Gold Digger: Is that a union job?
The Walter Sobchak and Jesus Quintana of newsletters rolls deep on mega publishing news, estranged scions, inexplicable marriages, and *real* friends—that’s YOU.
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Greetings, Spreadsthetes,
This week, Atlantic writer Olga Khazan, someone whose work we often find Spread-worthy but whom we did not previously think of as a laugh riot, per se, revealed a surprising (to us, but hey, what do we know) humorous streak in “The Big Lebowski Friendship Test.” Turns out, Khazan dies hard for all things Dude. Huh! But each time she’s in the early stages of a new friendship, she’s never sure how far to push this agenda: Does she invite a new friend over to Lebowski? Will that new friend understand why, when talking decor, Olga can’t stop yammering about the rug tying the room together? There’s real vulnerability in sharing a cultural artifact that you love with a person you either like a lot or want to like—you need them to like it, too, to laugh and cry at all the right parts. Because if they get your favorite movie, maybe they get you too? For Rachel, those artifacts might be, in no particular order, the Muppets’ entire oeuvre (but especially The Great Muppet Caper), Call Me By Your Name, and Freaks and Geeks.1 For Maggie, it’s Hamnet and Walk the Line;2 she’s also workshopping Babes as a shortlist contender. We find the Spread itself makes a pretty good Friendship Test, one sure to discern the wheat from the chaff, and to eliminate a few people along the way (like that high-ranking MAGA politician we had no idea was on our roster until she recently unsubscribed—woah!) We're OK with a little attrition in the pursuit of real connection, how about you?
Why not give it a try: Share this issue with a friend and pass along the code TRUE FRIEND to get 20 percent off your (and her, or let’s be honest, any) subscription. If you never hear a word from her about it, well, was she really a friend at all?
Rachel & Maggie
P.S. We also know you’re a real pal when you poke that ❤️.
And now for some news we can use.
We wouldn’t call the long-awaited announcement of Vogue’s new “head of editorial content” anticlimactic, exactly, but in the last few weeks it had become clear it would be Chloe Malle and, yes folks, drumroll, tra la la… it is Chloe Malle! As others have pointed out, this is a rare win for the features team—for all her nepo cred, the universally liked Malle is an editor and writer on the words side of things, which is not typically where publishing poobahs look when seeking an EIC capable of enticing advertisers. Your Spreaditors devoted considerable time this week to parsing Malle’s New York Times job announcement, including the semiotics of her dress3 because there’s no such thing as “just a sweater.” The Altuzarra Lydia Stripe Poplin Midi Wrap Dress (investigative journalism at its best!) is definitely Fashion, but despite its $1395 price tag, it’s giving this girl knows how to read—not exactly Met Gala overlord, ya know? And there may be good reason for that. We’ve heard that Chloe had some reluctance about accepting the post, perhaps because her all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing boss will still be very much present. (“The truth is that no one’s going to replace Anna,” said Ms. Malle in the Times.) Friend-of-Spread A., a close reader of media tea leaves, texted: “The fact that Anna’s still there gives me Conan/Jay Leno vibes.”
This was over Maggie’s head so please allow Rachel to explicate:
Remember when Leno stepped down from the Tonight Show, allowing O’Brien to take the reins of the hallowed late-night program…only to have Leno experience a change of heart? Instead of retiring, he stuck around at NBC and launched a new late-night show that would air nightly juuuuust ahead of Conan’s. Rude!
While we chew on that, we offer our congratulations to all the Sex and the City heads, the real winners here, because, of course, Chloe is the real-life daughter of Candice Bergen, who played fictional Vogue editrix Enid Frick on the series4. As the show shuffle-ball-changes off to its well-deserved place in the sky, could there be a more fitting homage?
Elsewhere in back-to-school-season media moves…
Substack flexes! Feed Me phenom Emily Sundberg just announced two legit journo hires that give some indication of her grand ambitions. Not so long ago, when Sundberg was a junior social media editor at New York, Anna Silman was a writer at the Cut. Now, a few short years later, Sundberg has hired Silman to do managing editor-y things at Feed Me. (We stan Silman, especially for her hit Merve Emre profile, so we hope she can still find the time to write features!) Meanwhile at the
Summit this coming Monday at Printemps in NYC, Substack’s anointed fashion darling will gather what we think of as the platform’s fashion homecoming court, including , (our fave), , , and . Always a bridesmaid…Every day is National E. Jean Day in our book.
And we love it when the whole world concurs, as in Variety’s absolute rave review of Ivy Meeropol’s “urgent” and “enthralling” new documentary about our idol’s life and career. “Ask E. Jean isn’t at all interested in painting a false sense of victimhood — instead, it succeeds as a celebration of a singularly authentic person, one that beat Trump not only against the odds and in spite of his powers, but also thanks to who she has always been as a truth-teller in the male-dominated spaces of her career.” Huzzah! Meanwhile, even close members of team Elle who know Auntie Eeee well were surprised and moved to hear her offer Modern Love’s Anna Martin a rare peek behind her armor of unflagging optimism, admitting that, thirty years after her assault, it’s still excruciatingly difficult for her to open up to the possibility of romance and eroticism… yet, nevertheless, she does long for it. (Golden bachelors, the line starts here. Please submit resumes and 8x10 glossies to rachelandmaggie@thespread.media.) A supporting character in their chat is one Laurie Abraham—you’ll recall her and her colon from last week’s Spread—who was E’s editor and cheerleader on the New York article in which she first came forward with her story about Trump.
“From what I heard, she got a baby by Busta /
My best friend said she used to f*ck with Usher /
I don't care what none of y'all say, I still love her.”
According to the New York Times, this is the poetry of Bezos, Belichick, and (baby) Soros. The paper of record is—perhaps accidentally—celebrating Gold Digger Week, and it’s giving Discovery’s Shark Week a run for its money. (Gold digger, shark—potato, potato.) First and foremost, in the Times Magazine, Amy X. Wang makes the case that economic uncertainty has changed the dating market, with women trading girlboss aspirations for financial security in the form of “provider” hubbies. “This give-up-the-fight attitude… looks like a whole lot of fun,” she writes. But “to champion this hedonistic credo is to also admit that feminism, as we last knew it, might have been a failure.” Wang masterfully weaves together a lot of this summer’s biggest cultural threads, and sure, we mostly buy it: Social media is indeed awash with ladies proudly looking to marry up, and we, too, have seen personal friends (even former women’s studies types) make the trade-off. Still, speaking of antifeminist, how do we feel about the Times branding women “gold diggers”? Her Exhibit A is, inevitably, Lauren Sánchez. But while we think of Bezos’s “Alive Girl” as a great many things—Olympic-level face interventionist, hobbyist helicopter pilot, mermaid-dress enthusiast, space organizer, friend to those who need one (Katy Perry)—something about her (blue) origins—sorry—as a broadcast journalist and production company founder, plus Bezos’s obsession with her and his physical transformation in her glow, puts her in a different category for us. On the other hand, Belichick's Jordon Hudson, whom the Times has covered almost as many times as the Spread has this calendar year (we checked—we’re in the double digits)? Well, yeah. At least Belichick, whom we see on TV any given Sunday and win the Super Bowls [ain’t] drivin’ off in a Hyundai, has chosen himself a gold digger with a sense of humor and some chutzpah: The Times reports that Hudson filed to trademark the term, presumably to use on merch and mwahahahaha make millllllions of her own! The gold digger who’s also a girlboss? Now that’s a modern gal.
Read “The Gold Digger Was an Archvillain. Now She’s an Aspiration.” here.
Read “Is Jordon Hudson a ‘Gold Digger’? She Wants the Trademark.” here.
Cheryl Hines. Cheryl David. Cheryl Kennedy. Will the real Cheryl please stand up? (Though seriously, does it even matter?)
WSJ mag, which has consistently been punching above its weight lately (serious Spread nerds can take this as a hint for the subject of our next Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!) pod collab!), snagged a profile that no media outlet would kick out of bed: Cheryl Hines, former Curb star and perky wife to reckless power monger RFK Jr.—the man who, in the words of his own cousin, “preys on the desperation of parents of sick children,” now by promoting his vaccine skepticism from the cush and consequential perch of US Secretary of Health and Human Services. Writer Ellen Gamerman gets fantastic access to both Hines and her husband, but is careful not to allow Hines’s charm to distract us from what’s really at stake with this DC boondoggle: She spends nearly half of the story setting up the curdled dynamics between Kennedy and his family (and anyone who cares about basic public health) and explaining the momentous consequences of RFK’s anti-science stances. And then there’s the color: Hines and Kennedy hanging out and teasing each other in their $4.4 million Georgetown pad, Hines contending with the Mar-a-Lago look that’s seized Washington (false eyelashes, extensions: “these ladies are bringing it!”). It’s fun for the whole family, except, you know, not because, measles. Hines has a memoir coming out this fall called Unscripted; surely she’ll clear up this giant misunderstanding and we can all get along!
Read “How Cheryl Hines Went From Hollywood Star to Mrs. MAHA” here or via Apple News here.
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