Hype Is Tripe

Things turn very frivolous around this time of year. Barf-inducing parties by pop culture schlock merchants selling their wares are a nightly transgression, the hacks duly reporting the shenanigans of doped-up rappers the next day as once upon a time they detailed the haut monde. London isn’t much better. Last week, at the British Fashion Awards, a designer by the name of Jonathan Anderson said that he was “honored to be on the same stage as Karl Lagerfeld,” a bum-clenching announcement for its unremitting vapidity. Lagerfeld is a preening, self-important freak whose trademark is rudeness and that other giveaway of ultimate ghastliness, the ponytail.

Over on these shores, things are just as bad, except Congress hasn’t as yet invited Angelina Jolie to enlighten them with her plan to save Africa, in the manner a parliamentary committee did over in dear old England. What is it with these modern celebrities? How can they be as uninformed, dumb, full of themselves, and arrogant as they are? And how can the public swallow the hype the PR hucksters put out about them daily? Hype derives from the Greek word “hyperbole,” and there’s nothing elegant about it. It debases the truth, as well as the language—I’m proud to be on the same stage as Karl—and is often duplicitous and outrageous.

I remember forty years or so ago, the editor of Vogue, a self-invented but very nice lady, Diana Vreeland, used the word “fabulous” as a nonstop answer. “Fabulous” became her mask, her defense, almost a way of life. By calling everything fabulous, la Vreeland kept everyone in the dark and off balance. It vitiated the power of the sales pitch. An item could be inferior or superior, but Vreeland declared it fabulous and that was that.

Vreeland, however, had terrific taste, loved worthy fashion and talented people. But she called everything fabulous in order to keep the peace. The trouble is, the bullshit stuck after she lost power. Now everything and everyone is fabulous, and fashion has never been uglier and designers less talented. But the latter are Olympian gods when compared with professional celebrities like the Kardashians and the Hiltons, both families forever with us, and everywhere, like herpes.

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