Bieber vs. Assange for Vanity Fair cover boy

(UPDATE: fixed, at right, by Andrea James)

Bieber won the cover. But *inside* the February issue of Vanity Fair, a feature on Wikileaks teased as WIKIGATE: The Twisted Inside Story of How Julian Assange Spilled the Government's Biggest Secrets.

"For his WikiLeaks bombshells to land with maximum force, Julian Assange needed the mainstream media. Sarah Ellison reports on the Faustian pact between Assange and Britain's leading investigative paper."

It's not online yet.

• [BB]

  I didn’t know that Vanity Fair’s demographic was age 12. They must have a good deal of disposable income these days.

• [Anonymous]

  One of the magazine publishing world’s best kept secrets. Vanity Fair is thoroughly researched, deeply knowledgeable, and well written.

  Unfortunately, it exists in the world of fashion, which is of little interest to the BoingBoing community; and I would say that there is very little *of* interest in the self-obsessed world of the vain and their ornamentation, period.

  But Vanity Fair can and do publish articles outside their traditional focus. When they do so, they get the very best in their respective fields to write, and to write superbly – and in depth.

  Here’s a sample:

  http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/07/third-world-debt

  And for fun, some background on AIG:

  m.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/aig200908

  I look forward to their article on Assange.

  Also: I don’t read VF – people send me links – and my idea of style is a confident instruction to my tailor that, whatever it is, it should be at least seventy years out of date.

• [vancouvergrrl]

  OMG now I see a very very slight resemblance to Edward Norton. (Not you, Beeb; dream on.)

• [Philipshade]

  The Assange-shop is just creeping me out.

  Shuddersss *ugh*

• [Dave Faris]

  re: the subtitle : I don’t know about adorable, but I completely endorse the inescapable part.

  • [EH]

    The people responsible for “inescapable” benefit from the association.

• [Xenu]

  I’d love to take a WikiLeak all over Justin Bieber’s face.

  • [Michael Smith]

    Thats not very nice Xenu.

• [xian]

  I vote encino man.

• [PFR]

  Maybe if we ignore them, they’ll both go away!

• [scifijazznik]

  in a Bizarro World somewhere, those lipstick prints belong to Christopher Hitchens.

• [franko]

  that poor kid. i just know that all his hair is going to fall out sooner rather than later because of all the crap they must put in it to get to stay in that position all the damn time. that and, you know, how just messed up he’s going to be as an adult.

  • [scifijazznik]

    It’s the price to pay for what Bill Hicks called “suckin’ Satan’s pecker.”

  • [hassenpfeffer]

    Maybe VH1 could organize a Scared Straight special in which The Bieb meets Danny Bonaduce.