Miley Cyrus is the new quarterback for the Giants? Don’t rule it out. She’s everywhere else. And, goodness knows, Eli Manning could use the relief.
You’ve got to hand it to InTouch Editor-In-Chief Dan Wakeford: No one can do more with so little. Take this week’s effort to sell some glossy paper off the antics of Miley Cyrus. “Look out, Kim!” the Bauer celeb title screams on its cover blurb. It seems Kim Kardashian is “so embarrassed” with hubby Kanye West’s “creepy obsession” with Cyrus. So, did Kanye go out on a date with Cyrus, “sext” her an inappropriate photo or canoodle with the pop tart? No, he simply sent her a text after seeing an August rehearsal of her twerky VMA performance. That’s it? Yep. Readers have to know, by now, that Wakeford is slinging overheated slop. Maybe that’s why circulation of the Bauer title is fast heading south.
When it comes to red hot pop stars there is no one more aglow than Cyrus — what with her VMA twerk-a-thon, her nude photo for her “Wrecking Ball” CD, her HBO docudrama and Saturday’s night’s SNL hosting gig. And when it comes to exploiting such a phenomena, this week’s OK! magazine hits it out of the park. Ryan Pienciak, editor of the American Media title, not only gives readers plenty of Cyrus to chew over, but pumps up a feud with hot-as-her-fake-blonde roots Taylor Swift. Pinch me, this is too good to be true. The two songbirds are fighting over a guy? Do tell. It involves a Jonas brother? Cancel my lunch please — and tell me everything you know. OK! even offers up two side dishes: a tale-of-the-tape comparing Cyrus and Taylor and a look at which celebs are in their respective corners. This is so good I don’t even care if it’s true.
Read between the lines of Rolling Stone’s feature on Cyrus and you’d think the tongue-flicking, twerky pop star is on the fast track to self-destruction. No surprise there. Most readers might already expect to discover that the 20-year-old daughter of former country one-hit wonder Billy Ray Cyrus is an unbridled wild child. But Cyrus in RS is an unfurling tragic-comedy — as she comes off as a desperate star struggling to carve out her own identity. Right now it’s pure comedy. Meanwhile, the mag gives Lorde, a 16-year-old New Zealand anti-Miley, short shrift in an item that spans three paragraphs. Lorde eschews Miley’s signature blinginess. Elsewhere, the music glossy delivers a well-done essay pointing out that gay teens still face expulsion at certain Christian schools in the US for coming out.
We were somewhat surprised to see Cyrus and her tattoos on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. Yes, like everything else in America, the magazine must be looking for a younger audience. But it’s more likely that horrified mothers of similarly aged young women are its readers. No doubt they’ll shake their heads at Cyrus, who comes across as exceedingly vapid. Like everyone else in Harper’s Bazaar, she looks elegant; a black cocktail dress and red lipstick will do that. But to date, the only thing sensational about Miley (shortened for “Smiley,” her childhood nickname) is her ability to shake her behind.
“Are the techies the new hippies?” The New Yorker asks on its front cover flap. This could actually be a smart question, if one recognizes that a key activity of both groups is clandestine money-grubbing. Instead, we get a wide-eyed, gushing story about “inventive youth cultures” in San Francisco that appears to be entirely impressed by kids who are focused mainly on minting money and going on meditation retreats. Equally idiotic is a story about the guy who writes the air-headed lyrics for songs by Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry. “Words are chiefly there to serve the melody,” says Lukasz Gottwald, a.k.a. Dr. Luke. “It’s very mathematical.” So is the word “ka-ching.”
A few years back, Joaquin Phoenix upended Williamsburg’s male fashion scene with his sleepy beard-and-shades look, looking like an undead Jim Morrison. Now, he’s on the cover of New York looking like a cross between Richard III and a Tennessee child molester. Bravo. Inside, there’s a spirited interview with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in which he says, “I have friends that I know, or very much suspect, are homosexual.” We believe him, but elsewhere he asserts that in Biblical times the Devil was more conspicuous in the world, doing things like “making pigs run off cliffs.” We would note that, as Bertrand Russell once did with rather high-toned chagrin, it was Jesus who threw those demons into the poor little piggies.
Time does its best to stick the blame for the government shutdown with the Republicans, which is somewhat fair. But as it reports on the troubled start for Obamacare, it’s reporting a slew of easy-to-predict problems that the magazine did little to prepare readers for in recent months. “Those most likely to benefit from Obamacare’s new insurance exchanges know the least about them,” the mag tells us. Our diagnosis: a chronic case of 20/20 hindsight that’s sure to get worse in the coming months. Far more compelling is the piece on NASCAR’s decline, which has fallen victim to, among other things, safer cars that don’t crash as often.