You will recall that on February 25, 2011, the ultra-chic, ultra-liberal Vogue magazine, led by high-profile Obama supporter Anna Wintour, published a fawning profile of Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad by Joan Juliet Buck.
So outrageous was Buck’s story that Seraphic Secret saved the article in the sure knowledge that Vogue would, sooner or later, be called to account for celebrating a mass murderer and his wife.
Of course, we were proven correct. So clueless and disgusting was Buck’s story about the al-Assads that Vogue—Soviet style—flushed the story down the memory hole with nary an explanation.
Now, Joan Juliet Buck, the liberal author of the infamous piece, has penned an apology: My Vogue Interview: Mrs. Assad Duped Me, a self-serving kvetch.
Buck would have us believe that a) she was a reluctant participant in the story, and b) she didn’t know that Assad was and is a totalitarian butcher.
Here’s a sample:
I didn’t know I was going to meet a murderer.
There was no way of knowing that Assad, the meek ophthalmologist and computer-loving nerd, would kill more of his own people than his father had and torture tens of thousands more, many of them children.
In December 2010, there was no way of knowing that the Arab Spring was about to begin, and that it would take down the dictators of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.
If you have the stomach, you can read the entire piece here.
Buck claims that the so-called “Arab Spring” finally revealed the evil that is the heart of the Assad regime.
Only the naive or the stupid or the willfully ignorant can claim ignorance of Assad’s murderous reign prior to the Syrian civil war.
Buck’s self-pitying whine is filled with new details on meeting Asma Assad. Now, Buck makes disparaging remarks about Bashar’s long neck. Now, Buck paints Asma as a manipulative liar. Now, Buck reveals the sinister state repression she encountered. Now, she tells us that she glimpsed the true monstrous Assads.
Not surprisingly, like a good liberal, Buck paints herself as the victim. Buck is glued to Al Jazeera —Joan, sweetheart, it’s a Jew-hating channel, or didn’t you notice—and coverage of the Islamist uprisings, aka the Arab Spring.
I asked Vogue’s managing editor if we could meet to discuss how to handle the Assad piece. A meeting was held, without me. I was asked not to speak to the press.
And finally:
I didn’t want to write this piece. But I always finished what I started.
Including, we might add, doing PR for an evil tyrant and his “extremely thin and very well-dressed” wife.
Like Lady Macbeth, Joan Juliet Buck can scrub all she wants, but the red soles of her Louboutin heels are soaked not with dye, but with the blood of the dead.
If Ms. Buck was so innocent of any real knowledge of the crimes of the Assad regime, she could have asked veteran war photographer, James Nachtwey, who was hired to Vogue to illustrate her article. Oh, that’s right – the very earnest, <a href=”http://www.pixelatedimage.com/blog/2006/11/a-quote-from-james-nachtwey-war-photographer/“>moral high-ground-taking</a> Mr. Nachtwey also took Conde Nast’s money and kept shtum about what he knew. As someone I know is always fond of saying: Journalists – your moral and intellectual superiors.
I find it reasonably astonishing that in an age of Google, not to mention well-documented historic atrocities committed by the Syrian state (wasn’t there a reason we didn’t really like them to begin with? Hrmmmm) she can honestly claim that she was “duped.” If by duped you mean completely ignorant and uninformed, and incapable of running a two second Google search using the keywords Bashar Al-Assad human rights violations/atrocities/is not a nice person/etc then you probably shouldn’t be writing such pieces in the first place. If it’s a PR piece, be honest enough to say so instead of dressing it up as an interview and then saying you were lied to. Please.
I don’t think she was duped at all. I think that she was hired to write the article as part of a larger PR effort for the Assads. Apparently, the use of PR firms in Western countries to make dictators look more appealing to Western audiences is nothing new.
Reminds me of a scene from Absolutely Fabulous. Eddie & Patsy are discussing another woman’s bad/rude behavior when Saffy interjects– “That’s awful, how can she behave like that?” Eddie looks over at Saffy & says loudly, “Because she’s THIN!!”
Behold the real-life example. Disgusting. Jennifer Saunders and Ade Edmunson really didn’t invent anything in that series, just made it safe to laugh at.
Buck would be better served to look at herself and acknowledge WHY she wrote such a fawning tissue of an article. “Look how Western these people are and how much a part of the 21st century West they are and aren’t really scary muslims at all.” Only, not so much. Buck should have just not written on it again at all, she’s compounded her problem.
Joan Juliet Buck has a left wing pedigree that goes back a long way.
My sister still gets Newsweek and when I was there today I saw the cover with Buck’s quote and laughed. She reminds me of the OJ jurors, willing to believe anything they want whether it is true or not.
Maybe the people at the Daily Beast and Newsweek believe her but I bet even Buck knows she is not telling the truth. I would even bet she didn’t read the piece in Newsweek until her publicist finished it for her review.
Some of the greatest sins of moderns are done in furtherance of their careers.
In Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow, one major character is Franz Poelker, a German rocket scientist. Poekler is not a Nazi supporter; he works on the V-2 missile mainly because it is intellectually interesting to him. After the war ends, he leaves his laboratory and office and wanders into the Dora concentration camp, where the V-2s were actually built, by slave labor.
The odors of shit, death, sweat, skckness, mildew, piss, the breathing of Dora, wrapped him as he crept in…All his vacuums, his labyrinths, had been the other side of this. While he lived and drew marks on paper, this invisible kingdom had kept on, in the darkness outside…
In Pynchon’s novel, Poekler makes a small act of contrition:
Where it was darkest and smelled the worst, Poekler found a woman lying, a random woman. He sat for half an hour holding her bone hand. She was breathing. Before he left, he took off his gold wedding ring and put it on the woman’s thin finger, curling her hand to keep it from sliding off. If she lived, the ring would be good for a few meals, or a blanket, or a night indoors, or a ride home…
It’s not much. But more, I feel sure, than Wintour and Buck and their sort will ever do.
For her to claim she was duped would be to say she ignored world events. More likely – typical of many liberals, she had blinders on and chose not to see until her article was brought to light – outside Vogue’s orbit
Bill:
There are many people of position and education who fall into the “stupid” category. Joan Juliet isn’t alone.
Barry – in my cynical – warped sense of humor I propose a new prize – the Walter Duranty Prize – for most egregious duped author
I nominate Joan –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
Robert:
Stupid is the right word. I know people who watch Al-Jazeera and who are, if not Jewish, have Jewish family members. But no American or Canadian or any of the good guy tribe should be supporting the enemy.