“Lastweek”
March 16, 2011
WRITING in The Washington Examiner, Noemie Emery pans Tina Brown’s Newsweek. She writes:
And the real news this past week is not that the fate of the Middle East swings in the balance, but that “150 women are shaking the world.” And who are the women doing this shaking?
The left-wing, the aging, and people left over from Brown’s now-dated circles of buzz. These include Oprah Winfrey, Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep, Diane von Furstenberg (who dedicated a tote to Barack Obama), Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, Clinton aide Melanne Verveer, Eve Ensler, (“The Vagina Monologues”), Gloria Steinem (now pushing 80), and Annie Liebowitz, photographer to the stars. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is there, but not Palin (as Suzanne Fields has noted.)
Not a word about the GOP women who came in with the 2010 midterms; all of them feisty, and very much younger: Sen. Kelly Ayotte, Gov. Susana Martinez, Rep. Kristi Noem, and, of course, Gov. Nikki Haley, a hell-raiser if ever there was one, and an all-but-sure pick for a future national ticket.
But that would be news, in which Newsweek has long since lost interest. Brown’s one success since the ’90s ended was a book that she wrote about Princess Diana, along with the Clintons, a much-favored topic and a star from a long-ago age.
Rounding it out was the postscript by one Harvey Weinstein, the mid-1990s Miramax mogul, a megabucks funder of Hillary Clinton, and main benefactor of Talk. Those were the days, and Brown can’t let go of them.
There was a day when he, Brown, and Hillary strode the world like colossi, and Newsweek is bringing it back to your doorstep. It should change its name to “Lastweek,” or maybe “Last Century.”
