The Bluestocking, vol 288

as if he’d been kicked by a small and angry pony

Happy Friday!

I hope you enjoyed last week’s Keir Starmer special; this week we return to our regular digest email.

Helen

PS. In this week’s Private Eye podcast, I reflect on whether I was too soft on Russell Brand’s conspiracism in the early 2010s. Plus: what does Rupert Murdoch’s retirement mean?

PPS. I will be talking at this WPUK event in November about the early years of writing about self-ID, and (maybe) about the unfolding split in the British gender-critical movement between leftwing feminists and single-issue populists.

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The Ugly Truth About Rolling Stone (Vanity Fair)

“These particular stars were his de facto business partners in the formation and success of Rolling Stone—stars whose images sold magazines on the newsstands, and who, after [Jan] Wenner allowed them to edit their own interviews, became social friends. At one time, Mick Jagger was a literal business partner in a British edition of Rolling Stone. Jann went sailing with Mick. He vacationed and shopped with Bruce. Bob Dylan flew a private jet to Jann’s house in Sun Valley and played guitar with his son. Bono personally helped him sell advertising by meeting and greeting with automakers in Detroit. Wenner built his business and reputation on his 1970 interview with John Lennon, with whom he made a handshake deal promising that John Lennon actually owned the interview (which Lennon, too, was allowed to edit, though later Wenner went back on that deal by publishing it as a book for which Wenner received $40,000, but that’s another story).

These were not interviews, but transactions. The exchange was clear: These artists helped Wenner sell magazines and he helped emphasize their iconography through expansive coverage. How many covers has Mick Jagger had? At last count, at least 24. Wenner personally placed U2 at the top of a best-albums-of-the-year list in 2014, “by fiat, buddy,” he said.”

Jann Wenner, founding editor of Rolling Stone, recently gave an interview to promote his book of music profiles and explained that they were all white men because no women or black people were “masters”. That dumbass remark imploded his career.

This Vanity Fair piece by his biographer, written in response, is one of the most interesting things I’ve ever read on the cultural production of “genius”: a stitch-up between the artists and the tastemakers for their mutual benefit.

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Romeo And Juliet Was a Tragedy (Vulture)

“Zeffirelli waited until nearly the end of production to shoot the film’s most controversial scene. In a departure from Shakespeare’s text, he moved the young lovers’ postcoital scene from Juliet’s balcony to her bedroom. He shot the couple naked in bed together, covered only by a sheet and the angle of the camera. Olivia [Hussey] did not realize she would be fully undressed until that morning, when the makeup man arrived and announced he was there to make her up “head to toe.” Panicking, she ran to Zeffirelli, who promised her the audience would see only “a hint — a bare back, a shoulder.” For most of the shoot, she lay in bed holding the sheet over her chest, but Zeffirelli had placed her nightgown out of reach so that her nipples were briefly exposed when she rose to get it. She didn’t realize this moment made the final cut until she saw the film for the first time at its royal premiere in London, where she sat behind Prince Philip, Prince Charles, and the queen.

In the end, the scene proved central to the film’s good fortune.”

Among the many revelations in this piece is that Franco Zefferelli was the inspiration for Uncle Monty in Withnail and I. It’s also a masterclass of insinuation; wait for the section on the lawyers “helping” Olivia Hussey pursue her claim against the film makers for exploiting her as a teenager.

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Hasan Minhaj’s Emotional Truths (New Yorker)

“In Minhaj’s 2022 Netflix standup special, “The King’s Jester”—a biographical reflection on fame, vainglory, and Minhaj’s obsession with social-media clout—he relays a story about an F.B.I. informant who infiltrated his family’s Sacramento-area mosque, in 2002, when Minhaj was a junior in high school.

[…] Later in the special, Minhaj speaks about the fallout from “Patriot Act” segments on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalism. The big screen displays threatening tweets that were sent to Minhaj. Most disturbing, he tells the story of a letter sent to his home which was filled with white powder. The contents accidentally spilled onto his young daughter. The child was rushed to the hospital. It turned out not to be anthrax, but it’s a sobering reminder that Minhaj’s comedic actions have real-world consequences. Later that night, his wife, in a fury, told him that she was pregnant with their second child. “ ‘You get to say whatever you want onstage, and we have to live with the consequences,’ ” Minhaj recalls her saying. “ ‘I don’t give a shit that Time magazine thinks you’re an “influencer.” If you ever put my kids in danger again, I will leave you in a second.’ ”

Does it matter that neither of those things really happened to Minhaj?”

This is a really smart piece about a leftish Muslim-American comedian whose act is based on rewriting stories from his life—racism, social media threats, even an anthrax scare—that are either wholly fabricated or tilted to place himself at the centre. I’m not so worried about this happening at a standup show, where the artificiality is obvious, but it’s a style that has bled into late-night news adjacent shows by people like Jon Stewart. (The type of shows that are very hot on rightwing “misinformation.”)

Also, this isn’t a victimless crime—the ex-girlfriend painted as a racist in Minhaj’s first Netflix special would have a decent libel case if she lived in the UK.

Chaser: I’ve written before about my own evolving feelings about Jon Stewart and the clapter genre of news-based comedy, which this Atlantic piece by Devin Gordon captures very well: “Without Stewart’s Daily Show, there’s no Colbert Report, no Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, no Daily Show With Trevor Noah. But maybe no Tucker Carlson Tonight, either.”

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Quick Links

1. “A senior editor from the London Review of Books began a long, meandering, hesitating, prattling anecdote, which eventually arrived at a destination. This person wanted to pass on a message to Stewart from a friend in the civil service who had worked with him: Rory, you were just, you know, well, simply, an awfully good minister. Stewart looked pained – as if he’d been kicked by a small and angry pony – thanked the writer, and slightly bowed his head.” Fun profile by Will Lloyd of the Alexander The Great of Podcasting. Also: it reveals that an account with the name of Rory Stewart’s mothers dog has been editing Rory Stewart’s Wikipedia page (New Statesman).

2. Why are views about immigration different in Scotland? Rob Ford investigates (The Swingometer, Substack).

3. The British tax system is so broken: look at these 70% marginal rates for thirtysomethings with kids (Dan Neidle).

4. “It’s like when he says, “It’s a very odd experience to take an animal’s life. The first time I did it, it was psychedelic. It was a transformative experience.” Which sounds good but doesn’t mean much. Or like when he’s down in his basement, as he is now, standing in front of that big stainless-steel box. It’s his flotation tank, first developed by dolphin researcher John Lilly in the 1950s, later made infamous in the movie Altered States.” Enjoyable 2015 Joe Rogan profile (Rolling Stone).

5. “Twenty men have served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs since the position was created after World War II. Until Milley, none had been forced to confront the possibility that a president would try to foment or provoke a coup in order to illegally remain in office.” My boss Jeff Goldberg met Mark Milley, one of the generals who tried to restrain Donald Trump (The Atlantic).

6. Matt Yglesias lost 70lb with stomach surgery (Slow Boring).

See you next time!