A special issue indeed

I finally picked up a copy of the first ever "Green Issue" of Vanity Fair. What is up with that cover? George Clooney, Al Gore, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are all sitting around in varying shades of green, with Julia Roberts looming over them in a poofy, green Bill Blass number and a garland on her head. With the greenish background and the greenish lighting, everyone looks a little ill. Or as a less charitable colleague put it, "They all look like pond scum."

I wouldn't go that far. But they certainly do look silly, which probably isn't what they should be going for if they want people to take them and their environmental causes seriously. Maybe Clooney and Roberts don't care because, hey, they're actors. (And, let's face it, Clooney looks ruggedly delicious even as pond scum.) But I suspect Mssrs. Kennedy and Gore aren't eager to be dismissed as preening loons. Maybe already committed greenies and Vanity Fair's liberal readers will dig the cover, but my guess is that anyone who just happens to encounter it in the express lane at Safeway will just think the whole group, not to mention Graydon Carter, has gone round the bend.

Then again, five-plus years of Bush have had that effect on a lot of folks.

--Michelle