In fact, it worked out the other way around. Lindsay Lohan gets just a fleeting name-check in Beato's think piece on Page (see Page 17). "I think I could have easily written a 5,000-word piece about her career/influence," he says of the iconic fetish model. "So much there to comment on."
Anyway, I probably shouldn't get too uppity about pop culture's cynical repurposing of celebrity mojo—hell, one of my relatives got married by Elvis. And in our mashed-up, remixed, sampled moment, where everything can be appropriated for anything, what do I think is gonna happen? If anything, I should be surprised that a place like Kmart isn't already selling thousands of Bettie Page nighties.
Sometimes, of course, you can confiscate a celebrity's image for creative reasons other than simply moving units, which brings me to "Barry Manilow, Welterweight," a nice piece of fiction by Tom Junod. Nominally, we're running it because Manilow recently marked an anniversary at the Hilton, but, really, I just wanted to see what would happen if I asked a great writer to try his hand at Barry Manilow fiction.
If Junod's story (Page 22) wasn't what I expected—extravagant silliness would have been the natural curse here, not meaningful whimsy—it probably shouldn't have been. A man who's written brilliantly about topics as diverse as creationism and Tony Curtis, Junod is, by near-universal acclaim, the finest magazine writer in the land. He's the clean-up hitter on Esquire's all-star masthead, has won two National Magazine Awards and is a perennial finalist (this year, for a terrific post-Katrina piece). After you read his Weekly contribution, I urge you to fish around Esquire.com for more of his work. Trust me on that.