| Editor | Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen |
|---|---|
| Categories | Humor |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Circulation | 165,000 [1] |
| Founded | 1986 |
| Final issue | 1998 |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | New York City |
| Language | English |
| ISSN | 0890-1759 |
Spy was a satirical monthly magazine published from 1986 to 1998. [2] [3] Based in New York City, the magazine was founded by Kurt Andersen and E. Graydon Carter, who served as its first editors, and Thomas L. Phillips Jr., [4] its first publisher. Spy specialized in irreverent and satirical pieces targeting the American media and entertainment industries and mocking high society. [5] [6]
Some of its features attempted to present the darker side of celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, John F. Kennedy Jr., Steven Seagal, [7] Martha Stewart, and especially the real-estate tycoon Donald Trump and his then-wife Ivana Trump. [8] Pejorative epithets of celebrities, such as "Abe 'I'm Writing As Bad As I Can' Rosenthal", "short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump", [9] "churlish dwarf billionaire Laurence Tisch", "antique Republican pen-holder Bob Dole", "dynastic misstep La Toya Jackson", "bum-kissing toady Arthur Gelb", "bosomy dirty-book writer Shirley Lord", and "former fat girl Dianne Brill" became a Spy trademark. In the summer of 1992, the publication ran a story on President George H. W. Bush's alleged extramarital affairs. [10] The following year, it ran an article entitled "Clinton's First 100 Lies", detailing what it described as the new president's pattern of duplicitous behavior. [11]
In March 1989, Spy published "The Pickup Artist's Guide to Picking Up Women: A Case-by-Case Look at Movie Director James Toback's Street Technique." It was written by Vincenza Demetz and included accounts from thirteen women—including the author—who accused Toback of sexual misconduct. [12]
Spy was acquired in 1991 by Jean-Christophe Pigozzi and Charles Saatchi. [4] [1] In early 1994, the magazine, which was losing money and couldn't find a buyer, was forced to suspend publication. [13] It was saved by Sussex Publishers Inc., the publishers of Psychology Today and Mother Earth News , resuming publication with the July-August 1994 issue. [1]
The magazine ceased publication in 1998.
Introduced in the May 1987 issue, Private Lives of Public Enemies (renamed Private Lives of Public Figures, then simply Private Lives in 1989) presented fictional representations of public personalities in unflattering situations.
Separated at Birth?, first presented in a feature article in December 1987, was a regular section which would present juxtaposed photos of two different personalities exhibiting visual similarity, to comical effect. The first of each pair was typically a public figure or celebrity, and the second was usually another such figure, but sometimes (usually in the last set) a more absurd subject such as a fictional character, animal, or inanimate object. Separated at Birth? became one of the magazine's most popular features and was spun out into a set of paperback books.
In 1990, NBC aired a TV special Spy Magazine Presents How to Be Famous hosted by Jerry Seinfeld and featuring Victoria Jackson and Harry Shearer satirizing American celebrity culture.
In October 2006, Miramax Books published Spy: The Funny Years ( ISBN 1-4013-5239-1), a greatest-hits anthology and history of the magazine created and compiled by Carter, Andersen, and one of their original editors, George Kalogerakis.
In January 2015, after the Charlie Hebdo shooting, Donald Trump made a series of tweets attacking both Spy and Charlie Hebdo , calling Spy a "rag magazine" [14]
In October 2016, Esquire produced a special online version of Spy during the last thirty days of the presidential campaign. [15]
Garretson Beekman Trudeau is an American cartoonist, best known for creating the Doonesbury comic strip. Trudeau is also the creator and executive producer of the Amazon Studios political comedy series Alpha House.
Vanity Fair is an American monthly magazine of popular culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast in the United States.
Lisa Lampanelli is an American former stand-up comedian, actress and insult comic.
Air quotes, also called finger quotes, are virtual quotation marks formed in the air with one's fingers when speaking. The gesture is typically done with both hands held shoulder-width apart and at the eye or shoulders level of the speaker, with the index and middle fingers on each hand flexing at the beginning and end of the phrase being quoted. The air-quoted phrase is, in the most common usage, a few words. Air quotes are often used to express satire, sarcasm, irony or euphemism and are analogous to scare quotes in print.
Edward Graydon Carter, CM is a Canadian journalist who served as the editor of Vanity Fair from 1992 until 2017. He also co-founded, with Kurt Andersen and Tom Phillips, the satirical monthly magazine Spy in 1986. In 2019, he co-launched a weekly newsletter with Alessandra Stanley called Air Mail, which is for "worldly cosmopolitans". His current net worth is 12 million dollars.
Kurt Andersen is an American writer, the author of novels and nonfiction as well as a writer for television and the theater.
Ivana Marie Trump was a Czech-American businesswoman, socialite, and model. She lived in Canada in the 1970s, before relocating to the United States and marrying Donald Trump in 1977. She held key managerial positions in The Trump Organization, as vice president of interior design, as CEO and president of Trump's Castle casino resort, and as manager of the Plaza Hotel.
Kelly LeBrock is an American-born English actress and model. Her acting debut was in The Woman in Red (1984), alongside Gene Wilder. She also starred in the John Hughes film Weird Science (1985), and in Hard to Kill (1990), opposite Steven Seagal.
Arianne Bethene Zucker is an American actress and model. She is known for playing Nicole Walker on the NBC daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives since 1998.
John Ficarra is an American publishing figure. He was hired as assistant editor of the American satire magazine Mad in 1980, shortly after his debut as a contributing writer. He became editor-in-chief in 1985, when the incumbent retired, to 2018.
Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical weekly magazine, featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. The publication has been described as anti-racist, sceptical, secular, libertarian and within the tradition of left-wing radicalism, publishing articles about the far-right, religion, politics and culture.
James Lee Toback is an American screenwriter and film director. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1991 for Bugsy. He has directed films including The Pick-up Artist, Two Girls and a Guy and Black and White.
Eric Kaplan is an American television writer and producer. His work has included shows such as Late Show with David Letterman, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Malcolm in the Middle, Futurama and The Simpsons. He also worked on The Big Bang Theory throughout its run.
Comedy Central Roast is a series of celebrity roast specials that air on the American television channel Comedy Central. The first official Comedy Central Roast premiered on August 10, 2003. On average one or two roasts air every year. There are eight to ten people invited who roast each other before finally roasting the title subject of each show. As of 2019, seventeen roasts have aired. Targets of roasts have included musicians, actors and comedians. Since 2010, Comedy Central affiliates outside the United States have occasionally produced their own roasts; twelve such roasts have aired so far, in five countries.
Stefan A. Halper is an American foreign policy scholar and retired senior fellow at the University of Cambridge where he is a life fellow at Magdalene College. He served as a White House official in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, and was reportedly in charge of the spying operation by the 1980 Ronald Reagan presidential campaign that became known as "Debategate". Through his decades of work for the CIA, Halper has had extensive ties to the Bush family. Through his work with Sir Richard Billing Dearlove, he had ties to the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.
Spygate is a disproven conspiracy theory peddled by 45th U.S. president Donald Trump and his political base on many occasions throughout his presidential term. It primarily centered around the idea that a spy was planted by the Obama administration to conduct espionage on Trump's 2016 presidential campaign for political purposes. On May 17, 2018, Trump tweeted: "Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI 'SPIED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN WITH AN EMBEDDED INFORMANT.'" In that tweet, he quoted Andrew C. McCarthy, who had just appeared on Fox & Friends repeating assertions from his own May 12 article for National Review.
Trump: The Art of the Deal is a 1987 book credited to Donald J. Trump and journalist Tony Schwartz. Part memoir and part business-advice book, it was the first book credited to Trump, and helped to make him a household name. It reached number 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list, stayed there for 13 weeks, and altogether held a position on the list for 48 weeks. Trump cited it as one of his proudest accomplishments and his second-favorite book after the Bible.
Nimrod Kamer is a comedy writer, gonzo journalist and club crasher based in London.
On 7 January 2015, at about 11:30 a.m. in Paris, France, the employees of the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo were targeted in a shooting attack by two French-born Algerian Muslim brothers, Saïd Kouachi and Chérif Kouachi. Armed with rifles and other weapons, the duo murdered 12 people and injured 11 others; they identified themselves as members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the attack. They fled after the shooting, triggering a manhunt, and were killed by the GIGN on 9 January. The Kouachi brothers' attack was followed by several related Islamist terrorist attacks across the Île-de-France between 7 and 9 January 2015, including the Hypercacher kosher supermarket siege, in which a French-born Malian Muslim took hostages and murdered four people before being killed by French commandos.
"Donald Trump" is a segment of the HBO news satire television series Last Week Tonight with John Oliver that is devoted to Donald Trump, who later became the president of the United States. It first aired on February 28, 2016, as part of the third episode of Last Week Tonight's third season, when Trump was the frontrunner for the Republican Party nomination for the presidency. During the 22-minute segment, comedian John Oliver discusses Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and his career in business. Oliver outlines Trump's campaign rhetoric, varying political positions, and failed business ventures. The comedian also criticizes Trump for making offensive and false statements, and says the Trump family name was changed at one point from the ancestral name "Drumpf".
