It has been an intriguing seven days in that peculiar subsection of American society where politics and celebrity meet. First, John McCain got all up in Paris Hilton's grill, forcing the heiress to respond by unleashing the devastating comedic powers already
demonstrated in her blistering contribution to the genre of satirical cinema, The Hottie and the Nottie. Then Scarlett Johansson blasted the "extreme sexism" of the media for suggesting that there was something flirtatious about her recent claims that she was conducting a "personal" email dialogue with Barack Obama: clearly the email passed to Lost in Showbiz -- "OMG Barack u r 100% lush and AWESOME!!!!! Me and my m8s luv ur plans to simplify filing of income tax returns by pre-filling wage and bank information
already collected by the IRS ur wife is well lucky" -- was a fake.
But all that stuff is a mere bagatelle when compared with what's going on in the current
issue of Harper's Bazaar magazine. There, former supermodel Tyra Banks has posed for a lengthy pictorial as would-be First Lady Michelle Obama, complete with mocked-up Oval Office set, and looky-likeys of Barack and the Obama children.
Anyone understandably baffled by this turn of events is directed to the accompanying
article. It appears beneath the ineffably menacing strapline "from the runway to the catwalk, EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE for Tyra Banks", which somehow gives the pictures the feel not of a homage, but of the photographs police find when raiding a stalker's bedsit, from which the accused has cut out their victim's spouse and crudely Pritt-sticked in a picture of themselves. The sense that you are witness to something slightly sinister is not a notion the text does much to disabuse you of, not least because it keeps carrying on as if Banks is actually angling for the job of First Lady: "Ms Banks would bring some fierce grace to the White House. But she would be ever of
the people."
But lest anyone infer a certain creepiness about the proceedings, Banks is quick to set the record straight by lauding Obama -- "one hot mama" -- and carefully detailing her most important qualities: "She's not a ha ha ha type . . . I like that she's tall."
With the world's fears that the White House might soon be home to a diminutive ha ha ha type thus allayed, the article moves on to the more important topic of Banks' qualities. Her chatshow is apparently a kind of televisual answer to the Samaritans, dissuading would-be jumpers from the ledge or the gin bottle and the fistful of sleeping pills. "I had a woman come up to me when I was seeing Rent once. She told me she was going to commit suicide until she saw [Banks'] show. I held her hand and cried with her in the aisle." The pressing question of how many of their fellow patrons found their enjoyment of the musical irrevocably marred by a former supermodel and a complete stranger drowning out the quieter passages with their sobbing goes unasked, perhaps because this kind of thing seems to be an everyday occurrence: "I get that kind of stuff; it doesn't stop."
But whatever you think of Banks by the time you've finished the article -- and it seems likely you'll think she's a bit crackers -- you have to say that it and the accompanying photos cast a harsh light on British political reporting, with its grey comment pieces and sketches and leaders. Should you doubt such reasoning, consider this.
How much more appealing would the current foreign secretary seem as a prospective PM if he'd posed his threat to Gordon Brown's leadership not with a lengthy article calling for a commitment to a bolder policy agenda, but by inveigling a top homegrown model -- let's say Lucy Pinder, sometime Nuts magazine columnist and owner, according to the Daily Star, of "the best natural pair in Britain" -- to (a) pose for a series of photographs in a mock-up of No 10 with a David Miliband lookalike and (b) give an accompanying interview personally vouching that Mrs Miliband is not a ha ha ha type?
The case rests.
