GOD IS GREAT

There I was, idly perusing the October issue of Vanity Fair, when suddenly I was struck by a profound religious revelation. An ethereal being whispered in my ear: “See? The Lord works in mysterious ways — and He’s got a wicked sense of humor.”
This revelation did not come while I gazed at Vanity Fair’s cover, which shows Nicole Kidman opening up her shirt so we can all get a good look at her bra. My epiphany came when I happened upon a far less lovely sight — a photo of Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens naked in the shower, soaping up his portly, pudgy torso. Yikes! It’s nice to know that Hitchens takes showers occasionally, but did we really need to see the photographic evidence?
Hitchens is, of course, a famous journalistic provocateur. He has penned ferocious attacks on Mother Teresa and Henry Kissinger and just about everybody in between. This spring, he took on the ultimate target, publishing God Is Not Great, a best-selling attack on the Big Guy Upstairs.
I enjoy reading Hitchens, so I worried when his anti-God book appeared. I half-expected to read that he’d been the tragic victim of a freak accident. God in His infinite wisdom instead chose to humiliate Hitchens in the pages of Vanity Fair. What else could explain that hideous shower picture? Or the equally hideous photos of Hitchens swabbed in mud masks and other goop? Or the goofy Hitchens column that the pictures illustrate?
The column is Hitchens’ zany account of his wild, wacky misadventures at a fancy California spa.
This genre of story is, of course, one of the oldest cliches in journalism. When feature editors can’t think of anything else, they send male reporters out to get weird beauty treatments and dispatch a photographer to document the humiliation. So why would a sophisticated, trendy magazine like Vanity Fair resurrect this mouldy old chestnut? There’s only one plausible explanation — the Big Guy arranged the whole thing to humiliate Hitchens.
And it worked perfectly. First, Hitchens was forced to undergo the wretched tortures of mud baths and medicinal scrubs. Then he had to write the damn thing, describing his “porpoise-like” body, his “ratlike claws,” his “layer of flab” and his “fanglike teeth”. And the humiliation isn’t over yet. At the end of the column, an italic paragraph informs readers that there’s more to come: “In the next installment, our correspondent confronts extreme smoking cessation … cold-turkey booze withdrawal and ultimate waxing.”
Oh, no, ultimate waxing! That’s a fate worse than smiting. Lord, have mercy on this poor sinner.
-Peter Carlson (LATWP)