Thursdays with Tina: This Column Took Me About 15 Minutes Edition
Wonkette's weekly service to our readers: Translating Tina Brown's Thursday column in the Washington Post. We understand it so that you don't have to.
Tina saysTina meansOne of Ronald Reagan's unsung achievements is that he saved Vanity Fair.I am completely high.By March 1985, I had been editor in chief for a year, but [it]. . . was still in the throes of a severe identity crisis. . . Hoping for a deus ex machina, we got a president ex machina.The world revolves around me.At 6 p.m. March 20, 1985, I showed up at the White House with Harry Benson, the excitable Scottish photographer with toilet-brush hair who talks so much and works so fast he has managed to get six presidents to give up human moments of syndication gold for his camera.Elaborate but nonsensical metaphors will help stretch out this slim anecdote to fill an entire column."I love this song, honey," she said. "Let's dance." Her co-star replied with a line that might have been written for any number of vintage B movies: "We can't keep the president of Argentina waiting, Nancy."It surprises even me how easily I am impressed by celebrity.The Reagans' moment of gaiety on the cover was a kiss of life for Vanity Fair. Coming when America was emerging from a long recession, the dancing presidential couple seemed to epitomize the buoyancy of American expectation. Reagan's theatricality always resonated that way. It was an instinctive collusion between imagery and national mood.I would make an excellent minister of propaganda.
The strangest thing in this week of all-Reagan-all-the-time has been to hear New York liberals who were so devastating about him in office telling just as many sentimental stories about him as Republicans.My ability to somewhat convincingly pretend to transcribe the thoughts of "New York liberals" is the only thing keeping this column alive.. . . a narcotized benevolence comes down like a curtain.Have you met my husband?I suspect A-list stars such as Fonda, Tracy or Bogart who didn't get to be president would have been less effective than Reagan. They might have been tempted to be more interior, more complex, more averse to the visual cliche.Remember what I said about being a good minister of propaganda?Reagan was never afraid of the obvious. And he loved happy endings. In our Age of Anxiety, those are the endings we long for.Give me my pills.