He has been hailed as the King Of New York. With his charming manners and ability to make or break celebrities, Graydon Carter is to the magazine world what Jay Leno is to the American talk show — powerbroker to the formerly, currently and would-be famous.
Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, was portrayed by some as a lightweight when he took over from Tina Brown almost a decade ago. He once worked as a telegraph man in Saskatchewan before powering his way through American journalism and going on to become a celebrity in his own right. Now, however, he is no longer content with damning the reputation of Hollywood’s finest: Carter has emerged as the cheerleader of a movement to change the face of America by having George Bush thrown out as president.
Famous throughout America for his A-list Oscar parties, Carter has picked up the challenge of leading America’s intellectual liberal luminaries in a battle against Bush when the race for next November’s election gets seriously under way with the primaries after Christmas.
An influential institution at the grand Condé Nast monthly that, from its huge building on a corner of New York’s Times Square, rules on what is hot in A-list celebrity culture and style, Carter has turned his normally innocuous monthly Editor’s Letter into a campaign for ‘regime change’.
His January 2004 letter will blast Bush’s ‘wrongheaded’ state visit to Britain, ridicule Tony Blair as having a schoolboy’s crush on the President and slam ‘deceptions’ in the run-up to a war in Iraq that is ‘out of control’.
In previous columns he has accused Bush of lying over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and shaming the country by allowing members of the Saudi royal family to fly out of the US without questioning two days after the 11 September terrorist attacks. He has slammed healthcare gaps, security, the burgeoning deficit, tax cuts for the rich, the US reputation abroad and corruption.
This has proved surprising given his magazine’s even-handed coverage of the war on Iraq, compared with the supine, pro-Bush stance of much of the American press.
Denouncing Bush has made his Editor’s Letter one of the best-read parts of the magazine, with advertisers clamouring to pay top rates for the page opposite the column.
Carter is now turning to Hillary Clinton as America’s saviour. He believes she is the only Democrat with the ‘X’ factor – charisma, toughness and a certain je ne sais quoi that makes her a natural leader.
This weekend it emerged that he is also writing an anti-Bush book and, he told The Observer, has been campaigning behind the scenes to get Hillary to run for president ‘right now’.
‘I feel like a lone voice in the wilderness. But there is a large, seething majority out there against what Bush is doing to this country. This administration is as fundamentalist as the Islamics,’ Carter said.
His book, What We Have Lost, which will examine the failings of Bush in office, is to be published late next summer as the election campaign approaches its climax.
‘It is about the fragile state of US democracy, looking at what this administration has done to the environment, the judiciary and civil liberties. This is a very dangerous time in America,’ he said.
He promised it will not be ‘hysterical’ or a rant, but fact-based – researched by him and a small team and written himself: ‘It is different from the other books out there. I am not a liberal ideologue; I am very much a libertarian. I never got invited to the Clinton White House.
‘If Hillary announced right now that she was running for President she could beat Bush. She is no less qualified than he was when he got it and has been a good Senator.’
Carter moved to the US from Canada 25 years ago. He admires his birth country’s progress on legalising soft drugs, passing gay marriage rights and opposition to the war in Iraq.
Last week a Hollywood bash for the cream of wealthy intellectual society figures in Beverly Hills was starkly themed as a ‘Hate Bush’ evening. Liberals are fighting back after years of flinching at the constant, populist right-wing vilification of Bill Clinton and ruing his self-destruction over Monica Lewinsky.
Some commentators now believe Bush’s new status as hate figure surpasses even the intense loathing by the Left of Richard Nixon. Anti-Bush books feature heavily on the New York Times best-sellers list, such as Michael Moore’s Dude, Where’s My Country?, Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and Bushwacked by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose.
George Soros, the billionaire financier, recently gave about R100-million to a liberal group because, he said, removing Bush had become ‘the central focus of my life’.
Meanwhile, 90% of party Republicans support Bush, despite Carter identifying signs of the start of a moderate Republican backlash. And Bush’s national approval rating went back above 60% from less than 50% after he swaggered about for the cameras in Baghdad with a decorative Thanksgiving turkey that wasn’t even eaten.
Time magazine has dubbed Bush the Great Polariser — love him or hate him. Joe Conason, author of Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth, said: ‘In terms of level of vitriol, left-wing rhetoric is every bit as strong now as it has been from the Right.’
And liberal forces are striving to launch a radio network next year after a broadcasting company, Progress Media, bought radio stations in New York, Los Angeles and several other cities. Franken is likely to host a show, taking a stand against the massed ranks of right-wing ‘shock jock’ radio talk-show hosts.
Carter has been mocked by some for using frivolous, glossy Vanity Fair as his platform. Yet he is determined to drag the liberal masses out of their meekness to keep Bush from a second term: ‘Everything I love about America is fragile. I used to be an angry young man, but I suppose I got complacent. Now strangers stop me in the street to talk about Bush.’ – Guardian Unlimited Â