A lot of the anti-Hillary Clinton rhetoric disappeared from left-leaning publications when Donald Trump became president in January. Clinton wasn’t the first choice for some Democrats to lead their party, but after Trump won, most people decided to focus on how his presidency would affect Americans instead of quibble about a former candidate.
Vanity Fair apparently wasn’t ready to put the issue of Clinton, and what she should do with her life now, to bed. The magazine released a video that shows staff writers and editors holding glasses of champagne and reciting “resolutions” for the former Secretary of State. Most of the suggestions for Clinton in 2018 boil down to this: don’t run again, please. The video also suggested that Clinton take up a new hobby, such as “volunteer work, knitting, improv comedy.”
Maybe it's time for Hillary Clinton to take up a new hobby in 2018 pic.twitter.com/sbE78rA5At
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) December 23, 2017
The video is clearly intended to be silly and humorous, but it wasn’t well received. And that’s putting it mildly. On Twitter, people called the video “garbage” and misogynistic.
https://twitter.com/DGB_JAIID/status/946073127393677312
Did Vanity Fair suggest that Mitt Romney, John McCain, John Kerry or Al Gore take up new hobbies? Hillary Clinton is a Wellesley and Yale Law grad, U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, and the only female presidential candidate win the popular vote by 3 million. Apologize #Misogyny https://t.co/ripJWFlSMY
— Nancy Levine Stearns ✍️ (@nancylevine) December 27, 2017
I also thought the @VanityFair "Go Away Hillary" take was garbage, but before you write them off as a faux-erudite aspirational gossip roundup grasping for relevance, where else will you read about Jackie Kennedy's nanny or Martin Scorsese's favorite brand of personal stationery?
— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) December 27, 2017
https://twitter.com/Selena_Adera/status/945724832297246720
Six New Year’s Resolutions for Vanity Fair’s Hive Editors: 1) Don’t make videos on Ambien 2) Show some fucking respect to the 1st female Presidential nominee of a major political party & the former 1st lady & Secretary of State 3) Learn what funny is 4) Fuck off 5) see 4 6) see 5
— Caissie (@Caissie) December 27, 2017
#CancelVanityFair turned into a popular hashtag.
I subscribed to @VanityFair for the first time last year. It's tons of pages of ads followed by some articles, a couple of them interesting. But now they've decded to shit on one of the most accomplished women in the world. Buh-bye #CancelVanityFair
— chris ☀️🌈☮️🌻🦄🌊 (@oldxtine) December 27, 2017
https://twitter.com/ProfSybill/status/945899019569647622
https://twitter.com/Realmommabear/status/946045741180620800
Director Ava DuVernay weighed in.
https://twitter.com/ava/status/946086500994658304
As well as outspoken actor Patricia Arquette.
https://twitter.com/PattyArquette/status/945812980939161600
The video was so widely criticized and hated that Vanity Fair staff members who appeared in it were bullied and harassed online this whole week. One writer locked her Twitter account.
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/946106108682399744
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/946108178848198657
Vanity Fair didn’t single out Hillary Clinton in its end-of-year political commentary. The publication also created New Year’s resolutions videos for President Trump and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Those videos feature equally silly suggestions, such as a Sanders joining forces with Bernie Sanders to form a radio show called Sanders and Sanders. Yet producing a video unprompted by any sort of news coverage about the former presidential candidate is strange (Clinton has said she will not run again). What’s even stranger is the backlash. The video seemed like the kind of internet content that briefly attracts negative attention before people move on to the next thing to get mad about. That didn’t happen. Vanity Fair tweeted a link to the video over the weekend, and people are still talking about it.
It’s even devolved—as everything did in 2017—into a wild, Russian conspiracy theory.
You made me look. You are correct. The new editor in chief at Vanity Fair is Radhika Jones who got her start with the Moscow Times. I have no idea what, if anything, to make of that. https://t.co/8UdTGDOWwN
— RiotWomenn (@riotwomennn) December 27, 2017
Maya Kosoff…is that a Russian name? https://t.co/hr6NF6P3vC
— #sunglassesUTR (@GomerWHoward) December 27, 2017
A spokeswoman for Vanity Fair told the Washington Post that the Clinton video “was an attempt at humor and we regret that it missed the mark.”