Editor’s Letter December 2019
RADHIKA JONES, Editor in Chief
the political party that, to quote Ted Cruz, loves to rail
against “New York values”?
Well, I’m from New York too, and we would like
to counter with the values broadcast by one of America’s
most delightful families: Chrissy Teigen, John Legend,
and their two adorable children. We photographed them
at home in Los Angeles, and spoke to Chrissy and
John about fame, fortune, family, and activism—John
as a powerful and persuasive advocate for prison reform
(with a side hustle as one of the most accomplished
musicians of our time); Chrissy as a funny, disarmingly
honest voice pushing back against a president known for
harassing women of color who dare to speak their
minds. The Teigen-Legend household harmony provides
an alternate note to the divisiveness and dissonance all
around us, and it seems that whatever Trump throws
at them, they can handle it. Here’s hoping the same for
Congress in the coming months.The first day that Annie Leibovitz photographed the
Speaker of the House, shadowing her through a day
of meetings on Capitol Hill, was the same day many hoped
might herald the beginning of impeachment proceedings
against the president. Elsewhere on the Hill, Robert
Mueller was testifying before the House judiciary
committee. By the end of that day, his testimony seemed
like a final curtain; in reality, it was just a false start.
And so, in this issue we present Annie’s suite of pictures
of Nancy Pelosi at work, illustrative of the Speaker’s
drive, focus, and uncanny ability to rise above the noise
of a chaotic news cycle. “The times have found us,”
she tells V. F.’s Abigail Tracy, quoting Thomas Paine, and
if they found us a few months later than we expected,
with more bizarre bit players from Ukraine, well, Pelosi
was ready and waiting.
The tyranny of low expectations hangs over the
president during this inquiry. Questions like “What
did the president know and when did he know it?”
presume some actual knowledge on his part as to how
governance works, and what he should and should
not be saying while on the phone with foreign powers.
But it’s fair to ask a few similarly pointed questions
about all the president’s men. For example, how did
Attorney General William Barr devolve from a principled
conservative into one of Donald Trump’s chief
sycophants? Marie Brenner looks back to the tumultuous
spring of 1968 to investigate the scandal of Barr’s
formative years—when his father, Donald Barr, was the
controversial head of the Dalton School in Manhattan,
and young Billy Barr was a staunch young Republican
pushing back on the rising tide of liberalism. As
Marie writes, the lessons William Barr learned while
under the sway of a different “charismatic, domineering,
and doctrinaire figure named Donald” are manifesting
in today’s headlines. Is it weird, incidentally, that
the trio of men most visibly responsible for our current
national paroxysm—Trump, Barr, and Rudy Giuliani—
all hail from New York City? Or is it poetic justice for
The
Right Note
LEGEND HAS IT
Left: John Legend
and Chrissy
Teigen in their
backyard with the
kids. Below:
Radhika Jones
and Legend.36 VANITY FAIR PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK SELIGER DECEMBER 2019