Back to School? Halloween? But Why Haven't You Done Your Christmas Shopping, Slacker?

A couple of years and a few (hundred?) pounds ago, I went on CBS This Morning to talk to the lovely Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell about how Christmas advertising and retail holiday displays seem to happen earlier and earlier each year (see video above) — and how much everybody, including Gayle and Norah, supposedly hates that, even though marketers clearly didn't get the memo. (My local Walmart already has pre-lit Christmas trees on sale — even though the whole Northeast is in the midst of another fires-of-hell heat wave this week.) You might think it's a purely American phenomenon, what with our hyperconsumerist culture, but you'd be wrong. As Reuters reports, Santa himself showed up last week to open the Christmas shop at Selfridges department store in London. The whole Christmas in the summer thing may be working, too, as retailers seem to be making headway persuading us to jingle our wallets earlier. According to the National Retail Federation, 10 percent of adults in the U.S. start shopping for the holidays during the month of August. That's not all. Some consumers are getting a jump on holiday decorating, too — which, besides infuriating your neighbors, apparently has the added benefit of a Xanax or a shot of Jack Daniels or whatever your fix for staying chipper happens to be. A recent study found that those of us who put up our trees, lights, menorahs and stockings earlier are happier people. As Steve McKeown, a psychoanalyst, puts it: "In a world of stress and anxiety, people like to associate to things that make them happy, and Christmas decorations evoke those strong feelings of childhood ... so putting up Christmas decorations early extends the excitement." What was that somebody once said? Oh, yeah: Bah, humbug.

Why Is CNN Covering Klan Rallies Anyway?

CNN's Jim Acosta greeted in Tampa by local members of the Charles Darwin Hall of Fame

Yep, it's depressing people. Especially if you do journalism for a living. And while I agree wholeheartedly with Jim Acosta's assessment of the cretins who heckled and threatened him in Tampa and warnings about how dangerous they probably are, I think the best way to handle them (if you insist on continuing to cover them, though at this point the benefit of that escapes me) is the same way you deal with any screaming maniac: turn up the lights and mic, point the camera directly at them and let them show themselves for the nutty, potbellied circus freaks they are. Hire more bodyguards (I will happily be your wingman, Jim—just let me check with my minister and grab my Kevlar vest first) and give 'em the platform they so crave. You wouldn't try to compete for attention with a dumpster fire or plane crash, would you? Just take a picture while it goes up in flames. I don't think most Americans watching this lunatic fringe think like them, show their asses like them, or want anything to do with people like them. These are the same fine citizens who burn down the city after their team wins the Super Bowl. The rest of us just stare in disbelief and scratch our heads. You're never going to be able to talk rationally or deal rationally with those whose singular motivation and contribution to the public discourse is violent, unhinged rage. In case you hadn't noticed, this country has no shortage of woefully undereducated and uninformed (and raging) people. Go ahead, let their fires light up the sky. They always end up burning themselves out.

Nope, Vanity Fair Is Not Getting Any Better

There once was a glorious, glamorous magazine that covered Hollywood and politicians and media titans and the royals and scandals and the lowdown and dirty better than anybody, and it was called Vanity Fair. Tina Brown resurrected it in the 80s, made it great, then handed it off in the 90s to Graydon Carter, who made it even greater. But then, with one penny-pinching, jaw-droppingly shortsighted move, the publisher, Condé Nast, in the direst position of any of the beleaguered magazine publishing giants, seemed intent on destroying it all. There was really only one choice to replace the retiring Graydon, of course, and that was Janice Min, who'd turned The Hollywood Reporter from a sad rag into a gleaming, glitzy affair—and took home National Magazine Awards for it. But someone with the chops of a Janice doesn't come cheap (she was pulling down seven figures at THR), and even though Condé's artistic director Anna Wintour is said to have (wisely) wanted her bad, bad, bad for VF, the bean counters, in cahoots with the eggheaded in one regard (politics) but apparently not so smart in other areas (business) David Remnick, tapped an unknown book editor with a razor-thin resume from The New York Times for a song—and on the subject of music, with several issues under her belt now, it's become clear to all of us watching and listening (and waiting, impatiently) that poor Radhika Jones can't carry a tune to save her life. VF under the underwhelming Radhika has no idea what it is, or what it wants to be, or apparently even what it once was till not so long ago. The covers have been edgy—and to a one, dreadful. The features are boring and irrelevant. The design is godawful. I can't imagine who this magazine is being produced for, or who'd bother reading it with all the other, so much better sources of information and entertainment out there. (The magazine's sad demise is even more poignant on the heels of Tina's terrific, rollicking reminiscence of her years at the helm, The Vanity Fair Diaries. Even the worst chapter of that book is infinitely more entertaining than anything you'll find in Radhika's VF.) Looks like Condé saved some admittedly much-needed cash (including not only Radhika's relatively wee salary, but all the heads her bosses continue to force her to chop) but in return may well have done in one of the few remaining strong heritage print brands around. It's not too late—they can quietly retire this young woman, leaving her to return to the brainy world of writing about books nobody will ever read or whatever she's presumably adept at, and get a real star of an editor in there, maybe Janice or maybe somebody else. But every passing month that they let this experiment drag on is another that VF loses cred and luster, and most urgently, once-loyal readers. The trend is not irreversible—yet. But not with this losing formula, dreamt up by an editor who's clearly in way over her head. Truly visionary and talented editors, though the owners of media companies may not think it, are an extremely rare thing. And as with anything in life, you get what you pay for.

ADDENDUM: As if all that weren't enough, now it appears the new VF is blurring the line between editorial and advertising on its very cover, reports the Times.

Kylie Is a Selfish, Unprofessional Little Twit

I feel like I've aged 10 years in the day since I learned Kylie Jenner made the cover of Forbes, she having made its list of the richest self-made women. Much has already been made of the hilarity of the magazine dubbing Kylie as "self-made," considering the famous, wealthy family from which she was spawned. And let's not even get into the fact that her "empire" is built on lipstick that purportedly gives you pouty lips — conveniently ignoring the fact that, as anyone can tell from photos of Kylie as a kid versus now, she obviously had surgical enhancements to pump up her pie hole. (A lot of things on my person have grown as I have ticked off days — ears, bunions, and those wispy little gray hairs sprouting from my eyebrows spring to mind — but I assure you my lips are not one of them.) As it turns out, I have a bit of history with this little twerp posing as a grown-up businesswoman. I once ran features for a magazine that negotiated with Kylie's reps to put her on the cover. Her business had already started to take off, and this was to be her first ever cover of a business publication. Then the hell started. First she stood up our reporter, repeatedly, after having agreed to a sit-down interview. Then after our having secured for the photo shoot an expensive studio out in L.A. for the better part of a day, plus a photographer, stylist, makeup artist, hair person and even caterer of Kylie's choosing, she decided after a couple of snaps that she just wasn't feeling it and walked off. Her rep pleaded with us to reschedule for another time. We explained that, having flown 3,000 miles and gone to considerable planning and expense to make this happen, that wasn't likely. (I seem to remember our having sunk more than $10,000 in the failed shoot. That might not be a lot of money for Forbes or Vanity Fair, but it certainly was a lot for our little pub to flush.) Mind you, all her shenanigans were blessed and fully aided by her P.R. handlers, who seemed to have absolutely zero control over the little diva and throughout the process took obvious delight in torturing us on behalf of their snot-nosed client. (I have no clue if they're still repping her, nor do I care. As I understood at the time, that family has blown through, so to speak, a series of kneepad-donning lackeys, so I wouldn't be surprised if these particular enablers were also 86'd.) What a contrast that experience was from one we had with her sister Kim Kardashian, who we'd shot for our cover a couple of years earlier and who couldn't have been a nicer, more professional subject to work with, showing up on time for her shoot, meeting with our reporter as planned, and staying present and engaged through the whole affair. Not that it'll hurt Kylie one bit (she can dry her tears with hundred dollar bills, as they say), but I must admit to taking a wee bit of satisfaction in the backlash that has greeted this absurd Forbes cover. After many years of dealing with celebrity subjects — even notoriously difficult ones like Martha Stewart — I never encountered such a headache as I did with this one, before or since. Now I'm going to check to see how much bigger my eye bags have grown overnight while Kylie counted her money.

#MeToo Ax Falls on Another Creative Chief

Bombshell news in the advertising world today that Ogilvy fired its widely revered global creative chief Tham Khai Meng over behavior it called "a clear breach of our company values and code of conduct" — his apparently becoming the latest in a growing line of agency bigwigs to get snagged up in the #MeToo mess, among them Droga5's Ted Royer, another onetime superstar CCO. Here I am, as it happens, posing with both men at an industry party during obviously happier times. The fact that I am beaming in the photo is not incidental. What a thrill to be flanked by two seriously accomplished, enviably talented ad guys. These sexual misconduct allegations are always troubling and infuriating, but especially so when the accused is someone you have known, written about and admired for years. Someone remarked the other day that, on Madison Avenue, in Hollywood and in other trades where the mighty have been swiftly brought down over alleged misdeeds, the stream of sexual misconduct scandals that dominated headlines not so long ago seems to have slowed to a drip — suggesting that maybe we'd heard the worst of the worst already. Today proved that there's still plenty of filth gushing from that spigot. Heroes, it would appear, are getting harder and harder to find, in advertising and elsewhere.

Killing Roseanne: Let's Have Fun With This

"The Conners" (Season 1, Episode 1)

After a series of tweets, Roseanne Conner becomes a hero of red state America, gets invited to the White House by President Trump, dies on the way there after choking on a waffle fry at Chick-fil-A

Nobody Wants to See Children in Cages — But Here's Why We Must Not Turn Away

I think we've all seen enough of caged children on the U.S.-Mexico border the last few days. I know I have. I've never exactly been a journalist of the war-hardened, seen-it-all, trenchcoat-wearing type — I write about consumer brands and ad agencies and how they try to sell people stuff — but I have, as not only a reporter but as a human being who's hung around this mortal coil long enough, seen enough to have developed a reasonably hearty stomach when it comes to observing death and destruction and mankind's worst moments. But even I have struggled to watch this kids in fucking cages in America shit. What a low moment for this country, just when you thought it couldn't get any lower. But of course, I do watch, because remaining willfully ignorant is not an option for any person of conscience, especially under this regime. As Barry Blitt, whose illustration "Yearning to Breathe Free" covers next week's New Yorker, explains: "I can't watch TV news anymore. It's always people yelling at each other or, worse, people agreeing with each other. There's always a background drone of outrage, it seems. Stories like this, obviously, are different. The outrage and disgust is justified and real, and needs to be paid attention to." Well stated, Barry. (Oh, and by the way: Fuck Ann Coulter.)