Dumbidity: In Which: schmed Fisks a Velvet Hammer

I chanced across this today. It wasn't labeled as an editorial or opinion piece, but it's very subtly constructed to lead an uninformed reader to a negative conclusion about the President and Mrs. Bush's daughters. Partisan Dembots™ will feed on it as further evidence in their anti-Bush crusade.

However you might describe the cant of the article, I found it typical of how most of the media handles any positive stories on Bush. But in this case, I'll just take a couple rolls of pennies and boldly insert my two cents...

Bush Twins Enter Spotlight
Profile shows pretty smiles, not personalities, of president's daughters
[The obvious implication is that they’re hiding something we should know about and sets a pervasive and appallingly sexist tone.]

By Robin Givhan
Updated: 3:28 a.m. ET July 14, 2004

The president's daughters have emerged from their media-free zone of comfort into the flattering spotlight of Vogue. [By flattering, Givhan implies it’s undeserved.]

The August issue of the fashion magazine includes an interview with the recent college graduates as well as two portraits by photographer Patrick Demarchelier. [...as well as NO pictures by four other very edgy photographers Givhan feels compelled to mention later.] The opening picture features the two young women in strapless ball gowns. Jenna's ruby red dress is by Oscar de la Renta, a designer favored by her mother. Barbara is wearing a similar ivory gown by Calvin Klein. [Unlike the Kerreddie children, they have access to exclusive designer clothes.] They are accessorized with an array of borrowed diamonds. […a fact that must be killing Givhan, perhaps added by her editor.] The dresses are classic designs -- styles that a designer would keep on hand in the showroom but wouldn't bother to put on the runway. [Here Givhan cuts with both edges of the sword – they’re wearing big-name designers like elites but have such plebian tastes they select second-rate stuff. She just tosses that off so easily, too.]

Public debut
The 22-year-old twins look like debutantes, minor royals, or that particular New York species of well-groomed, pedigreed and socially connected woman known as the "Bright Young Thing." [I did mention Givhan’s condescending, appallingly sexist tone, right?] For much of the time their father has been in the White House, they were kept under wraps. [Yes, going against the long tradition of media-played First Chids like Chelsea, Amuh Carter, Tricia, Caroline and John-John, Jenna and Barbara were chained in the basement.] Occasionally they emerged from their protected world to be snapped attending a fashion show or traveling with their mother. [She doesn’t mean protected-by-Secret Service either.] The only significant ink on them has been on police reports detailing their ill-advised underage drinking. [OK, so maybe they broke out of the basement on occasion to engage in well-documented, wildly aberrant behavior.]

This public debut is occasioned by their having graduated from college and deciding to campaign for their father during this election year. [A total shock to all concerned.] "The decision was completely up to Jenna and Barbara. They made the decision in late winter, early spring after thinking about it for some time," says Gordon Johndroe, the first lady's press secretary. "They thought this would be a nice interview to start with."

Barbara made her campaign debut yesterday, accompanying her father on a trip to Michigan and Minnesota. Jenna's first foray was on Friday. [The fledgling’s first foray on Friday? Freaky!] So far, they have been quiet cheerleaders [...sis-boom-BAH! There's that subltle-yet-appalling stereotyping again.] and are unsure of how they might ultimately be dispatched. [Make sure they seem unsure, but ultimately they’re gonna be dispatched. What a utilitarian word – messengers and minions are dispatched, as are the unfortunate hostages of jihad.] But in Vogue, Jenna makes clear that they are not interested in political process and are doing this for love of Dad. [I’ll bet her exact words were “Let me be perfectly clear, I am not a political process.”]

Both the president and first lady have seen the story and the accompanying photographs and "they like it," Johndroe says. "They think their daughters look great and it's a nice article." [Another, albeit legitimate toss-off – but the stinger’s coming...]

What's not to like? [Cute, eh? Tell the MSNBC audience they can’t dislike these young ladies.] The story notes that the daughters' post-graduation plans include Jenna's desire to work for a charter school and Barbara's interest in working with AIDS-afflicted children in Eastern Europe and Africa. […and they’re wasting time campaigning for Daddy while disadvantaged students and suffering AIDS victims wait for help? How selfishly Republican of them!] Both girls have surrounded themselves with a group of good friends who say such nice things about them that readers might be led to believe these young women have never burped publicly, let alone had a grumpy day. [Just like the way the liberal media surrounds the Dembots™, but they make it look cheap and tawdry. I’ll bet Givhan never spent any formative years in the South and therefore easily mistakes southern manners for insincere flattery.]

Glossy portrait [Valid point – pictures in magazines are so glossy that it’s often difficult to keep the glare off them. These high-tone mags ought to develop a glare-resistant finish.]
The story's headline promises that the daughters are about to "give the country a glimpse of who they really are by joining their father on the campaign trail." But [And a pair of recently released memoirs by the authors Clinton were supposed to give the country a glimpse of what really happened during the Scratch-n-Sniff Administration] those who spend any time on such trails argue that the goal is not to reveal one's real self but a perfectly polished and eloquently scripted facsimile. [Except of course for the pair on the unmentioned Dembotic™ ticket who will provide a fresh, unvarnished view of every reconsidered, poll-calibrated, restated nuance of their deeply-held core values.]

The same can be said about making your debut in Vogue. This is not the kind of magazine that traffics in humanizing reality -- one that finds reassurance in warts, foibles and missteps. [Yes, apparently the First Twins constantly misstep on their warts and land on their foibles all the time, except in the media.]

[Pay careful attention to how this is constructed to look like an attempt at evening out the anti-Bush slant…]
The people who appear in Vogue never look like their true selves [The opening slam includes all people.] -- they look better. They become their own fantasy. [The First Twins are a Fairy Tale (not that there’s anything wrong with that).] The magazine put Oprah Winfrey on its cover in October 1998 and the media mogul admitted that at long last she was convinced of her own beauty. [And like Narcissus, continued to gaze at her image - until her stomach growled.] When Hillary Clinton [Queue “Wicked Witch of the West” theme…] appeared on the cover in December of that year, during the impeachment proceedings, […brought to you by the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy] her spirit got such a boost that she thanked the magazine's editor in her autobiography. [The role of Vogue magazine in the movie version of “Lying Herstory” will be played by Michael Moore.] When Marion Jones appeared in 2001, the photographs not only reiterated the sex appeal [Thank the Lord for small favors – that these words weren’t placed next to the name of “She-Who-Demands-Obeisance”.] of the athletic female physique but also pronounced it fashionable in the most rarefied worlds. [In case you missed it, Vogue circulates only in the Rarefied World.] And when Vogue shot Sean "P. Diddy" Combs at the haute couture shows in Paris in 1999, [Wasn't Puff-Diddit the one who got in trouble for shooting?] the spread helped legitimize Combs to the fashion establishment as an ebony-skinned Cary Grant and pronounced young minority millionaires among the logical heirs to couture. [So you see, the First Twins have imposed themselves undeservedly and unwelcomed on the flattery organ of the Left.]

In Vogue, there are no pimples. [Unlike HDTV, which broadcasts every blotch and blemish, and, if the victim resorts to old-fashioned pancake makeup, every layer and crack. So don’t look for many events in the Dembotic™ campaign to utilize that new technology. Oh - that Algore invented.] Everyone glows. People are more elegantly groomed and styled than they will ever be again. [I think she’s implying that the First Twins are fake, the visual form of LYING.] In the instant that their photograph is taken -- when the stylists, the makeup artist, the hairdresser, the lighting person, the assistants have all stepped out of the frame -- there is perfection. Not stilted or stodgy, but an unreal perfection nonetheless. [Those evil twinsisters are unreal-ly perfect and don’t have monster honkers like Cinderkerry and it just isn’t fair.]

Demarchelier is known for a style that is natural but beautiful. [Meaning natural isn’t always beautiful or is Givhan contradicting herself?] He photographed Laura Bush for Harper's Bazaar in 2001. He is not a trickster in the manner of David LaChapelle, whose photographs are filled with saturated color, his subjects transformed into caricatures. [And who DIDN’T take the pictures but is helpfully presented to subliminally inject the word “trickster” like “you’re thirsty” flashed in a 50’s movie theatre.] Demarchelier does not offer the cinema verite quality of Ellen von Unwerth, [Someone else not taking the pictures] whose subjects often seem to have been captured unaware in a melancholy reverie. And he does not engage in the homoeroticism of Bruce Weber [Exactly how is this and the next reference the least bit appropriate? Hmmm?] or the sexual provocation [More subliminal slander – should they be nude? Should they grace the pages of Larrie Flent’s crapulent Hussler?!?!] of the late Helmut Newton, whose vision of this shoot might have employed leg braces, whips and a donkey. [Ms. Givhan, do you cry at night because portraits are not being taken of respectable people in leg braces whipping donkeys? What a sad day it must have been for you on January 20, 2001.]

Life story in photographs
Instead, the photographs that Vogue offers are coolly beautiful, aloof and controlled. [Get it? The aloof First Twins are controlled – back to being under wraps in the basement again.] The opening portrait, shot in Manhattan at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute with the two women dressed in their classic ball gowns, could easily hang alongside those of their mother as first lady. Barbara's conservative Calvin Klein gown is particularly striking. She has a well-documented interest in fashion, attending shows by her friend the designer Zac Posen and interning in the Proenza Schouler showroom in New York, but this dress hardly suggests an adventurous spirit. [See earlier comment of this left-handed attempted compliment.]

In fact, the young women are not particularly interested in such gala gowns and their accouterments. [These women are just faking it – lying is clearly in their genes.] "They've always shied away from the pampered, debutante image," says Julia Reed, author of the accompanying story. She describes herself as an "acquaintance of the family" and has spent significant time writing about it.

The clothes transform the daughters into archetypes; they do not reflect the personality of the wearers. Their debut has all of the intimacy of a state dinner receiving line. [A type of event, by the way, at which adult First Daughters must be prepared to attend.]

But the portrait does offer this: They are ready to play a new role. In the picture's formality and control, it reflects their emergence as public, political daughters. [Zinging again with those utilitarian, subtle negatives – formal, control, political. None of that in the Kerreddie campaign – nosiree-bob! (oh, sorry about the nose-bob dig, Alexandra.)]

In their life story as told in public photographs, they've gone from indiscreet college [just a couple of syllables off of “indiscriminate” ] students to Stepford daughters. [They are mindless pawns of their father, isn’t it obvious?] One longs for photographs that tell of the intellectual curiosity that took them abroad or of the "natural effervescence" that Reed found so compelling.

The second photograph has the twins dressed in more casual attire. Barbara wears an Alberta Ferretti camisole and Max Mara skirt. Jenna is in a Moschino top, Tommy Hilfiger jacket and trousers from Joe's Jeans. [It speaks volumes that there are names associated with casual wear – who would/should know or care?] The twins wear Italian and American labels but no French. [This could be a coincidence, but assuming it isn’t – doesn’t that demonstrate loyalty? At any age it’s a little difficult to not take it personally at some level when a duplicitous, self-serving bag of overripe camembert like Jaques ChIraq repeatedly insults your father – and by extension your Nation – publicly.]) They are walking toward the camera, perfect teeth lighting up their pretty faces. [<= appallingly sexist stereotypes being reinforced hither and yon =>] Here they play the roles of chic girls about town. The setting is Schiller's Liquor Bar, [Y’know, liquor – like what they drank while under age in those NY Times articles?] one of those downtown New York restaurants where town cars idle out front and the menu is voyeuristically working class, with a wine list that is cheap, decent and good.

They wear another kind of uniform, […brown shirt, jack boots, and a riding crop for that donkey that isn’t present] one that speaks of youth, hipness and moneyed polish. The clothes tease the viewer, offering the faintest whiff of the twins' personalities. Is Jenna in jeans and jacket because she is more casual? More urbane? One wishes that the caption said something like: Jeans, model's own. The restaurant is empty. It was closed for the shoot. [Imagine the herd of cattle their Secret Service Agents would be having if this Manhattan mudhole was filled with those native liberals who’re wishing that that imported Jordanian Terrorista would exterminate the illegitimate Coalition Forces in Iraq.] There's none of the liveliness that makes it such an enticing place. No "cheap" or "decent" wine on the tables. It's just a tidy backdrop for two perfect smiles. [Givhan finishes with one final, callow slap.]

-30-

If anyone sees an article by Ms. Givhan on the Kerreddie childbots, please let me know. Any MSNBC article on that topic would be of interest to me also.