Joan Juliet Buck, the post-modern Unity Mitford.
You will recall that on February 25, 2011, the ultra-chic, ultra-liberal Vogue magazine, led by high-profile Obama supporter Anna Wintour, published a fawning profile of Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad by Joan Juliet Buck.
So outrageous was Buck’s story that Seraphic Secret saved the article in the sure knowledge that Vogue would, sooner or later, be called to account for celebrating a mass murderer and his wife.
Of course, we were proven correct. So clueless and disgusting was Buck’s story about the al-Assads that Vogue flushed the story down the memory hole with nary an explanation.
Now, Joan Juliet Buck, the liberal author of the infamous piece, has penned an apology: My Vogue Interview: Mrs. Assad Duped Me, a self-serving kvetch.
Buck would have us believe that a) she was a reluctant participant in the story, and b) she didn’t know that Assad was and is a totalitarian butcher.
Here’s a sample:
I didn’t know I was going to meet a murderer.
There was no way of knowing that Assad, the meek ophthalmologist and computer-loving nerd, would kill more of his own people than his father had and torture tens of thousands more, many of them children.
In December 2010, there was no way of knowing that the Arab Spring was about to begin, and that it would take down the dictators of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.
If you have the stomach, you can read the entire piece here.
Buck claims that the so-called “Arab Spring” finally revealed the evil that is the heart of the Assad regime.
Only the naive or the stupid or the willfully ignorant can claim ignorance of Assad’s murderous reign prior to the Syrian civil war.
Buck’s self-pitying whine is filled with new details on meeting Asma Assad. Now, Buck makes disparaging remarks about Bashar’s long neck. Now, Buck paints Asma as a manipulative liar. Now, Buck reveals the sinister state repression she encountered. Now, she tells us that she glimpsed the true monstrous Assads.
Not surprisingly, like a good liberal, Buck paints herself as the victim. Buck is glued to Al Jazeera —Joan, sweetheart, it’s a Jew-hating channel, or didn’t you notice—and coverage of the Islamist uprisings, aka the Arab Spring.
I asked Vogue’s managing editor if we could meet to discuss how to handle the Assad piece. A meeting was held, without me. I was asked not to speak to the press.
And finally:
I didn’t want to write this piece. But I always finished what I started.
Including, we might add, doing PR for an evil tyrant and his “extremely thin and very well-dressed” wife.
Like Lady Macbeth, Joan Juliet Buck can scrub all she wants, but the red soles of her Louboutin heels are soaked not with dye, but with the blood of the dead.
