Eco-hypocrisy is all the rage.
From Al Gore’s carbon-spewing mansion to John Travolta’s backyard air force, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do elites are putting dinosaur-sized carbon feet in their mouths. And so it is with the magazine that caters to them, Vanity Fair, whose self-titled “green issue” gives a finger-wagging lecture on living green — yet while it does so, its editors are too busy kissing up to luxury merchants to hug any trees.
In a hysterical eight-page spread, Vanity Fair editorial assistant Adam Spangler takes America to task for just about anything we can conceivably use or touch throughout the course of a normal day. He derides toilet paper use, nightstand lights, battery-powered toothbrushes, anti-perspirants, razors, showers, newspapers, non-organic milk, corn, coffee, sugar, automobiles and SUVs, fish, beef, computers, printers, bottled water, grocery bags, handbags, plasma TVs, excess square feet in our houses, and anything made of plastic, to name a few.
“You answer the cell phone, not realizing that the popularity of this device is helping kill some of the last wild gorillas on Earth,” says Spangler, before embarking on some six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-like explanation that finally links saying hi to mom to gunning down apes — with Kalashnikov rifles, no less.
“Done with your call, you go to the closet and slip on some wool trousers, which come courtesy of vast herds of sheep belching and farting methane,” warns Spangler, “A greenhouse gas that’s 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.”
How dare we wrap ourselves in such luxury?
A caption next to a staged picture of a slightly overweight, disheveled white guy pretending to take a bite out of a miniature mountain range reads: “Appetite for Destruction: An economy based on more and more consumption must eventually collide with the reality of Earth’s limited resources.”
“Americans are compulsive consumers,” says Spangler. “It is this affluence, and the unnecessary spending that it sucks you into, that is driving much of the destruction of the planet.”
Give Spangler credit for having nerve, because his meal ticket is contributing more than its fair share to this sucking.
The “green issue” is just over 300 pages of slick, glossy, un-recycled paper. But that’s not all. The magazine devotes almost half (149 and 1/3 pages to be precise) of its arboreous cadaver flesh to — you guessed it — ad space.
And these aren’t ads for common everyday necessities that average Joes might buy. These are ads aimed at hypnotizing readers into dropping cash on unessential luxuries such as designer clothing, handbags, sunglasses, jewelry, luxury SUVs, resort hotels, alcohol, cigarettes, and, just in case we can’t afford it all, credit cards.
Incredibly, Spangler even picks on The New York Times because its Sunday edition alone “eats up 62,860 trees.” He then preaches about paper consumption and the need to recycle. But how many trees had to die so Vanity Fair could seduce Americans to buy Cadillac Escalades, Louis Vuitton handbags and Prada sunglasses?
A phone call to a representative at Vanity Fair’s New York office revealed that the magazine is not printed on recycled paper because it’s “too expensive.” Guess 149-plus pages of ad space for the likes of Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Cartier doesn’t buy what it used to. Heck, it doesn’t even buy a token, and one would think obvious, gesture for the annual green issue.
Curiously, Spangler reserves the bulk of his wrath for everyday items that Joe and Jane Six-Pack use, as opposed to the high-dollar frivolities that fill out Vanity Fair’s pages. The implication here is that it is the “little people” who are blissfully unaware they are killing Mother Earth, and need a good talking to. As for the beautiful people who wouldn’t be caught dead in anything but Versace and Gucci, well, they can’t be expected to cramp their style.
It borders on silly to give such serious scrutiny to a tabloid attempting to plumb the depths of our social consciousness. Adam Spangler and his colleagues at Vanity Fair probably don’t give a moment’s worry that, if their philosophy is to be believed, their paychecks are stained with the blood of gorillas, endangered species and impoverished miners in the Third World.
But is it too much to ask that the people trying to shame us out of our cars and steakhouses not line their pockets with the unbridled avarice they claim is destroying the planet? And since the powers-that-be at Vanity Fair don’t buy the environmental line they’re selling, why should anyone else?
Peyton Knight is director of environmental and regulatory affairs for The National Center for Public Policy Research.
