Leftover Glamour

EXCEPT PERHAPS FOR ACADEMIA, the publishing and entertainment industries are the most left-leaning portions of American culture–as well as the most cheerfully insular and relentlessly smug. And among them sit the women Myrna Blyth calls the “Spin Sisters”: an axis of kvetching, pouring tales of woe, victimhood, and the nefarious nature of Republicans into the small, shell-like ears of American women.

From television divas like Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, and Barbara Walters, to Vogue‘s Anna Wintour and the other editors of the glossy fashion and food magazines, to the women who produce, write, and star in the four-Kleenex weepies in the movie theaters, they form a friendly circle. The television hostesses celebrate the actresses, while the magazine editors interview the hostesses, and all of them join in a choir to extol as feminine models such people as Hillary Clinton and Anita Hill. Now and then they are forced by circumstance to spotlight some other figures–Elizabeth Dole, Condoleezza Rice, or Lynne Cheney–but it always appears that their hearts are not in it. Somehow or other, they are never named Woman of the Year and never make the list of Women We Love. They are instead Women We Can’t Figure Out, women who, despite all their advantages, insist on backing wrong causes.

Myrna Blyth spent thirty years in the sisterhood of the women’s magazines, rising to become editor of Ladies’ Home Journal. But now, with the publication of her book Spin Sisters, she has become a Benedict Arnold in skirts. Polls show that only about 2l percent of the American public calls itself liberal (as opposed to 43 percent that thinks itself moderate and 33 percent that tilts to the right). In the world of the feminized media, it is more like 99.9 percent. In this world, there is only one kind of political woman, and only one way for a woman to think.

So, for instance, as Blyth points out, the women’s magazines all put on their good-government hats during the 2000 election and urged women to get out and vote for their candidates. But they made it clear only one kind of vote was wanted, and that wasn’t one for Bush. Marie Claire’s get-out-the-vote piece was written by Miramax czar Harvey Weinstein, a fundraiser and friend to the Clintons, who urged a vote for Vice President Gore. Cosmopolitan’s was by Christie Brinkley, the ex-model and delegate to the Democratic convention. Glamour, perhaps the most egregious, beat the drums for Gore all through the autumn, coming out in September with a dire warning that abortion rights were at stake and quoting Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued the Roe v. Wade case, as urging a vote for the Democrats.

Indeed, Glamour “ran a blockbuster combination of anti-Bush features,” Blyth writes. It made a special pet of Karenna Gore Schiff, Gore’s good- looking but tiresome daughter, and ran a picture of Gore and his daughter together under the statement: “A vote for Gore is a vote for you.” After the election, it turned to Karenna again, for advice on “How to Make George W.’s Term a Lot Less Scary.” (The answer was that women should donate money to left-leaning and feminist lobbies.)

Of course, women’s magazines are always promoting involvement by readers, suggesting organizations and running petitions and websites. But somehow, Blyth notes, those are never on the pro-life or the right-leaning sides. None of this would be objectionable if run in the Nation or the New Republic; printing opinions is what these magazines do. But, in fact, the New Republic publishes much more dissent than Glamour does, though the women’s magazine presumably speaks to a more diverse audience.

For example, polls show that majorities of white women and married women (presumably the bulk of the magazine’s audience) supported the Contract With America and the Republican Congress that came in the 1994 midterm elections. The Spin Sisters, by contrast, went into a spasm: “Listening to the wailing and keening, . . . you’d have thought Lucifer himself had been elected,” Blyth says. She recalls a trip to Washington with three other editors, made at the behest of Hillary Clinton, at which they ‘proceeded to trash Newt Gingrich and his vote-winning Contract . . . agreeing it was just a dumb PR stunt to lure gullible voters, . . . especially enraged that the Contract endorsed prayer in schools.” (They were stunned when their cab driver said he agreed with it, and they concluded the fool had been duped.)

But this is a good example of the respect with which they view a large part of the national public. “We have trouble with religious hicks,” an unnamed television producer told Blyth. “We have problems with using hicks. Unless it’s after a tornado in a trailer park, and she’s crying about the Tupperware blowing away.” This attitude informs the content of the morning and magazine television programs, on which Katie, Diane, Barbara, and others express themselves not quite as brashly as Glamour, but to much the same end. “Katie does not so much state her views as imply them, with a look, a gesture, or asking tough questions to some, usually conservatives and even moderate Republicans, and tossing softballs to others. . . . Katie makes her likes and dislikes very obvious even if you are watching with only one eye.”

INSULATED BY ONE ANOTHER from the world outside and the lives of at least some of their readers, the Spin Sisters live in a state of self-congratulation, in which they endlessly cycle awards. The Matrix Award, for female achievement in media, sponsored by the networks, advertisers, and magazine companies, is a “sold-out spring event at the Waldorf-Astoria.” Winners are permitted to pick their presenters, and the pairings tell everything: “During the past few years, Hillary gave Katie Couric her award. Barbara Walters gave Kati Marton, wife of Clintonista Richard Holbrooke, her award. Longtime feminist activist Marlo Thomas handed the prize to Carole Black of Lifetime” (the cable channel that runs endless movies of victimized women).

Meanwhile, Robert Redford gave an award to his publicist. Mary Landrieu gave an award to a woman who helped elect Democrats to the Senate. C.J. Cregg, the fictional press secretary on television’s West Wing, got a Matrix in one of the show’s scripts. Walter Cronkite gave one to Helen Thomas, who thrilled the audience by launching into a Bush-bashing tirade. Though Blyth herself says that she once got a Matrix, back in the days before it got quite so posh (and before she herself was an open conservative), there has been a shut-out since then of women who aren’t manifestly liberals.

Apparently conservatives never achieve quite enough, or quite the right sort of achievement, in a round-robin world in which hosts, writers, actors, and activists endlessly interview themselves and one another, plug their movies, campaigns, causes, and programs, and reinforce their own view of society: a world where women are victims, men are the enemy, a government program is the favored solution, and the greatest enemy is the repressive right wing.

This is the view of Spin Sister Gail Collins, a long time contributor to feminist glossies, whose most recent book concerned gossip and scandal, and who now runs the editorial pages of the New York Times. Anita Hill and Hillary Clinton are their main heroines, as their stories have everything: ambition, sex, suffering, and persecution by nasty conservatives. Hillary Clinton–she gives it all up for a lout who betrays her, and still becomes senator!–is the greatest Lifetime movie of all time.

Blyth doesn’t object to these people having opinions or even expressing them. She objects to dishing out these opinions in venues that address a general audience under the pretense of being objective, where differing views are seldom permitted or even acknowledged as real. She invokes the chasm that exists between these media stars and their audience, who on numerous subjects are far more Republican, far more religious, and far more pro-life. In fact, in the period in which the spin sisters (and brothers) have been most aggressive–say, 1980, up to the present–conservatives have been making gains.

This state of affairs suggests two different analyses: the first, that there is potentially a much greater store of conservative sentiment that is now undermined by this kind of press bias; and the second, that the “opinion-leaders” are not very good at leading opinion, and that their power is less than is feared. From the 1930s to the early 1960s, Hollywood, radio, and other parts of the media reflected the social and political mood of the country. But since then the media have been turning against it. As a result, some people have tuned out parts of the media (the networks seem to be losing millions of viewers). Others still read and watch, but no longer believe it (press credibility also has suffered). And yet others watch and read, but simply ignore the political message, having factored the biases in.

After all its heavy lifting on behalf of Al Gore and his daughter for many months before the 2000 elections, Glamour took a poll and found that its readers evenly split for Al Gore and George Bush, correctly reflecting the split in the country. Perhaps Glamour‘s readers–all younger women–were really in the beginning in favor of Bush, and had their minds realigned by the magazine’s hysterics. More likely, the sisters were spinning their wheels.

Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.