New York Magazine 11/13-11/26/17

1 In New York’s most recent issue, David Marchese sat down with Jimmy Kimmel, late-night’s most unlikely political voice (“In Conversation: Jimmy Kimmel,” October 30–November 12 ). Former Kimmel colleague Rick G. Rosner tweeted about the cover story: “Great interview with best guy in Hollywood.” And Representative Ro Khanna tweeted, “Thank you [to Kimmel] for speaking out on issues like health care and common sense gun safety.” Not everyone was convinced of the host’s new liberal bona fides, though. Laura Bradley at Vanity Fair wrote that “the comedian seemed to wear his newly earned crown reluctantly—and peppered his responses with comments that might give a few of his new fans pause … Indeed, from the interview, it’s not difficult to discern a certain conservatism to Kimmel’s outlook, despite his occasional…

The View From the Edge “There are lights skating up 51 stories to the copper tops of the buildings of the World Financial Center,” Julie Baumgold wrote. “They are lights from the windows of Merrill Lynch and Oppenheimer, Dow Jones and American Express. Each light is a Suit working late because of the stock crisis, guys in shirts looking at numbers and making late, painful calls, but downstairs, downstairs—it’s burning.” What was burning was Christian Lacroix’s first New York fashion show. It took place a week after what was already being called Black Monday, the day the Dow fell 22 percent. Baumgold had already been at work on a profile of Lacroix, the most-talked-about designer among the city’s socialites. His maximalist designs were ridiculous and funny, and could top $25,000…

What they designed as an act of sadism turns out to be an act of masochism. THE OTHER NIGHT at dinner, I was explaining to my kids how the Republican agenda in Washington has settled into a familiar groove of manic tax-cutting for the rich. The House, Senate, and White House are united in their determination to deeply reduce taxes on corporations, partially or completely eliminate the tax on inherited estates of more than $11 million, give business owners a special low rate, as well as administer other comforts for the comfortable that we liberals see as unlikely to help anybody other than their direct beneficiaries. The news made them glum. My daughter, seeking some solace, and having been repeatedly impressed that our family has it better than most of…

THE VERY FUNNY Swedish art-world farce The Square may have been a divisive pick when it won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, but there was one thing the entire international film community could agree on: the swooning. Claes Bang, the movie’s dashing and virtually unknown Danish star, might as well carry a fainting couch with him, considering how often he inspires fawning reveries from anyone who sees him, onscreen and off. “The main actor, I felt in love, I must say, and I’m not the only one,” said French actress-director Agnès Jaoui when asked at a press conference why she and other Cannes jury members had given The Square the top prize. “Yes! Yes!” enthused Will Smith, sitting next to her. Bang is six-foot-four with a…

The wheel has turned in the Bushes’ favor not through mere accident. THE REHABILITATION OF George W. Bush has never looked more promising. His recent speech in defense of the Republicanism of yesteryear (free trade, globalization, and multinational alliances) came loaded with “Never Trump” alarms about the rise of “bigotry” and “nativism,” “conspiracy theories” and “outright fabrication.” It pleased even Democrats, who not long ago loathed him almost as much as they loathe Trump—and did so, at least by the end of Bush’s second term, with more concrete reason: a needless and costly war in Iraq, an incompetent and coldhearted handling of Hurricane Katrina, Wall Street–first economic policies that plunged the economy into the Great Recession. And yet today, remarkably, much is being forgiven. Why? For one thing, Bush’s “compassionate…

FOR MANY , if not most, Americans, the only pleasure to be had from Donald Trump’s presidency is to imagine his premature eviction from the White House. Impeachment, the 25th Amendment, pick your poison. My own scenario places Trump on Richard Nixon’s Watergate resignation timetable, fleeing next August to Mar-a-Lago as federal bloodhounds close in on him, his son, or his son-in-law (or all three) and his party’s Vichy regime on the Hill at last mutinies in the face of what could well be an apocalyptic Election Day in 2018. In private, Steve Bannon reportedly gave Trump only a 30 percent chance of finishing his term, even before Robert Mueller dropped his first indictments. (Bannon has denied saying this.) And there are other fresh signs of an advancing Trump expiration…