Leonardo, Leona and the little people
I’ve been collecting magazines lately to send to my son and his fellow Marines in Iraq. A key player in this effort is a gentleman I’ve met only briefly, but who works at the area’s biggest advertising agency. The variety and volume of magazines he receives is astonishing. Who knew that dairy farmers in Ontario not only have their own glossy magazine, but also possess the firm conviction that somebody in North Carolina wants to read it?
I’m grateful for this gentleman’s efforts, and happy to do the necessary triage on his magazine offerings. (Maxim makes the cut. Ontario Dairy Farmer goes into the recycling. C’mon, they’re Marines.) All this is a long way of explaining how I belatedly came into custody of the May issue of Vanity Fair, which I’ve been thumbing through this week. It was VF’s 2nd annual “Green Issue,” and my teeth were on edge before I even got past the cover.
But let me say something first: There was much valuable information inside, once I got beyond the cover. Also, I’m not one of those global-warming skeptics (although I do get skeeved out when I hear environmentalists declare that the debate is over and all contrary voices should — no, must — be ignored or silenced). But getting lectured by a magazine which ….
Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about VF’s cover.
It showed Leonardo DiCaprio standing in an icy landscape, looking all green and resolute. Inside, a note explained that he’d been photographed by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz “at the Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon, in Iceland.” Unless the actor and photographer just happened to encounter one another while there, it’s almost certain that the two of them traveled to Iceland — spewing carbon emissions the whole way — just to be photographed for VF’s Green Issue cover.
Inside, the magazine devotes seven full pages to explaining the damage wrought on the environment by everyone’s simple daily routines. (Read it, and you’ll never drink coffee with a clear conscience again.) It also suggests ways you can reduce your carbon footprint — emulating movie stars, for instance, many of whom now travel by hybrid vehicles. Except when they need to go to remote locations for glamorous photoshoots.
This is the great inconvenient truth that celebrity environmentalists want you to ignore. Like Leona Helmsley once said of taxes, carbon reduction is for the little people.