The New Republic

It's April, which means taxes and magazines putting out green issues. After the first flush of Al Gore portraits and photos of polar bears on tiny ice floes in the early days of "green issue" covers (say, in 2006), magazines are now forced to get a little creative with their cover images.

Vanity Fair's Madonna-as-world-hugging-dominatrix cover is a good example of this. (It's not really worth deconstructing this one. Probably we should feel lucky it's not Angelina Jolie french-kissing a polar bear.) The cover story is a bit silly (lede: "The world is a series of rooms, which are arranged in concentric circles, or rooms within rooms, joined by courtyards and antechambers, and in the room at the center of all these rooms Madonna sits alone, in a white dress, dreaming of Africa") and, as usual, it's not printed on recycled paper, thus failing to, you know, actually be green in any meaningful way. (I know: Pot ... kettle. That doesn't get them off the hook, though.) But as usual, there are some gems in the magazine, in particular a piece about Donald Trump's ongoing attempt to build a huge golf course on protected land in Scotland. The article is engaging in itself, but what really makes it worth the read are the quotes from the Trumpster (and yes, it seems that he calls himself that even when not on television). Here are my favorites:

"My son Barron has incredible energy. You know why? Because his father is a fucking genius."

"People think being Donald is a bowl of cherries, but it isn't always."

And then the rather Thomas Nagel-like: "Do you think manatees know they're alive? They're like huge amoebas, constantly getting hit by boats. I don't think they're 100 percent there."

 The feeling's probably mutual.

 --Britt Peterson

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