Hannah Montana, the kids' show starring exploited teenager (or, alternately, picture-posing strumpet) Miley Cyrus, ran its first new episode in two months last Sunday. And the ratings were down 24%! Could this be the end for our hero—done in by Annie Leibovitz, Vanity Fair, and a child-unfriendly wave of bad publicity?
Graydon Carter, the rotund Vanity Fair editor and undersecretary of the celebrity-industrial complex, weighs in on the magazine's controversial Miley Cyrus photos in a video message: "She seems like a girl with a head on her shoulders," he says. Right-o! "But parents, rest easy. We think Cyrus is going to make it through adolescence. And this issue." [VF]
At long last, the mainstream media stops its glad-handing of Hillary Clinton and pins down her position on the most important issue of our time: Vanity Fair's scandalous Miley Cyrus pictures. Clinton reveals that Cyrus is a "great kid," and vows that this should be a "teachable moment" for parents and children alike. Good work, ET! Then she gets interrogated about her position on Barbara Walters' affairs, her workout routine, and how great her last interview with ET really was. Why the deafening silence on these issues, Obama? Video of the interview is below.
Congratulations to the gang at United Talent Agency, who last weekend offset a series of high-profile defections with the addition of Mitchell Gossett — the Agent to the Child Stars who brings along top client and recent teenagers-fucking firebrand Miley Cyrus. Nikki Finke had the news Saturday, reporting that Billy Ray Cyrus would be tagging along out of Gossett's former headquarters at Cunningham Escott Slevin Doherty, sort of a halfway house for transitioning young talent (and, evidently, their middling parents). Finke notes that it's anyone's guess how Miley's Vanity Fair bedsheet-rocking played into the deal, but the timing seems clear enough to us.
If you are on the hunt for comfort food for your brain, look no further than this week's flavor-packed installment of Dirt Sandwich. Each week, our superstar videotrix Molly McAleer puts her very sanity on the line for you, the loyal Defamer reader, as she pours through over a dozen hours of infotainment shows looking for moments of high camp from TV journalism's lowlifes. This week's episode features only the hottest of hott topics, including Miley Cyrus' initial reaction to Annie Liebovitz's now controversial Vanity Fair spread ("Annie took, like, a beautiful shot"), Donny Osmond's nationwide manhunt for a gentleman caller willing to date his sister, Harvey Levin drooling over some new Halle Berry pics and, of course, the appearance of a cow on the set of Extra. And no, we're not talking about Dayna Devon. Enjoy!
It's official: the world-saving baby-making duo of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are no longer mere entertainers. They are "heroes and pioneers." At least according to the categorical rankings of Time's 100 Most Influential List released today. And not only are they the most influential heroes, they're apparently more influential than Oprah Winfrey. And Tony Blair. In any case, among the "artists and entertainers," the mag happily ranks Lorne Michaels and Robert Downey Jr. high above icky Suze Orman and preachy George Clooney, but we do take issue with several other entries, after the jump.
It seems America's teenaged girls, their normative instincts honed to razor sharpness in high school hallways, have distilled the Miley Cyrus scandal to this: the Hannah Montana star acted like a "whore" and is probably a "slut." The Times interviewed several 15-year-old girls outside the Beacon School on the Upper West Side, and their comments neatly capture the essence of the judgements levied at large against Cyrus and Vanity Fair, fueled as they were by a conflicted Puritan hysteria about sex and self-interested image control masquerading as morality:
The Walt Disney Corporation was nothing short of outraged when its billion-dollar-a-year child star Miley Cyrus appeared in Vanity Fair wearing only a bedsheet, as shown in the rightmost image above. Said a spokeswoman at the time: "A situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines." But check out the Disney billboard pictured on the left, snapped by Slate's Daniel Brook in Beijing, China. The model, who looks barely pubescent, is being used to sell a matching bra-and-panties set. Brook said the billboard made "the controversial 1990s Calvin Klein underwear ads look artistic by comparison." And it's not the work of Chinese intellectual property pirates; it comes from a legitimate Disney licensee pledged to clear all ads with Disney corporate. What does Disney say? Controlling child exploitation is hard! Also, Chinese people have certain... tastes:
Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2008 have been chosen, and as if on cue, Miley Cyrus gets the wide-eyes-and-wonder treatment from none other than Donny Osmond. But this isn't just another convenient thematic tie-in of wholesome media figures — no! Written before the whole Vanity Fair photo flap, Osmond's blurb is easily the most uncannily prescient piece of writing since Paddy Chayefsky sat down to pen Network:
Michael Roberts, the Vanity Fair fashion and style director who attributed the uproar over the sexy Miley Cyrus photos to unsophisticated Americans who don't handle "chic pictures" as well as his fellow Europeans, is not just dispensing cultural criticism through the media: he has a book coming out! And in a fun coincidence, the 112-page tome is going to be called Fashion Victims: The Catty Catalogue of Stylish Casualties, from A to Z. Perhaps he'll add a section addressing the fact that "The whole kiddie porn prurient angle seems to be worryingly sour grapes from other magazines that didn't get a picture like this." After all, at Vanity Fair "We don't do cheesy teen pictures. We do chic pictures and pictures that are beautiful portraits." Alrighty then. Just for kicks, another now-ironic quote from last October's Telegraph profile of Roberts:
This whole Miley Cyrus incident, a young pop star being immodestly scandalized by Vanity Fair photos: it's so complicated! How should you feel? Who should you blame? Who is the biggest jerk in this whole sordid incident? Where should America direct its momentary outrage so that it can return to playing video games, eating snack foods, and conducting imperial conquest? Allow us to help. After the jump, a roundup of all the reaction from our most important opinion leaders to the Biggest Media Celebrity Scandal Of The Final Quarter Of April 2008. Was Rosie O'Donnell right, that we all need to lay off the heroic and intimidating Annie Leibovitz? Or is Germaine Greer, a Guardian critic, correct in predicting the beginning of Miley's existential decline? It's quite the heated argument:
Rabid New York Post attack columnist and X-ray pornographer Andrea Peyser finally weighs in today with her take on the Miley Cyrus uproar, and a breathless city exhales. She's upset! Now she has to add Miley to the list of pop stars "not welcome in my house" (you're on there too, Jamie Lynn Spears). But she reserves most of her contempt for Miley's dad Billy Ray Cyrus, a "one-hit wonder who lives like a leech off his billion-dollar baby." Zing! We agree the photo of the two together was a little weird. But Peyser is also mad that Billy didn't stop his teen daughter from being such a freaking idiot when she opens her mouth:
We're so confused. An extra day's digestion of the Miley Cyrus/Vanity Fair photo "scandal" hasn't cleared much up for us in the way of morals, betrayals, exploitations and career management of the young Hannah Montana star, but the public meltdown has alerted us to a more basic truth that is helping guide us through the fog of outrage. This isn't about Miley Cyrus without a shirt on or if she's been seen somewhere in her lingerie, or if her father dropped the ball.
MySpace sensation, reality television star, fake bisexual, and living anime character Tila Tequila has weighed in, sagely, on the Annie Leibovitz Vanity Fair no-no special place photos of Miley Cyrus: "I think it's hot. When I was 15, I was doing the same thing except I bared it all....She's just showing her back. She's growing up. I don't think she's doing anything harmful. If the media keeps pushing her, pressuring her, she might end up messed up. But right now, I think everyone should just let her have fun. She's not doing anything scandalous. I think she's hot!" [From Extra]
The New York Times ran a "correction" of their Business section front page story yesterday on how young Miley "Hannah Montana" Cyrus was totally topless on the cover of Vanity Fair, due to her recent run-in with a Jewish lesbian mystic, who hypnotized her. Now, the Times claims Cyrus was topped. The correction:
Bonnie Fuller, who oversees Star magazine and is therefore the arbiter of American media standards, has a question about this whole Miley Cyrus thing, and its connection to the current Texas polygamy scandal: "Is it OK to sexualize a fifteen-year-old if it is in the pages of a high falutin' magazine and her parents seem OK with it? Or is this really not much different from parents in a cult acquiescing to having their teen daughters wedded and bedded?" Ummm... can we say 'No' to all of the above?
