| HILLARY BUSIS,
SENIOR EDITOR |
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Perhaps the best joke on 30 Rock—and I’m fully aware that I’m setting a high bar here—comes in the show’s fifth season, when Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy shows Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon a pie chart revealing NBC’s fictional programming priorities. A huge majority of the chart is taken up with The Biggest Loser; a tiny sliver is dedicated to “Everything Else.” Then there’s the middle sliver: “Make It 1997 Again Through Science or Magic.” How many of us have felt a similar impulse to reach toward the not-so-distant past—30 Rock made this joke in 2010—when things seemed simpler, and kinder, and we also happened to be 10 to 15 years younger? Perhaps not surprisingly, the same nostalgic urge currently seems to be driving two very different purveyors of culture: the conservative anti-feminist minds behind Evie magazine, and the Kardashian clan. As Erin Vanderhoof notes on VF today, Evie seems to be reaching for a female blogosphere ethos that arguably peaked with Jane Pratt’s endearingly ludicrous website xoJane; Kim and co., as Savannah Walsh writes, can’t help looking back at their own quasi-humble beginnings. Mentally, perhaps, we’re all yearning for 2015. (Hey, Evie—do you remember who was the president back then?)
Elsewhere, we dig into this weekend’s LACMA Art+Film Gala, as well as the ever-trembling AI bubble. More tomorrow… |
Currently the editor of the online newsletter “Another Jane Pratt Thing,” Pratt has a storied media career that stretches from the influential run of alternative teen magazine Sassy (1988–1996) to her women’s magazine Jane (1997–2007) to her sometimes scandalous digital outlet xoJane (2011–2016) all the way through the present. Her work is famous—notorious, even—for taking the buttoned-up language of a previous era of women’s magazines and bringing it down to earth.
In conversation with VF, the original media maven digs into the legacy of her “one good idea,” sending her editors to try out sex tips, and what the conservative cultural turn has meant for a new generation of young women. |
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From Demi Moore to Salma Hayek, see all the stars as they made their way into the gala, which brings the art world and the biggest names in Hollywood together. |
The stock market is largely being propped up by a promise of AI that has yet to deliver—setting up what could be a disastrous bubble. |
With unease in America seemingly at an all-time high, reality TV’s first family has opted for some good old-fashioned 2010s nostalgia. |
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Darren Walker was not supposed to run the Ford Foundation. Born to a single mother in Louisiana in 1959, Walker grew up Black and poor in rural Texas. “I think I was always a strange little gay boy,” he says with a laugh. “I was fortunate. My mother gave me unconditional love, and so I never felt out of place or unwelcome.”
Who knew that strange little boy would one day become the 10th president of the Ford Foundation, a private philanthropic organization—and one of the wealthiest in the world—with the goal of advancing human welfare and social change. Since 2013, Walker has overseen the entire operation.
Now, after almost 13 years, Walker is leaving his post. On a Zoom from his home on the east side of Manhattan, he chats with VF’s Chris Murphy about his new book, The Idea of America, and his enduring belief in the promise of the nation. |
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