V@nity Fair, Most Foul

All right, the credibility of this blog is being challenged, and so I am called to respond.

As everybody knows, credibility is the coin of the realm in the blogosphere [though Google Ads often suffice]. The fact that I have to defend my honor against the smarmy, snarky [smarky?] pretties at Vanity Fair magazine makes it all the more distressing.

To recap the action:

Back in September, I wrote one of my effortlessly coruscating entries in which I unmasked a Twitteur calling herself VanityFairer as a stooge of the magazine’s inept communications staff. While she feigned innocence–just a fan of the magazine, nothing more, blah blah blah–I was able to demonstrate without question that she was an inside job trying to appear independent of the Conde Nast mothership.

How was I able to verify this? Flecks of circumstantial evidence,  a hunch virtually indistinguishable from certitude, my strong desire to embarrass the smarky pretties and–most tellingly–the fact that Vanity Fairer convincingly denied my accusations! Not just once, but repeatedly!

My case irrefutable, I dusted my hands and moved on, continuing my unerring quest for truth in other matters. Vanity Fairer, meanwhile, quietly wallowed in her shame. Although she did manage to accumulate over 700 followers and turned out to be a pretty good Twitterer. Which of course only provides further evidence of her guilt.

Then, recently, the plot thickened.

Someone calling himself “Michael Hogan,” writing on what appears to be the real Vanity Fair website, claimed that he was just beginning to use Twitter, the magazine’s first Twitter profile!

Wrote he, about the 50-some followers accumulated by the “official” Vanity Fair magazine’s profile, @vanityfairmag:

One of them is a mysterious and fascinating (to us, anyway) character who calls herself vanityfairer…. She has been doing an amazing job of covering our work here on the site without our knowledge. There was even an article written about her, [n.b. that's my original post!--cs] which speculated that she was an undercover operative for the magazine.

She’s not, though I wish I’d been smart enough to think of that. I have no idea who she is, but I’m very curious to find out.

Ha! Nailed again! Mssr. “Hogan” denies Vanity Fairer is an inside job, once again proving the case that she is. He compliments her lavishly, demonstrating that the is trying to curry favor with an insider. And he uses the hoary “I’m not smart enough to do that” denial, as transparent as any Wall Street bondsman’s casual lie over drinks.

But there’s more!

A few days ago a blog called “blog, p.i.,” co-written by someone calling himself “William Beutler,” published “Who is @Vanity Fairer? [Hint: Probably not Graydon Carter]“. He brilliantly disassembled the argument in my original post, like Tinkertoys, demonstrating with a brisk intelligence how Vanity Fairer virtually could not be an inside job. I was momentarily devastated. Until I looked at “blog, p.i.” closely and discovered that one of the blog’s co-authors is named “Not Paul Begala”!

So here we have a blogger, defending the honor of a Twitteur of dubious provenance, who keeps company with a fellow who misrepresents himself with fake names on the Interwebs! Luckily I could now seize the logically irrefutable “consider the source” argument to reassert my correctitude and scramble back to the high ground.

Close, “Mr. Beutler,” but no Cohiba Cubano for you!

In response to all of this I felt compelled to continue my research into the whole sordid affair, deposing witnesses, using powerful Internet discovery tools and goofing off with Twitter more than I should admit. My investigations are now complete. Here finally I lay out the facts for all to see:

1. William Beutler is really Michael Hogan

2. @vanityfairmag is ghosted by Not Paul Begala

3. The author of the Vanity Fairer Twitter profile is @joaquin_phoenix

Thank you. I trust this puts the matter to rest once and for all.