Vanity Fair and Key

Who can be surprised that the NY Times has launched one of those Sunday magazine supplements about real estate (for as long as I can remember there was the fashion one, then it was joined by the home one and the travel one, and more recently the sports one, which I have never even cracked open, though I do keep the others in the bathroom for weeks, until I find myself flipping them open to articles and blurbs I have already read)? I can't seem to find a link on the website, but it is called Key and as soon as you open it (hard copy--aha, this may be the reason it can't be found on the website, because you couldn't appreciate the ads in quite the same way) it is quite obvious that the purpose of this new supplement is to provide even more space for those advertisements for luxury apartment buildings that have recently been clogging the front pages of the regular magazine. You know, those advertisements that make you wonder who on earth lives in such buildings, like the one designed by Ian Schrager, or the ones for really rich people with kids (who apparently have different household needs than ordinary people with kids--I would settle for one more bathroom). There are also articles about things like teeny-tiny houses and cohousing which, you know, have never before been covered by the mainstream media, not ever (that is the sound of sarcasm), but you have to have some kind of copy to hold together the advertisements.

At any rate, one cannot be surprised, but if one has been plodding through the September Vanity Fair and has just read Michael Wolff's piece on how the Times has lost its path and is trying to be a national luxury newspaper, a dubious goal at best, one is nodding sagely at this latest piece of evidence thereto. Of course, for Vanity Fair to chide the Times on such a count is a bit pot/kettle/black, given that the line between editorial and advertisement in Vanity Fair seems to get thinner with every issue, and while exposes on Iraq and Gaza are all very good, it's hard to take them seriously when they are surrounded by girl-on-girl high-fashion action and an apparently infinite number of Kate Moss product promotions.

And while we're talking about the NY Times, real estate, and luxury goods (which is the implicit subject of the end of the previous paragraph), I'll just take a moment to offer a contained version of last Friday night's rant upon reading Judith Warner's latest blog post, alas available only to those with Times Select and I am too lazy to fiddle with programming below the cut so I can cut and paste the whole thing (one point of this blog is ease and lack of anxiety). Anyway, Warner talks about the month she just spent in Normandy and what a great break it was and I think that's just super for her.

Because, you know, some people are privileged and that's fine. I really do think it is. What's not so fine is denying privilege, like those people I went to college with who dressed in ratty sweaters and always nitpicked over the bar bill and then you went home with them for the weekend and discovered they lived in mansions. So this paragraph just made me explode:

It sounds grand, doesn’t it; vacationing for a month, every summer, in France? But picture this: our house in Normandy – a thatched-roof, half-timbered chaumière that we bought when we lived in Paris – sits on a field that is flooded nine months of the year. In its entirety, it is the size of most people’s bathrooms in Bethesda. Speaking of bathrooms – it has just one, with pencil marks on the walls where the light fixtures I bought five years ago ought to be. And the guest room is accessible only by an outdoor stair, unless you’re a mouse or a spider, in which case you can come right in through the charmingly exposed bricks behind the bed.

Judith, repeat after me: I have a house in Normandy. I get to spend a month there every summer. That is a very nice thing, I am very lucky, and I appreciate it. In fact, I wish everyone could have this opportunity that I am so lucky to have.

That's all you need to say, really. And then people might not hate you so much. Until you say that some of your best friends are black.