profiling the Edwardses
department of anna wintour sucks
His ‘N Hers John & Elizabeth Edwards Profiles: Not Created Equal
Conde Nast’s Vogue empire is notoriously micromanaged by Anna
Wintour, so it did not surprise us that John and Elizabeth Edwards
were profiled extensively in the July issues of Men’s Vogue and
Vogue, respectively, though Elizabeth did not get the cover,
presumably because she is not as pretty as her husband. And speaking
of pretty, how about those controversial haircuts? Well according to
Elizabeth in Vogue:
[Elizabeth] says she has no intention of apologizing… for her
husband’s $400 haircuts. “The truth is we didn’t know how much it
was, and we didn’t know that it was being charged to the campaign.”
Which is sort of weird, because as Men’s Vogue points out, Beverly
Hills stylist Joseph Torrenueva “has already said that Edwards is a
‘longtime client’–it’s not accident that he got a $400 haircut; he
just got busted,” and as Edwards himself said during a public
appearance:
“It’s a ridiculous amount of money for a haircut. I’m actually
embarrassed by it.
Eh, we’re saving our embarrassment for Vogue writer Julia Reed, who
not only spares readers any insight into Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer
but censors some more egregious details of the Edwardses profligacy:
On that $6 million monstrosity in North Carolina that the Edwardses
just erected, what Men’s Vogue sees as a liability with less-
privileged voters, Vogue sees as… a perfectly understandable
upgrade! According to Vogue:
Their first home in the area, after all, was a dingy unit in a
planned development
P.S., ‘dingy’ just sold for $1.465 million!
[Elizabeth Edwards] designed this one herself with the help of an
architect (”I drew the first plan, he drew the second; I drew the
third, he drew the fourth”) toward the end of her chemo and
radiation. It was so big, she says, because she was determined to
build John a basketball court, housed in a huge red “barn” along with
racketball courts and a pool. “You grow up in North Carolina and
basketball is it,” she says….
Which is why the pick-up games get so crowded you need your OWN
COURT! As John tells Vogue:
“People think we live in this really fancy, gaudy place… but it’s
really down-to-earth.” It’s a description that is not entirely spin.
The main house is almost 11,000 square feet, surrounded by deep
porches and anchored by a light-filled central great room with an
enormous stone fireplace (modeled after one they saw at a lodge at
the Grand Canyon), wide heart-pine floors and beams and some of the
biggest TVs I’ve ever seen. It’s an impressive space but entirely
unpretentious and eminently livable.
Big TVs = unpretentious! Over at Men’s Vogue, meanwhile, we learn
about a few amenities Julia Reed forgot!
Fairly or not, to critics and many locals, Edwards’s new estate–a
28,200-square-foot, $6 million affair a few miles outside of Chapel
Hill–has become a potent symbol of hypocrisy when placed against his
political message of personal sacrifice, environmental conservation,
and economic division. Top aides were furious that the Edwardses
decided to build it just as they were launching the campaign.
Elizabeth has said she has no regrets; she worked closely with an
architect to design the house, down to the wide-plank pine floors and
soapstone fireplace. (It also has a 1,762-square-foot room called
“John’s Lounge,” two performance stages, a pool, and basketball and
squash courts.)
We learn some other stuff in Men’s Vogue that Vogue doesn’t tell us,
like that John Edwards rarely voted before running for office, that
his father is a Republican and that he’s kind of a huge phony! Also,
Elizabeth = pretty important to the Edwards campaign!
At 58, Elizabeth is more than Edwards’s wife. She’s the core of his
political life. The two met in the early seventies at the University
of North Carolina law school, where Elizabeth, the sophisticated,
well-read daughter of a naval officer stationed overseas, was seen by
classmates as much more likely to succeed than her husband. “I think
she helped shape him politically,” Shrum says. “She is a progressive,
and I think he was much less political when he started out.”…As
Edwards’s key political adviser, Elizabeth is a major force behind
the scenes, micromanaging details down to which tie he will wear and
how he should respond to press questions. When Kerry joked during the
2004 primary campaign that Edwards was still in diapers while he was
fighting in Vietnam, Elizabeth suggested heavy retaliation. (Her
husband talked her out of it.) According to a former campaign
staffer, she once dressed down an aide who questioned Edwards’s
judgment during a campaign meeting and fired three traveling chiefs
of staff in a matter of a few weeks. It was she who pushed for a more
sophisticated Web presence for the 2008 campaign, including the
hiring of two bloggers who quit after coming under fire for their
comments about religion.
Not that she really likes to cop to any of that.
“I just do mom things,” she says of her official campaign duties.
“John was home for several days, so I tried to cook the things he
liked and stuff like that.” I thought she might tell me her secret
chicken-fried-steak recipe, but when pressed, she has a hard time
remembering exactly what she cooked for him.
So basically, Vogue sorta swallowed the Edwards campaign PR jizz,
while Men’s Vogue wrote a thoughtful story that painted a nuanced
portrait of a charismatic but ultimately unconvincing candidate for
president? Or is it just because men perceive conspicuous consumption
differently from the gender that has been inured to it at the hands
of Anna Wintour? What about you kill us either way?