Vanity Fair isn’t sure what to do anymore.
With sinking readership will they go for the MAGA vote?
Or will they profile MAGA types with a little bit of an edge?
So they’ve chosen the second route in a new profile of Erika Kirk, the merry widow of assassinated right wing nut job Charlie Kirk.
In “The Widow’s Peak,” by Claire Molot, the magazine touts “unprecedented access” to Erika, her mother-in-law, and family.
There’s even a photo shoot showing Erika has mom of the year.
Welcome to the new Vanity Fair, where there are good people on both sides.
The profile is deceptive. It’s almost all a fluff piece, a big Valentine designed to con the MAGA reader who won’t finish reading the piece but will be satisfied Erika is now a celebrity.
Molot calls Charlie’s courtship of Erika “a MAGA rom-com.” Erika is seen as as a survivor and role model who stood steadfastly by her husband’s side. She’s also touted his successor at Turning Point. Molot quotes Charlie’s mother, as his perfect successor.
The fawning and praise go on endlessly until Molot gets way into the piece, farther than most Kirk fans who read aloud will go. There’s a short section deep into the article when she finally grills Erika about all the terrible , racist, misogynist things Charlie ever said. Now Erika gives moderating answers, not exactly backing off the most extreme ideas, but working her answers like a politician.
The answers to all of Molot’s questioning about things like Israel, whether Trump won or lost the 2020 election, abortion, even the Second Amendment — reminding Erika that a gun killed Charlie though he approved of them: “My brain bandwidth right now is honoring my husband, loving on my babies, and building Turning Point to be everything it could be. I really don’t have the bandwidth to go down the rabbit holes of all of it.”
In the end, you could skip over the one problematic section and come away with these conclusions: Charlie Kirk was a political savant, and Erika is sympathetic widow.
Erika is going to tactfully smooth over anything objectionable left behind by Charlie, and Molot is going to let her.
Molot writes: Erika, however, demurs when I ask if she thinks the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
“My husband’s the type of person, and I am the same way, that when something is decided, no matter—even in a sports game, no matter if you win or you lose—you have to play the next game,” she tells me. “So are you going to sit and just think about that past game, or are you going to go back out on the field and start practicing for the next game? How we are wired is you go back out on the field and you start practicing.”
Are we far from that Melania cover story? I don’t think so. The pandering started with the magazine’s portrait of White House staff earlier this year. Also, with a photo shoot. Will any of this help raise circulation? It should be noted that the head of Conde Nast, Roger Lynch, announced his exit from the job after seven years on the day this story appeared.
