The Second Coming of Tina Brown



Recently Gore Vidal, the Dean of the jet set (Alberto Moravia named the phenomenon and chronicled it; Gore Vidal lived it), pronounced Tina Brown cool at the PEN literary gala, thereby presaging this Second Age of Tina, which, presently, we navigate with great fastidiousness. Everyone seems -- even the neo-Conservatives -- to be hailing the book as THE summer beach read. Events appear to have conspired so that we are afflicted with Maximun Brown. To wit, even as Tina's bio of "The People's Princess" is released, Paris Hilton, the other Princess Meat is off to jail -- and, don't you know that Tina will be rolled out to give exacting media commentary on What-It-All-Means.

Mrs. Sir Harry Evans has been in a sort of media hibernation, away from her Washington Post column, absent from The Chattering Classes except for the odd Michael's sighting, crafting her Di bio -- "Diao"?. And it is now out, to sexy reviews.

From The New York Times Book review:

"With 'The Diana Chronicles,' Tina Brown breathes new life into the saga of this royal 'icon of blondness' by astutely revealing just how powerful, and how marketable, her story became in the age of modern celebrity journalism. Indeed, while Diana named Camilla Parker Bowles as the third party in her unhappy union, she might also have mentioned a fourth: the media. 'She was way ahead of her contemporaries in foreseeing a world where celebrity was, so to speak, the coin of the realm,' Brown writes. 'An aristocrat herself, Diana knew that the aristocracy of birth was now irrelevant. All that counted now was the aristocracy of exposure.' And Brown offers an insightful, absorbing account of the pas de deux into which, to her eventual peril, Diana joined with the paparazzi.

"As the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, Brown certainly has the authority to examine the Princess of Wales as a creation and a casualty of the media glare. Perhaps not incidentally, Brown’s own years in the spotlight were bookended by Diana’s rise and fall. In July 1981, Brown appeared as a 'royalty expert' on the 'Today' show’s coverage of the Wales wedding. Then the editor of the British gossip magazine Tatler, Brown recalls that 'the wedding did for the sales of Tatler ... what the O. J. Simpson chase did for the ratings of CNN. It put us on the map.'

"After Diana’s death in August 1997, Brown again placed the magazine over which she presided — this time, The New Yorker — 'in the middle' of what was still 'the biggest tabloid story in the world,' by publishing a special issue devoted to the princess’ memory." (NYTBR)

Update: And we had no idea of this.