Vanity Fair wants to doom conservatives and businesses to the many layers of Dante’s hell for daring to question global warming dogma.
The two-page “Dante’s Inferno: Green Edition” was part of Vanity Fair’s full-issue attack that even claimed Rush Limbaugh “has blinded millions of Americans to the climate crisis” and accused him of “the environmental destruction that he did so much to enable in his multi-decade reign of denigration.”
Page after page of the magazine sought out conservatives for withering attack. Editor Graydon Carter introduced this issue with an all-out assault on Republicans. “It is an ongoing mystery to me why Republican administrations are such wretched protectors of our land, inasmuch as Republicans own so much of it.”
Then there was Vanity Fair’s depiction of hell, which consigns Americans who voted for President George Bush either to the vestibule (2000) or to limbo for voting for him in 2004. After that, the punishments only got worse. Big Oil and Big Auto made the second circle of this “Fair” hell for being “the gluttonous.” Then it’s one industry after another dropped into the pit – Big Agriculture, Big Mining, Big Chemical, Big Defense.
The magazine reserved the deeper parts of damnation mostly for individuals – scientists such as climatologist Robert C. Balling, Jr., meteorologist Richard Lindzen, statistician Bjorn Lomborg, as well as numerous politicians and even novelist Michael Crichton.
Then there’s the final circle – hell itself – containing “Satan, and in his three mouths: Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), former chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, tireless denouncer of global warming as ‘a hoax’ perpetrated on Americans by alarmist liberal media; President George W. Bush; Vice President Dick Cheney, former Halliburton C.E.O., convener of top-secret energy task force, which met with oil and gas executives.”
The cartoon along with the feature shows “Paradise (more or less)” up above with Al Gore carrying a copy of “Silent Spring.” On a nearby hill sits a Prius, perhaps even higher in heaven than holy Al. Down below are images of some of those punished, from “Charlie” the Starkist Tuna to Crichton, holding his own head in one hand and a copy of his book “State of Fear” in the other.
There was much more to the magazine – too much for even the most strident of eco-leftists. One section highlighted mini-profiles of “Global Citizens” atop lush Annie Leibovitz photos. There’s actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who introduced Gore on Oscar night and has another upcoming environmental documentary called “The 11th Hour.” Then there’s the crunchy bunch of organic granola types who focus on “sustainability” and operate businesses with names like “Green & Black’s Organic Chocolate” or “Organic Valley.”
Then we get the “Soundtrack of Change,” with photos of mostly aging rockers like Jackson Brown and Bonnie Raitt – possibly fresh off a 27-year reunion tour of their 1980 “No Nukes” concert. The rest of the list was as predictable as the first – the left celebrating what else? The left. Robert Redford. Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Student Environmental Activists – complete with Greenpeace banner and improperly displayed American flag.
Even Anita Kunz’s “Sketchbook” drawing showed a man with a head the shape of the globe sitting in a sauna, sweating – no doubt from global warming or from trying to read more than 300 pages of ad-laced propaganda.