clinton’s
relinquished her Mar-a-Lago member- of scandal, nostalgia, miracle diets, and affair with White House intern Monica
ship and was iced out by friends. right-wing patriotism. At its peak in the Lewinsky, the virtual Genesis story of
1980s, the Enquirer reached 4.7 million the modern right. The Enquirer went
The cancellation of Pope—heir to the readers. When Pope died in 1988, Haley full-court press, splashing Lewinsky on
National Enquirer fortune—was an ironic went to his house in Manalapan, Florida, the cover (“Monica’s Story: ‘I Just Wanted
twist given that the source of her wealth is
exactly where the story of the Floridization
of the right-wing media begins. The his-
tory of the tabloid, based in Florida for 42
years, tracks with the rise of populist spec-
tacle and conspiracy theory in right-wing
politics, crescendoing with Donald Trump.

66 VA N I T Y FA I R

RIGHT-WING TOUR
Ann Coulter helped
forge a new media
style before being cast
out of Trumpland.

SEPTEMBER 2021 67

IT’S A WAR
Toni Holt Kramer,
center, and her
fellow Donald-
loving Trumpettes.

Bill to Love Me’ ”) and sloganizing a new board meetings at Mar-a-Lago and sup- in a nostalgic, commercialized jingoism—
philosophy: “These days, celebrities are ported Trump’s first attempt to run for had now migrated wholesale to the
politicians, and politicians are celebrities.” president in 2000 on the Reform Party conservative media. Instead of obsessing
ticket. By 2010, the tabloid started claim- over the travails of Brad Pitt and Ange-
The Clinton affair set the table for the ing Barack Obama wasn’t an American lina Jolie, the tabloid right obsessed over
mega-spectacle of the 2000 presiden- citizen (“Barack Obama Kenyan Birth Barack Obama as a secret Muslim or Joe
tial election, when for five solid weeks, Certificate—Exposed!”) right as Trump Biden as a socialist puppet for a cabal of
Florida and its hanging chads became was road testing the racist conspiracy as a radical feminists.
the white-hot center of the Ameri- political attack. Six years later, the Enquir-
can political universe. By the time the er published an endorsement of Trump Nowhere was this tabloid conversion
Supreme Court ruled in favor of George for president, a first for the tabloid. more evident than in Newsmax, the
W. Bush over Al Gore, NBC’s Tim Rus- right-wing media company founded by
sert had popularized the concept of red Behind closed doors, the relation- Chris Ruddy, who had made his name
and blue states, Fox News had turned ship was hand in glove in ways no one questioning the suicide of White House
conservative distrust of the media into yet knew: Pecker’s Enquirer was buying counsel Vince Foster, feeding the con-
a game-changing brand of hyperparti- exclusive stories from Trump’s alleged spiracy theory that the Clintons were
sanship, and Florida was a byword for mistresses and burying them in advance somehow involved. Fresh off a book on
quadrennial political cliffhangers. of the 2016 election (the infamous “catch the subject, Ruddy moved to West Palm
and kill” strategy). Beach from New York in 1998 and started
Around this time, David Pecker, a pal Newsmax with backing from right-wing
of Trump’s from Manhattan, became The Enquirer pulled up stakes in Flor- financier Richard Mellon Scaife, hoping
the CEO of Enquirer parent company ida in 2014, but its tabloid DNA—the to build a conservative media empire and
American Media and moved the tabloid conspiracy theories and bogus and serial- take the company public.
to Boca Raton. Pecker began holding ized claims about celebrities, embedded

68 VA N I T Y FA I R

Ruddy’s media menu included a Trump comes over and Chris didn’t even “OKAY, SLOW DOWN,” instructs Ann Coul-
healthy dose of right-wing conspiracy, want to talk to him because Trump want- ter. “We’re coming to it now—on the left
including Trump’s favorite—Obama’s ed Chris to turn Newsmax pro-Trump. is going to be Bernie Madoff ’s old house.”
birth certificate. “Ruddy loves conspir- And Ruddy felt that Trump was a psy-
acy theories,” says a former Newsmax chopath.” (Ruddy declined to comment We’re in the Camaro for what Coulter
employee. “They’re great for hysteria on the record.) is calling my “right-wing tour” of Palm
in the media. He also loves psy- Beach, pointing out the homes of various
chics and predictions of stuff.” Ruddy became a full-time Trump conservative heroes, liberal enemies,
functionary, cashing in on the demand for and notorious scoundrels. At 59, she’s
Ruddy mined the National pro-Trump news, building up his TV net- bone-thin in a sporty white dress and
Enquirer for hires, recruiting work, dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, tennis visor. “I almost wore Lilly Pulit-
veteran editor Steve Coz to run and watching his revenue rise. “He made zer for you,” she says, referring to the
Newsmax editorial. Meanwhile, his pact with the devil,” as Leamer put it. preppy dressmaker. “Honestly, I’m from
he knocked around Mar-a-Lago, “He knew what Trump was.” New Canaan, I just always thought that’s
trying to meet powerful people, what people wore.”
and launched Newsmax TV. By Newsmax went all in as Trump sought
2016, Trump was running for re-election (Ruddy made another former We begin in front of Au Bar, where
the GOP nomination, but Rud- National Enquirer editor, David Perel, the William Kennedy Smith met the woman
dy initially backed Ted Cruz. “I editorial director) and Newsmax TV gave he was later acquitted of raping in the
remember in 2016 being at Trump Inter- credence to every lie told by Trump up controversial and much-televised trial
national Golf Club for a Sunday brunch to and including speculation that Biden in 1991, a classic tale of Kennedy family
and sitting at this table with Chris,” says was “cognitively impaired” and that the privilege that still tickles Coulter. The pro-
Leamer, a former social friend. “And election was stolen through chicanery prietors “came in, waved the incense, had
involving Dominion Voting Systems. an exorcism, and now it’s a great restau-
While the January 6 Capitol riots were rant,” she says.
under way, Newsmax initially reported
that it was only “6 to 10 people” breaching Coulter was triggering libs before Twit-
the building and speculated that they were ter was even invented. As we cruise by the
antifa, later providing uncritical airtime to late Roger Ailes’s house, she sprays her
a Trump rioter who declared “this is our thighs with sunscreen and tells the story
house, and we have the right to be here.” of how she got her start as a conservative
commentator on the fledgling MSNBC
In recent years, Ruddy has expressed in 1996. A supporter of “Pitchfork” Pat
regret for overzealous attacks on Bill Clin- Buchanan, the stridently xenophobic arch
ton in the 1990s, personally reconciling nationalist who was running for president
with the former president and donating that year, her on-air mantra was “Go, Pat,
$1 million to his foundation. One might go!” It was the early days of the internet,
presume his regret extended to spread- and she recalls reading a new site called
ing conspiracy theories like the Vince the Drudge Report, “which was just that
Foster canard, but business is business, tiny little blog out of Hollywood,” she says.
and Ruddy merely moved on to other “And out of the blue Drudge sends me an
fake stories, giving voluminous airtime email saying nothing but ‘Go, Pat, go!’ ”
and ink, even after the insurrection, to
“stolen election” conspiracy mongers
Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, and
former Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani.

The week that I’m in Florida, the

“If YOU’RE Sean Hannity, you can’t
WALK down the street in Manhattan, you get

PUNCHED in the face.” —TUCKER CARLSON

Enquirer cover on newsstands is virtu- CoulterandDrudgemetinpersonwhile
ally indistinguishable from Newsmax, the two were in Washington to support
promising “THE TRUTH ABOUT JOE the long shot candidate. “We went to Pat
BIDEN’S HEALTH!” Buchanan’s C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 1 8

SEPTEMBER 2021 69

Wise

DAVID CHASE

AND THE SOPRANOS 
BLEW UP OUR
IDEA OF TV.
WITH THE NEW
MOVIE PREQUEL, 
THE MANY SAINTS
OF NEWARK,
THE SHOWRUNNER
RETURNS TO
THE SCENE OF
THE CRIME 

BY
M AT T H E W LY N C H

70 VA N I T Y F A I R

LAST SUPPER
David Chase directing
James Gandolfini, Edie
Falco, and Robert Iler
during the final scene

of the original series.

Guy
71

OF ALL THE whackings, beatings, and ritu- explaining Proust’s madeleines by way of film school in the era of director as auteur.
al humiliations served up over the 86 hours gabagool to the boss of North Jersey, and After a long and lucrative network-TV
of TheSopranos, one of its cruelest assaults who mined his own experiences with an career writing and producing for the likes
is verbal. It comes late—midway through overbearing Italian American lowercase-f of The Rockford Files and Northern Expo-
the sixth and final season’s second half— family for his life’s great work. sure, he thought he was onto something
and takes place a 20-hour trip down I-95 with a pilot script about a mob boss work-
from the show’s usual North Jersey locale. “That’s what being a writer is,” Chase ing out (among other things) his mommy
Tony Soprano is on the lam and getting says with a shrug. issues in therapy. HBO, then in the very
paranoid in Miami with his mostly loyal early stages of becoming the greatest thing
capo Paulie Gualtieri, who is entertaining Chase was already a TV lifer by the time to happen to television since coaxial cable,
their much younger dinner companions Tony Soprano entered the American cul- ordered a pilot and then sat on it for more
with tales of the good old days. Noticing tural consciousness via that therapist-chic than a year. At one point in the drawn-out
his skipper looking irritable, Paulie asks anteroom on January 10, 1999. Now 76, process, Chase was maybe hours away
if everything is okay. The boss, normally Chase grew up in North Jersey and went to from taking a job running the X-Files spin-
gregarious, is being kinda quiet. off Millennium for Fox.
BACK IN THE DAY
“That’s ’cause,” Tony says, James Gan- Michael Gandolfini “The way I see it is, I was plucked out
dolfini pushing his big brown bear frame (in the tie) plays young just in the nick of time,” Chase says, still
away from the table, “ ‘Remember when’ Tony in The Many genuinely marveling at his own good fate.
is the lowest form of conversation.” Saints of Newark. “Before the train hit.”

On a sunny afternoon in late spring in In 2021 it is impossible to truly remem-
Santa Monica, David Chase, the Sopranos ber just how jolting The Sopranos was in
creator who in 1998 got an HBO series 1999—for the quality of its writing and
order he was pretty sure he wouldn’t and execution, of course, but at a more ele-
then went on to revolutionize the very idea mental level, for its willingness to explore
of American TV over the next nine years, its characters’ interior lives and its audi-
was laughing when presented with the line. ence’s attraction to them. It had slapstick
Before landing in the script, it had bounced and Jung. It shocked and transgressed,
around in his head since a buddy at West titillated and left viewers hanging. Most
Essex High had said it decades ago.

“He was a real smart guy, great guitar
player, kind of a pissant in a way,” says
Chase. “It’s so awful. It’s so cutting. It
really is so nasty.”

It is also indelible. So much so that
when, a few years ago, news started get-
ting out that Chase was going to revisit
the Sopranos characters for a prequel
movie set in part against the Newark
riots of 1967, some of the show’s more
obsessive online fans held it up to justify
their anxieties about the project. Not that
such concerns about re-treading the past
for new material would faze the man who
once had Tony’s psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi,

72 VA N I T Y FA I R

thrillingly of all, at the turn of the century, in the past that he didn’t think the series and Junior Soprano, and when Warner
it respected its viewers’ intellects up to and would age particularly well in the audi-
including—though some will debate this— ence’s minds. “What I really thought was Bros. Pictures chairman Toby Emmerich
the final frame. (For those of us who did that a lot of their references were not in
not have premium cable and had to rent it play anymore,” he says. “The phones are floated the idea of revisiting the series,
one DVD at a time at Blockbuster, it also different. That’s the big one for people.”
encouraged a sort of proto–binge-watch- Chase felt ready. He had by then directed
ing.) In doing so, The Sopranos paved the “People started telling me, ‘My son
road for all the prestige content to come— is 17. He wants to go to film school,’ ” his debut feature, 2012’s semiautobio-
a little of it brilliant, most of it now just Chase says. “ ‘He watches your show all
as trite as the network notes Chase was the time….’ It was so interesting to me. graphical Not Fade Away, and was set to
trying to get away from back then. I thought, What the hell is going on now?”
direct Saints too but eventually ceded it
“The networks had this unerring sense As best he can figure, it is our eternal
to go for just what made the thing good fascination with outlaws, a subject the to longtime Sopranos director Alan Taylor.
and tell you to take it out,” he recalls. series probed often. Or it might be the
“They would always know that that’s appeal of exploring the idea, expressed The movie focuses largely on Dickie
where your heart was.” in the pilot, that all of us 21st-century
Americans have arrived for the story’s last Moltisanti, father of Christopher, who
A year-plus of quarantining helped chapters. Also: “I think Christopher and
make The Sopranos a hot property once Paulie were probably huge attractions.” winds up at war with a former associ-
again. It is the stuff of memes and Gen
Z fan accounts. Michael Imperioli and All of this freights the October 1 arrival ate after the 1967 Newark riots. Along
Steve Schirripa, who played Christopher of the prequel film, The Many Saints of
Moltisanti and Bobby Bacala, respec- Newark, with even more anticipation. (It the way, the film offers a view of a pre-
tively, have a hit podcast based on their will be on HBO Max simultaneously for
PREVIOUS SPREAD: COURTESY OF HBO. THIS SPREAD: BARRY WETCHER. rewatching of the show. In July, the second 31 days.) Chase, who wrote the movie with teen and high school–age Tony Soprano,
“SopranosCon” fan convention was held Lawrence Konner, first began thinking
in Atlantic City. This renewed interest has of returning to the characters a few years played by Michael Gandolfini, whose
somewhat surprised Chase, who has said ago. There was a never-used idea for a
flashback episode around Johnny Boy father died in 2013 at age 51.

“I looked at some tape, to see if he

could put one word in front of the other,”

Chase says. “But no, I had no hesitancy.

I just had this sneaking suspicion that the

DNA was going to be the same.”

In the course of its two or so hours,

the movie comes again and again to two

other of The Sopranos’ great themes: the

cycles of violence we perpetuate as a spe-

cies and the Herculean effort required to

make progress on a personal level, never

mind societal. All of which was cast into

relief last year. Filming had been largely

completed in 2019, and the production

took a long pause because of COVID,

during which the 2020 uprisings took

place. In the summer of 1967, Chase was

22, driving from the burbs to pick up his

future wife at work at Prudential Insur-

ance each day. Seeing the riots and the

living conditions that had brought them

on settled on his psyche. “What was going

through my head was ‘God, it was still

the same; I can’t believe it,’ ” he said of

watching the news last summer.

Long ago, when Chase first left North

Caldwell for L.A., he’d had an idea for

a script about four guys

riding around in a tank Read more
during those fraught at VF.com.

days in Newark. The

Many Saints of Newark is not that movie,

so it’s clear Chase still has projects in the

desk drawer to play with. He says he’d

do TV again, but a limited series is more

his speed. The Sopranos, especially those

last few seasons, seemed to take its toll.

“Features are still my first love,” he

says, before doing the mental math on

what’s become of the entertainment

business in the 20-something years since

Tony’s first therapy appointment. “I don’t

know. Is there a feature business? Do

movies really exist?” n

SEPTEMBER 2021 73

Future

ELLE WOODS. NEO. THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS.

V.F. REIMAGINES OUR FAVORITE TURN-OF-THE-MILLENNIUM

MOVIE ICONS WITH A NEW GENERATION OF STARS

PHOTOGRAPHS BY STYLED BY
EMMA SUMMERTON ARIANNE PHILLIPS

Legally
Blonde

KEKE PALMER
AS ELLE WOODS

The singer, actor, and
meme queen channels
the beloved hero from
the 2001 rom-com about
an unlikely Harvard Law
student, a Chihuahua,
and a dream.

Palmer’s clothing by
Rodarte; shoes by
Giuseppe Zanotti; belt by
Chanel; bag by Valentino
Garavani; earrings by
Mateo; rings by Chopard
(index) and Tiffany & Co.
Additional clothing
by Moschino Couture;
additional shoes by
Christian Louboutin.
Opposite: dress by Carolina
Herrera; earrings by
Irene Neuwirth; necklaces
(from top) by Irene
Neuwirth, Chanel, and
Van Cleef & Arpels.

Original Legally Blonde
costume design by Sophie
De Rakoff.

SEPTEMBER 2021 75

MANY MOVIE BUFFS consider 1999 to be one of the greatest Today’s rising stars of stage and screen were mere children at
single years of cinema ever. Industry-changing blockbusters, the time. But they’ve come to know “the classics”—sigh—thanks
like The Matrix, and daring indies, like The Blair Witch Project, to their elders and their curiosity as artists, not to mention the
closed out the 20th century with a roar, heralding the new mil- algorithmic tutelage of streaming-service recommendations. For
lennium. And once the calendar turned, Y2K fears gave way to this portfolio, which was inspired by vintage-era hair and makeup
excitement, as a young class of auteurs made their way up in tests, a bevy of up-and-coming talent helps us pay homage to the
the business and technological advancements pushed tentpole iconography of recent yesteryear, bringing to new life the dia-
studio filmmaking into previously unimagined visual frontiers. mond-draped lavishness of Moulin Rouge!, the jockish sex appeal
It was a thrilling time to be a film fan, and the generation now of Love & Basketball, the defiant pink of Elle Woods, and the ter-
taking the creative reins of Hollywood as executives and film- rifying business basic of Patrick Bateman. Some of these movies
makers was directly shaped by that epoch. are among the young stars’ favorites. Ours too. —Richard Lawson

76 VA N I T Y F A I R

HAI R , A S HAN TI L AT I O N ( N O R MAN I ) , DAN ILO ( AL L O TH E R S) ; MAK E U P, RO KAE L ( NO R MAN I ) ; MAK E UP AN D G RO O M I N G, KABU K I ( AL L O TH ER S ) ; MAN I CU RE S , AL E X JAC HN O ( AL L WO M E N E XCE P T NO RMAN I ) ; BE ARD AR T IS T , S OF IA
R U I Z ( S P R O U S E ) ; TA I LO R S , TAT YA N A C A S S A N E L L I , TAT I A N A S A L I ; R E TO U C H I N G , S T U D I O R M ; S E T D E S I G N , R O B E R T D O R A N . P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N BY W E S T Y P R O D U C T I O N S . F O R D E TA I L S , G O TO V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

The Matrix

CHARLES
MELTON AS NEO

The Riverdale heartthrob
watched the Wachowskis’
1999 blockbuster on
VHS every day after
school. Now it’s his turn
to enter the Matrix.

Trench coat by Fendi;
sweater by Ralph Lauren
Purple Label; pants by
Sheron Barber; boots by
GCDS; gloves by
Thomasine.

Original Matrix costume
design by Kim Barrett.

SEPTEMBER 2021

77

The Royal
Tenenbaums

BARBARA
PALVIN AND
DYLAN SPROUSE
AS MARGOT
AND RICHIE
TENENBAUM

The real-life couple—
she’s a model, he’s
an actor—take on the
iconic stylings of
Wes Anderson’s 2001
film about the mixed
blessing known as family.

Palvin’s coat by Maison
Atia; sweater and skirt by
Philosophy di Lorenzo
Serafini; shirt by Lacoste;
shoes by G.H. Bass & Co.;
hairpin by Kanel; gloves by
Gaspar Gloves by Dorothy
Gaspar; bag by Hermès.
Sprouse’s suit by Boglioli;
track jacket by Sergio
Tacchini; shoes by Adidas
Stan Smith; headband
by Fila; sunglasses by
Oliver Peoples.

Original Royal
Tenenbaums costume
design by Karen Patch.

78 VA N I T Y F A I R



Mulholland Dr.

ADDISON RAE
AS BETTY

Thanks to TikTok—a
platform so weird and
ingenious that David
Lynch might have
invented it—Rae is
a new kind of ingenue,
with a music and movie
career on the rise.
Clothing by Dior; shoes
by Giuseppe Zanotti;
earrings by Mateo; rings
by Sarah Hendler.
Original Mulholland Dr.
costume design by
Amy Stofsky.

80 VA N I T Y FA I R

Moulin
Rouge!

NORMANI AS
SATINE

The triple-threat pop
star steps into Nicole
Kidman’s glittering
role in Baz Luhrmann’s
2001 fantasia.

Crown and jewelry by
Michael Schmidt
Studios; corset by
Agent Provocateur;
briefs by What Katie
Did; shoes by Sergio
Rossi; gloves by Gucci;
tights by Wolford.

Original Moulin Rouge!
costume design by
Catherine Martin and
Angus Strathie.

82 VA N I T Y F A I R

The Virgin
Suicides

SYDNEY SWEENEY,
MADELAINE
PETSCH, OLIVIA
HOLT, AND CAILEE
SPAENY AS THE
LISBON SISTERS

They’re on wildly
different shows (The
White Lotus, Riverdale,
Cruel Summer, and
Mare of Easttown),
but there’s a film they
all love: Sofia Coppola’s
1999 haunting
directorial-debut feature
about the deep waters
of adolescence.

Dresses by The Vampire’s
Wife. Sweeney’s and
Holt’s earrings by Piaget.
Petsch’s earrings by
Lizzie Mandler (back)
and Zoë Chicco.

Original Virgin Suicides
costume design by
Nancy Steiner.

SEPTEMBER 2021 83

Hedwig
and the
Angry Inch

KING PRINCESS
AS HEDWIG

The singer-songwriter
and her mom used
to sing songs from John
Cameron Mitchell’s
2001 cult classic in the
car: “It’s one of the
most important movies
in my life.”

Leotard by Vaquera;
boots by Dorothee
Schumacher; gloves by
Chanel; tights by
Versace; necklace by Etro.
Opposite: dress by
Alexandre Vauthier;
boots by Rick Owens;
gloves by Chanel;
earrings by Lisa Eisner
Jewelry; bandanna and
bracelet by Michael
Schmidt Studios.

Original Hedwig costume
design by Arianne Phillips.

SEPTEMBER 2021 85

86 VA N I T Y FA I R

Love &
Basketball

CORDELL
BROADUS AS
QUINCY McCALL

The model-
entrepreneur—and son
of Snoop Dogg—has
been in the public eye
since his days as a
wide receiver at UCLA,
though in this role he’s
chasing hoop dreams.

STORM REID
AS MONICA
WRIGHT

The star of Euphoria
and The Suicide Squad
channels the other
of two childhood friends
with big ambitions
on and off the court.

Broadus’s jacket by
Burberry; shorts
by Telfar; sneakers by
Jordan Brand; bracelet
by David Yurman. Reid’s
sports bra by Fabletics;
shorts by Reebok;
shoes by Louis Vuitton;
earrings by Rainbow
Unicorn Birthday
Surprise; necklace by
Awe Inspired; bracelets
by Lizzie Mandler.

Original Love & Basketball
costume design
by Ruth E. Carter.

American
Psycho

PATRICK
SCHWARZENEGGER
AS PATRICK
BATEMAN

Already American royalty,
the actor, model, and
entrepreneur evokes a
sinister side in a tribute to
Mary Harron’s 2000
satire of the predatory
nature of capitalist culture.

Shirt by Ralph Lauren
Purple Label; pants and
tie by Giorgio Armani;
shoes by Jimmy Choo; braces
by Drake’s; socks by Falke;
watch by Rolex; cuff links
from Beladora. Opposite:
parka by Louis Vuitton; boxer
shorts by Emma Willis;
sneakers by APL.

Original American Psycho
costume design
by Isis Mussenden.

Throughout: hair
products by VIP Luxury
Hair Care (Normani);
hairpieces by Glam
Seamless (Holt, King
Princess, Palmer, Palvin,
Rae, Spaeny, Sprouse);
makeup products by
Giorgio Armani
(Palvin), Item Beauty
(Rae), Maybelline
(Reid), Urban Decay
(Normani), and Chanel
(all other women);
nail enamel by Giorgio
Armani (Palvin),
Maybelline (Reid),
and Chanel Le Vernis
(all other women
except Normani);
grooming products by
Boy de Chanel.

SEPTEMBER 2021 89

BY I L L UST R AT I O N BY
A AT I S H TA S E E R NIGEL BUCHANAN

MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI WAS ALL BUT SAINTED FOR

HIS LEADERSHIP AFTER 9/11. TWO DECADES LATER, THE
SPECTERS—OF THAT EVENT AND OF THE MAN HIMSELF—
HAUNT US STILL

Rudy
Country

90 VA N I T Y FA I R

SEPTEMBER 2021 91

On a glittering day in May,

ferries and barges charting a course in Time after 9/11, “ensures that he will this anniversary. But as the symptom of a
over the diamond-strewn surface of be remembered as the greatest mayor in deeper cultural malaise, he becomes
the East River, Richard Ravitch, former the city’s history, eclipsing even his hero, something more than that. We are impli-
lieutenant governor of New York, said Fiorello La Guardia, who guided Gotham cated in this fearful last act of his. I’d go
something extraordinary to me: “You through the great depression.” The queen so far as to say our national reckoning
have to remember Giuliani wasn’t mayor knighted him. World leaders, from Tony depends on our ability to make a whole of
on 9/11, was he?” Blair to Nelson Mandela, toured the site of the diptych Giuliani presents, now as the
Ground Zero at his side. The president hero of 9/11, now as a figure whose mad-
Ravitch, who had also been chairman of France called him “Rudy the Rock.” ness is not his own, but a national madness,
of the MTA and a mayoral candidate in There were book deals in the millions and which in part has an origin in the events of
1989, was something of a city elder—an speaking engagements. “Giuliani’s popu- that day—the wasteful wars that ensued,
embodiment of its institutional memory. larity is national now,” wrote Harold Evans the harm done to our social fabric as the
The walls of his office at Waterside Plaza in 2001. “He is the Mayor of America— nation was diverted by adventurism, and
were hung with honorary degrees, yel- with the potential of being president one the toll that ultimately took on the psyche
lowed clippings from the New York Post, day if he doesn’t screw it up.” of a country that grew every day more
and a print of the American Museum on suspicious of itself. These were the condi-
Broadway, circa 1850. Did this man, to If, 20 years on, we find the man we tions that engendered Trump.
whom Giuliani, in 1995, offered the job had lionized for his leadership on that
of chancellor of the city’s school system day unfit to represent its memory—not And so, yes: Of course Rudy Giuliani
(a post he declined), really not remem- because he is old, infirm, or gracefully los- is important.
ber who the mayor was when the city he ing his marbles, but because he is the face
loved so much was attacked? He was 87. of a Trumpian madness in which great BUT LET’S GO BACK for a moment to that
I feared his mind was going, but when swathes of the country are implicated— September morning when, in our vulner-
at my insistence Ravitch realized his that in itself is important. Giuliani’s latest, ability and fear, we clung to Rudy. The
mistake—remember America’s mayor? possibly final act in politics is no mere pri- memory of that embrace, from which
Time magazine’s Person of the Year? The vate misfortune. This is not Napoleon’s we have been trying to extricate ourselves
defiant figure, covered in dust and ash, hundred days, or the pathos-filled long ever since, may have faded, but the need
emerging from the rubble of the World kiss goodbye of so many giants, from that inspired it is still intact. “It’s funny
Trade Center?—I, in turn, saw that it Teddy Roosevelt to Margaret Thatcher, that you call it a ‘Cuomo-like moment,’ ”
contained a deeper truth: The grotes- who find themselves unable to leave the Andrew Kirtzman, Giuliani’s biogra-
queries of the Giuliani of today, here stage when it is time to go. It is too shrewd pher, said to me on Zoom, “because I
the supine figure of Borat fame reach- a political calculation to be that. A recent thought Cuomo was having a Giuliani-
ing aimlessly into his trousers, there the Economist/YouGov poll had the former like moment.” What Kirtzman found
bug-eyed death mask of Aschenbach in mayor’s popularity among Republicans especially comparable about the two situ-
Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, with in the 60s—three times that of Mitch ations “is how quickly people forget the
runnels of hair dye streaming down his McConnell’s. More important, Giuliani’s circumstances behind the rise of these
cheeks, had erased all memory of the particular brand of crazy, though more heroic figures.” Those circumstances
man who went before. operatic, has afflicted too many GOP are an atmosphere of totalizing fear
leaders in the age of Trump, from Lindsey combined with a leadership void. Enter
“Well, it may be,” Ravitch said, now a Graham to Ron Johnson, for it to be seen a flawed but vigorous leader, seemingly
touch embarrassed, “that my view of him as an anomaly. As Joe Klein, the author all facts and no bullshit—a man born, as
today has colored my memory.” of Primary Colors, put it to me: “Rudy his friend Peter Powers said of Giuliani,
is the epitome of what has happened to “without a fear gene.”
Ravitch added, “I don’t think Giuliani our public life. And it’s scary. People say
is an important person. He’s a peripheral it’s only 30 percent of the country. Thirty Kirtzman had been with Giuliani on
character. I think he’ll be a footnote in the percent is a lot!” 9/11. A young reporter at NY1, he was
history books of the Trump era.”
Even as the fallen symbol of our ven-
Now I felt he was being disingenuous. eration, Giuliani, who did not respond to
Of course Giuliani is important. It is the multiple requests for comment on this
20th anniversary of 9/11. This man had story, would have been important on
been our hero. “Giuliani’s performance,”
my former boss, Eric Pooley, had written

92 VA N I T Y F A I R

awakened by his mother, who told him building. Later, Harold worked as a had led it then). He kept his lynx-eyed
to turn on the television. He called his
newsroom, who instructed him to find the bartender at Uncle Leo’s loan-sharking gaze fastened on Italian organized crime
mayor. He went downtown in a cab. The
driver, as soon as they entered the desert- operation. When people couldn’t pay up, as well as white-collar crime, prosecut-
ed streets surrounding the World Trade
Center, slammed the brakes and threw Harold was the guy who showed up with ing the likes of Michael Milken and Ivan
him out. A frantic woman got in, urging
Kirtzman to go back uptown with her. a baseball bat. Much of this information, Boesky. His youthful love of opera made
A cop yelled at him to get off the street.
Kirtzman waved a press pass and held including a cousin who was a junkie and him relish the more theatrical aspects of
his ground. “I’m looking for Giuliani,”
he said. “Oh, Giuliani,” the cop replied. another who died as a cop in the line of his job. He memorably “perp walked”
“He’s over there.” The mayor, covered in
dust and ash, was emerging from a build- duty, came to light through the tremen- Richard Wigton across the trading floor
ing on Barclay Street where he had taken
cover after the first tower fell. On seeing dous work of Wayne Barrett, Giuliani’s of his company in handcuffs. “You don’t
Kirtzman, he said, “Come on, Andrew,
let’s go!” They began to walk up Church late biographer. These were dichotomies stop violent crime by being a good fairy,”
Street on what is now Giuliani’s iconic
march north. As they walked, the second typical of second-generation immigrant Ed Hayes, who served as the model for
tower fell behind them. An implosion of
rubble and debris. Everyone ran for cover. families in the city, and it is hard to be sure the Tommy Killian character in Tom

“Talk about a terrifying moment,” how much Giuliani himself knew of the Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, told
Kirtzman said, helping me to re-enter
the unbelievable experience of that day, equal measures of light and shade con- me. Hayes, who had also “grown up hard”
its magnitude, the emotions it inspired.
Zeroing in on what he saw as the source tained within him. Certainly now, as law in an Irish equivalent of Giuliani’s Ital-
of the mayor’s appeal, Kirtzman said, “He
was the only one who was not absolutely enforcement wraps its arms around him— ian neighborhood, fought the mayor on
immobilized by fear.” Afterward Giuliani
held a press conference where, when as this story went to press, a New York behalf of a firefighter’s widow after 9/11
asked how many would die, he gave that
unspeakably moving reply: “The number Court suspended Giuliani’s
of casualties will be more than any of us
can bear, ultimately.” law license, having deter-

KIRT ZMAN IS AT WORK on a second mined that he made false
Giuliani biography (to be published next
year by Simon & Schuster), and it’s not and misleading statements “Rudy is the EPITOME of
hard to see why: His subject—a child of
New York’s white ethnic enclaves, with in an attempt to overturn the
all their tribal hatreds and a cult of loyalty
as fierce as that found in the honor-and- results of the 2020 election— what has happened to our
shame societies of Afghanistan’s frontier there is a special poignancy to
regions—was fascinating even as a young
man. Born to a family of Italian immi- Harold imploring the young
grants, he grew up—first in Brooklyn, later
in Garden City—in a world where crime Rudy to steer clear of a life of PUBLIC LIFE,” says Joe
and law enforcement were two sides of crime. “He would say over
the same coin. He had four uncles in uni-
form; a fifth was a fireman. His father, and over,” Giuliani told Time Klein. “And IT’S SCARY.”
Harold, was a petty criminal who, in 1934, in 2001, “ ‘You can’t take any-
at age 24, had been convicted of robbing
a milkman at gunpoint in a Manhattan thing that’s not yours. You

can’t steal. Never lie, never

steal.’ As a child and even as a young and came away with a favorable impres-

adult, I thought, What does he keep doing sion. “He was a good mayor,” Hayes said.

this for? I’m not going to steal anything.” “I don’t give a shit what anyone says.” But

The young Rudy, brimming with admi- recently he had run into Giuliani at Scot-

ration for John F. Kennedy, was an RFK to’s, an Italian restaurant in Midtown, and

Democrat. When Hillary Clinton was still was shocked by what he saw. “I remem-

a supporter of Barry Goldwater, Giuliani ber looking at him, and he didn’t look the

was praising President Lyndon Johnson’s same. I said to myself, What the fuck is

War on Poverty and describing the writ- going on here? This is one of the great

ings of a member of the John Birch Society heroes in the history of New York City.”

“as the disgusting neurotic fantasy of a Giuliani, who almost became a priest

mind warped by fear and bigotry.” He until he discovered he had a libido, had

voted for George McGovern in 1972 but, an uncompromising sense of right and

three years later, was appointed Gerald wrong that served him well as a prosecu-

Ford’s associate deputy attorney gen- tor. After two storied terms as mayor, he

eral. In 1981, under Ronald Reagan, he launched a 2008 presidential campaign

became the youngest associate attorney that ran into the sands. Then he disap-

general ever. “He only became a Repub- peared into the private sector, where he

lican,” his mother, Helen, said of him, made gobs of money. (My husband, in

as Giuliani’s registration changed from fact, was an associate at the esteemed

Democrat to Independent to Republican, Houston law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani,

“after he began to get all these jobs from after the latter name had fallen away.) So

them.” As associate attorney general, he far, so standard. We should stop here to

had a shameful record of demonizing stress that, though more colorful than

Haitians fleeing the murderous regime most, these are the lineaments of a per-

of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. fectly routine career in public life. Had

By 1983, he was the youngest man ever Giuliani at this point vanished into the

to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the mahogany woodwork of boardrooms,

Southern District of New York (only men Kirtzman would have had no greater

SEPTEMBER 2021 93

task ahead of him than detailing messy and that’s why he’s behaving the way he to more than a quarter of the city. His
experience with race has a certain meta-
divorces, the odd shady deal, a late-in-life is.” A close aide demurred: “It’s a sadder, phorical power too, when one considers
that in America the encounter with “the
love affair with scotch, and the diminish- more complicated story. There’s some- other” so often begins at the color line.
That is when we see people unlike our-
ing returns that accrue to those who try to thing wrong, there’s something off. He selves, and when our ability to see in
the experience of another a shade of
extract every drop of financial and politi- got nothing out of this relationship. our own—empathy, in a word—is truly
tested. In the case of Giuliani, his racial
cal gain from a global celebrity they had He threw away his reputation for free.” attitudes were more than casually held
prejudices, no mere extension of his
only a partial hand in creating. upbringing but an actual vendetta, orig-
inating in his 1989 electoral loss to the
But now, as Giuliani comes full circle, city’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins.

via the Trump bypass, to be the subject of a “He couldn’t believe he had lost to
Dinkins,” said Bill Bratton, who served
criminal investigation led by the very same as police commissioner under Giuliani.
Bratton, who had been in the room when
office he once led, he becomes a study of President Barack Obama mocked Trump
at the White House Correspondents’
almost Dostoyevskian proportions. In him, Dinner in 2011—an event many believe
led Trump to truly set his sights on the
we see some of our most ancient impuls- “I TAKE GREAT ISSUE,” said someone presidency with an aim to undo Obama’s
legacy—described that moment to me as
es, of power and ethics, fear and greed, who worked closely with Giuliani in the the “mirror image” of the rage that the
defeat to Dinkins produced in Giuliani.
dramatized. To be clear—in May, Time 1990s (let’s call him Jeff ), “with the peo- The future mayor had until then actively
courted the Black vote, speaking with
revealed Giuliani worked with an accused ple who say that this is just a continuation emotion of homeless shelters and crack
babies. But Giuliani’s concern lasted
Russian agent in a plot against the 2020 of who he was. That’s not true. This is the only as long as he was allowed to play the
benefactor. Confronted with losing to a
U.S. election—this is a prosecutor who has tragic collapse of a great public man.” Black man, his goodwill disappeared. At
Giuliani’s party at the Roosevelt Hotel,
come to be a danger to his personal liberty, Jeff remembers someone with a “steel Barrett evokes a scene that would return
to haunt us: “The ballroom was filled with
aswellasthatofthiscountry.Evenifweset trap of a mind” who could hold briefings frustrated supporters he’d closed the cam-
paign invoking—white, male, and mad. It
aside the scenes of self-abasement—now of three to four hours without notes, a was also filled with ugly untruths about
how Blacks had stolen the election at polls
butt dialing reporters, now possibly emit- big reader, a man capable of compas- in Harlem and Bed-Stuy, where the dead
had supposedly voted by the thousands.”
ting COVID-infected fecal aerosols into a sion. Jeff attended one of a series of town
Not only did Giuliani lack the histori-
crowded Michigan courtroom—this is ter- halls Giuliani held around the city dur- cal imagination or the generosity of spirit
needed to see the significance of New York
ritory unlike any other in modern times. It ing his first term in Canarsie, in southern electing its first Black mayor, what is espe-
cially revealing (given what he would later
is incumbent upon us to try to understand Brooklyn, “real Rudy country.” There, an become) is that even when he had beaten
Dinkins in 1993, on the issue of law and
how the arc of this once-impressive indi- oldermanstruggledtogethispointacross. order, he could not let his animosity go.
“He really prevented us,” Bratton said,
vidual came to intersect so calamitously Shouts of “learn English” and “stop wast- still frustrated after all these years, “from
having a free hand to reach out to the Black
withthismomentthatwe’relivingthrough ing our time” rose around the packed community.” The animus ran so deep that
Giuliani, as mayor, didn’t once attend the
in America. Because as much as there is school auditorium. “Rudy shut that down US Open, because that event had come to
be associated with Dinkins’s mayoralty.
nothing mysterious (and certainly noth- right away,” Jeff said, recalling the mayor’s This also meant that when the truly hid-
eous incidents of police violence occurred
ing tragic) in Trump’s trajectory, even words: “ ‘Let me tell you something: This

the most partisan observers I spoke to gentleman is an immigrant trying to ask

could not help but feel a degree of pain, his mayor a question. My grandfather

sadness, and frank bewilderment at the came here. He didn’t speak any Eng-

lish. He had a hell of a tough

time. If somebody had taken

When HILLARY CLINTON the time to listen, life would
perhaps have been easier for

him. I’m a busy guy. As busy

was still a supporter of as you may be, I’m busier than
you are. If I have the time to

spend a few extra minutes

BARRY GOLDWATER, listening to this guy finish-
ing his thought, you do too.’ ”

Giuliani was praising Giuliani’s reaction changed
the tenor of that room.

Applause ensued. Jeff was

President Johnson’s eager for me to see that, when
it came to the old Rudy, there

WAR ON POVERTY. were as many stories of this
kind as of the other. “There
was none of that Trumpian

nonsense,” Jeff said, adding

question of what happened to Giuliani. that he found the present condition of the

“It’s inexplicable to me,” said one. “Fron- ex-mayor “heartbreaking.”

tal lobe dementia,” said another. “A guy Giuliani had far more trouble being

with an expiration date,” suggested a sympathetic to people from other back-

former associate. Ravitch said, “A lot of grounds, especially New York’s Black

people think he became a heavy drinker population, which in his day amounted

94 VA N I T Y F A I R

As Giuliani comes full circle, via the Trump bypass, to be the subject
of a CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION led by the very same office he once
led, he becomes a study of almost DOSTOYEVSKIAN PROPORTIONS.

under Giuliani—the 1997 rape of Abner cars they passed no longer sported signs hasn’t taken credit for.” Giuliani had
Louima in a precinct bathroom by cops taped to the windows addressed to car the ads removed from city buses. The
with the handle of a cleaning implement; thieves reading ‘No Radio,’ and old magazine sued and won. All this was
Amadou Diallo, shot at 41 times in 1999 ladies in the park no longer talked exclu- very much the normal exhaustion visit-
by plainclothes police officers; Patrick sively about who’d been mugged over the ed upon a big figure who has outlived his
Dorismond, killed in 2000 by undercov- weekend. The porn stores vanished from utility. But 9/11 gave him a golden finish.
er officers attempting to buy drugs that neighborhoods, and drug dealers no lon- “In the aftermath,” Kirtzman told me, “I
Dorismond wasn’t selling—the mayor had ger sold loose joints in children’s parks.” think it’s fair to say Giuliani was among
no one in Black leadership to speak to. Nor the most beloved people in the world. He
did he seem to want to. Instead he released ANOTHER CANARD in wide circulation is was knighted by the Queen of England,
Dorismond’s juvenile delinquency record that 9/11 rescued Giuliani from a political lauded by prime ministers and presidents
to show that he “was no altar boy.” In fact wilderness. It did not. In August 2001, he from here to Russia. So he was faced with
he was, at the very same Catholic school had a roughly 50 percent approval rating a choice of what to do at that point. And
that Giuliani had attended. Not surpris- in a city that was six-to-one Democrat. I think the story of Giuliani is largely a
ingly, a month after Dorismond’s funeral Even so, 9/11 did find him in a strange story of choices….”
Giuliani’s approval rating fell to 37 percent, place. As the city grew safer, cleaner, and
with only 6 percent of Black voters approv- more prosperous, its mayor had grown THE CHOICE GIULIANI MADE was to run
ing of the job he was doing. increasingly erratic and unstable. There for president in 2007. And it was around
was the separation from his wife, Donna, this time that things began to go badly
Giuliani’s flaws are grave enough that which Giuliani sadistically announced at wrong. Giuliani’s campaign foundered.
I see no point in denying him his due. a press conference. There was the very Some say it was because he was a pro-gay,
The fashion today is to say that crime public affair with Judith Nathan, his next pro-choice, pro–gun control candidate
was falling anyway, that the crack epi- wife who would become his ex-wife. from New York’s outer boroughs trying to
demic was burning itself out, and that There were the pitched battles with the appeal to the red base of his party. But the
Giuliani was merely the beneficiary of city’s institutions, such as the Brooklyn problem ran deeper than that. Somewhere
conditions beyond his control. When I Museum, which he threatened to defund along the way, his vision had imperceptibly
put this to Bratton, he said, “To be quite in 1999 because of an exhibition called darkened. A meanness had set in. He was
frank, that’s a bunch of bullshit.” He then “Sensation,” featuring, among other anxious to cash in on his 9/11 stock, but
assailed me with data about how crime pieces, the Virgin Mary created in part on the national stage it became clear that
nationwide fell 40 percent in the 1990s, with cow dung. Another instance, this his ruling passions were the many petty
while in New York it fell 80 percent. one involving a version of the Last hatreds he had sedulously nursed over a
Homicides in the city of 2,000 murders Supper that depicted a nude female lifetime. Confronted with the challenge
a year went down by 90 percent and con- Black Christ, led Saturday Night Live’s of presenting the American people with
tinued, save for one year, to drop every Tina Fey to joke, as Giuliani: “This trash a vision of the future, he could do no bet-
year through that decade. All this was the is not the sort of thing that I want to ter than substitute values in a formula of
direct result of policies that Giuliani, in look at when I go to the museum with resentment that had hardened in him.
tandem with Bratton, an early student of my mistress.” “In the current production,” wrote Van-
“broken windows” policing, instituted. ity Fair’s Chris Smith in New York in 2007,
That these same policies later had terrible Two terms on, fatigue had set in. New “the part of David Dinkins is played by
excesses is another story. Yorkers had tired of what Evans described Hillary Clinton, rampant crime is played
as Giuliani’s Thatcher-like “difficulty in by Al Qaeda, and welfare cheats have been
“It is hard to overstate the degree to the calibration of his response to dissent.” replaced by illegal aliens.” Smith then
which the culture of the city changed Here he was at war with jaywalkers, there made a judgment about Giuliani that has
under his mayoralty,” writes Kirtzman. with New York magazine, which ran an ad all the force of prophecy today. “He’s sell-
“New Yorkers walking to work no lon- campaign describing itself as “possibly ing his strength C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 2 1
ger encountered men urinating on the the only good thing in New York Rudy
sidewalk. They no longer traveled in
graffiti-covered trains, in which homeless
men slept across the seats and peddlers
hawked ragged copies of Street News.
They didn’t fear for their safety as they
exited onto deserted streets. The parked

SEPTEMBER 2021 95

Rule of

96 VA N I T Y FA I R

Men

WHEN AUDIENCES FIRST SAW FIGHT CLUB, THEY

HAD NO IDEA THEY WERE GAZING INTO A CRYSTAL BALL
OF 21ST-CENTURY MASCULINITY

BY PHOTOGRAPHS BY
LILI ANOLIK MERRICK MORTON

SEPTEMBER 2021 97

Let’s break all the rules, or at rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re slowly
least rules one and two. Let’s talk learning that fact, and we’re very, very
about Fight Club. pissed off.” And what are the Space Mon-
keys, Tyler’s band of proto-fascist foot
The movie, released in 1999, is directed than great too. It’s prophetic. To watch it soldiers, but the original Proud Boys?
by David Fincher and based on a novel, in 2021 is to realize that you were gazing
published in 1996, by Chuck Palahniuk. It into a crystal ball when you saw it in 1999. MEN’S RIGHTS GROUPS
stars Brad Pitt and Edward Norton playing, The crystal ball checklist: As Tyler sees it, society has it in for men.
respectively, the id, named Tyler Durden, It’s the old schoolyard taunt, “Girls rule,
and the superego, named Jack (though that 9/11 boys drool,” except the whole country is
name is theoretical, as he’s never actually Fight Club ends where it begins: with the schoolyard. In his view, there’s no such
addressed by it), a man in the midst of an the destruction of those monuments to thing as toxic masculinity; or, rather, mas-
identity crisis; and Helena Bonham Carter, late-stage American capitalism, i.e., sky- culinity is only toxic when it’s bottled up,
playing Marla Singer, the woman in love scrapers, by a group of terrorists. Two allowed no release, which is why he started
with them/him. I could tell you what Fight years, almost to the day, after its premiere Fight Club. He believes that, for men, spiri-
Club is about, but that would be like impos- at the Venice Film Festival on Septem- tual salvation is achieved through physical
ing a plot on a dream. And in any case, I ber 10, 1999, the Twin Towers would be violence. And though not homosexual, au
don’t need to tell you, since Tyler Durden’s reduced to piles of smoldering rubble by contraire—Tyler’s a stud muffin supreme—
kiss—a soft press of lips followed by cool- a group of terrorists. he is homosocial. Women aren’t to be
ing saliva followed by burning lye—has trusted. Men are better off sticking with
been seared into our consciousness just THE ALT-RIGHT their own kind. (The sole maternal pres-
as it’s been seared into Jack’s flesh: You Like most movements, the alt-right ence in Fight Club is Bob, identified by his
already know it even if you haven’t seen it. attracts its followers by overtly appeal- “bitch tits,” a former bodybuilder whose
ing to their self-righteousness, covertly overuse of steroids has resulted in testicu-
Fight Club is a masterpiece, but a repel- appealing to their self-pity. The alt-right lar cancer and in whose bosomy embrace
lent one—visually gorgeous, spiritually talks tough, comes on with a swagger and Jack occasionally seeks solace.)
ugly—and brilliant, yet of severely limited a sneer. Really, though, it’s a cult of victim-
intelligence. Its politics are reactionary; its hood, one big boo-hoo number about how Men’s rights groups, many of which
attitudes toward women crude, Neander- hard it is to be white and male. Says Tyler have adopted Fight Club as their bible—
thal even. And at the time it came out, it was to his followers: “I see…the strongest and “Tyler Durden lives!” is a frequent post on
largely ignored by audiences, savaged by smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all their message boards—think Tyler’s
critics. The usually mild-mannered Roger this potential and I see squandering….an on the money.
Ebert declared it “macho porn.” Ebert’s entire generation pumping gas, waiting
right: It is. Though he’s wrong to see that as tables, slaves with white collars.… We’ve THE BREAKUP OF BRAD PITT AND
a flaw. No, the movie’s explicit misogyny all been raised on television to believe JENNIFER ANISTON
is a source of its unsettling and unsavory that one day we’d all be movie gods and Pitt and Aniston weren’t married, never
greatness. Fight Club is something more mind divorced, in 1999. Fight Club, though,
already knew the couple was doomed. “I
want to have your abortion,” a lovestruck—
or possibly cockstruck—Marla says to

98 VA N I T Y FA I R