So this week’s Newsweek cover is a composite of what the late Princess Diana—who would be 50—would look like strolling through London with her daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton. The article that goes with it is a Photoshop of Horrors gallery of “what would she look like today?” mock-ups. Today’s reader poll on CNN.com asks “Is Newsweek’s Princess Diana cover in bad taste?” and almost 75% of respondents say yes. Personally, I despise it, not so much because it’s tacky—although Maude knows, it is—but because I’m so fucking sick of Tina Brown wanking about the British royal family in what used to be a good and respected American newsweekly. The painfully unnecessary and frivolous Allison Pearson cover story about Kate before the wedding was bad enough, but zombie Princess Di? Come the fuck on.
Our own Michelle Dean has penned a gloriously sharp (and funny) critique of the Newsweek edition for the Awl: “Tina Brown, Fanfiction and Princess Diana: Nine Observations.” Please read and enjoy.
They are going to have to change the title of the mag to “News”week.
CREEPY!
I am disgusted with this whole “princess” business. It is all about what the women wear, what they look like, and never about the complex human beings they are (were, in the case of Diana).
Diana died literally during the time I was in the hospital having my first child. I came home after two days to have someone (my brother I think) offhandedly mention it to me, as if I already knew.
The whole thing comparing and analyzing what Diana would have thought / looked like / talked about with her daughter in law just seems creepy.
Ugh, just saw the photoblog title at msnbc:
“The princess has landed. Let the fashion show begin”. WTF?
I dislike that cover for the same reasons you do. (Also, I wanted to like the Daily Beast/Newsweek merger, but I haven’t been like either since.) Michelle’s first point is spot-on.
Honestly. Newsweek, my ass. I’m trying to get Mr MM to cancel our subscription. I haven’t read a full issue since Brown took over.
I really like some of the writers who Brown hired, like Niall Ferguson and Robin Givhan, but I knew the mag was going downhill fast when in her first issue Brown ran a Brett Easton Ellis apologia about Charlie Sheen. And the Allison Pearson article about Kate Middleton was such a thinly veiled classist piece of tabloid shit…there’s no NEWS left in Newsweek anymore, I’m afraid. My subscription will not be renewed.
I wanted to quit my subscription a while ago but my 16 yo son still reads it. It’s about his level but he’ll outgrow it any minute now.
also, sick of Tina Brown wanking about the British royal family. The antidote is Johann Hari on the royal wedding and other related topics.
He refers to all the members of that clan as XXX Windsor, (Elizabeth Windsor, Charles Windsor, etc). I’ve taken a clue from him since then and been doing likewise.
When Hanna and I heard about this over the weekend, we agreed it was TOTALLY CREEPY RP fanfic. That is “real person” fanfic. Yes, it’s a thing. I bet you wish I hadn’t told you! Imagine all the slashy sexytimes goodness of fictional fanfic and then … imagine people writing it about ACTUAL REAL PEOPLE who are not themselves or their significant others. Like, instead of Sam and Dean in “Supernatural” they write it about the actors who play Sam and Dean. Complete with the sexytimes. *shudder*
It gives me the “no” feeling in a big way.
And so did this woman gushing about Princess Diana on the radio. I mean, did she even stop to consider what it would be like for the two kids to know that someone out there was writing fictional stories about your mother who had died in a car crash? I mean, obviously they don’t have to read it — but icky to know it’s even out there!
Anna, that is precisely right.
I like this quote from Michelle’s article: “National myths are, after all, something like old fixtures in the run-down Victorian you’ve just bought because you loved the gabled roof. The wall sconces are ornate in a way that obviates their value for you, they certainly aren’t up to your modern tastes, but if you want to take them out you’re going to have to gut the entire interior of the house. And at some point that gets too expensive, either materially or psychologically.”
That is so exceptionally well put, and such an accurate analogy. I love it.
What a tasteless pile of steaming crap.
I never had any opinion on Tina Brown (not being a Newsweek reader), but if she hired Niall Ferguson & produced this, I definitely don’t like her.
(Speaking of which: Becky, you LIKE Niall Ferguson? I admit I’ve seen little of him, but he’s always seemed like a rightwing ass to me, and like the kind of immigrant who is all to eager to denigrate the place he comes from – as a sort-of immigrant myself, albeit one in the other direction, that always grates on me).
@Endora: Ferguson’s a pompous horse’s ass in some respects, but I like his writing on finance and economics simply because I think he hits the right balance of being easy enough for the layman to understand, without being too dumbed down. Not a huge fan of his geo-political views, though.
@BeckySharper: fair enough – I’m not familiar with his financial writing, I’ve only ever seen him in imperialist or neocon mode…