I'd Ask "What Were They Thinking?" But That Question Assumes Facts Not in Evidence...

I don't particularly care what folks may think about former GOP VP candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She seemed like a sharp enough lady who was on a really big stage she wasn't ready for, and that she was poorly prepped for that role by a campaign organization that did a better job of doing things wrong than doing them right. Some flashes of possibility, but nothing super well-formed yet.

But holy cow, what reason in the world could prompt the magazine Vanity Fair to run an essay supposedly written by Levi Johnston, the young man who is the father of Ms. Palin's grandson and former fiance of Bristol Palin? What could Johnston possibly offer that would be anything like a reasonable, reliable, accurate and informed picture of anything other than the horror of having to spend an evening with Kathy Griffin? Even if I had reason to believe that Johnston was going to accurately describe the workings of the Palin family -- and I don't, as a rule, rely much on the testimony of 19-year-old high school dropouts trying to work their way onto fame's Z-list -- why would I care?

An even bigger question is why does Vanity Fair care? In previous incarnations, the magazine printed work by people like Dorothy Parker, Thomas Wolfe, P.G. Wodehouse, Aldous Huxley and others. For a time, it was edited by Clare Booth Luce. In its current incarnation, dating back to 1983, it's run pieces by Christopher Hitchens and Dominick Dunne. Marie Brenner's 1993 "The Man Who Knew Too Much" interview with a tobacco industry insider who smuggled secret documents out of the workplace was an exposé that ripped open the industry's secrets and later became the movie The Insider.

In other words, this is a magazine that has a history of thoughtful and important content, as well as sober and probing reflection on issues of the day and society, culture and the arts in general. And now it's running a cover pictorial and major essay "by" Levi Johnston?

Condé Nast and Frank Crowninshield aren't spinning in their graves -- they're opening their coffin lids and reaching for shotguns.