The Reluctant Whore

Even though mindless, self absorbed Manhattan socialites are reliably pointless for the most part, at the end of the day you can’t really get pissed off at them for anything that substantial. They’re rich and idle and they don’t know what to do with themselves so they shop and marry into money and get named Pinkerton or Sanford or Gigi or whatever the hell their coked out parents call them, they go out to parties and get photographed and air kiss and cruelly alienate one friend at a time for their own amusement. You know - crap like that and I mean, ultimately, what are you going to do? Save up all your rage and then hide in an allies behind fashion week events waiting silently for the opportune moment to arrive and then, when they walk by, jump out and relentless smack them in the head with an empty bottle of designer imposter perfume while demanding to know if they get the hilarious irony?

Yeah, you’re probably not going to do…that.

Consequently, at any other time, a gossip item about aspirational socialite airhead Tinsley Mortimer would be greeted by a yawn at best or me smashing my god damned laptop against the freaking wall at worst.

This time, and sincere congratulations must go to them for this, the ordinarily gutter level New York Post has actually managed to draw direct links between Tinsley Mortimer's narcissism and the inhuman suffering of the masses of people suffering because of genocide in Darfur.

The basic gist of the Post’s item is that Lydia Hearst was meant to host a Darfur benefit, she got sick, the organizers called in Tinsley Mortimer and Olivia Palermo who both agreed to do it but then backed out at the last minute when they discovered the other was involved. They’ve been bitch slapping each other for years over maddeningly important things like who gets to stand where at what events. Or some other inane crap. So, at the last minute, the benefit was more or less hobbled simply because of Mortimer’s bullshit.

When I was in Vienna covering the Life Ball , Tinsley Mortimer was in our group (above is the picture I took of her with my friend Justin)and I firstly remember how shocked I was that she flat out wouldn’t pay for drinks at an official after party the night before the actual Life Ball so she went back to the hotel where the party was dwindling but at least the drinks were still free. Bear in mind that she married into one of the richest families in New York and the entire weekend in Vienna was subsidized by the Life Ball organizers and Vienna itself so she hadn’t dropped a dime and had still flown there first class and had her own extraordinary hotel room at the Meridien. Then, later on when she was drunk (and maybe I was too), I fired questions at her about politics and who she was voting for in the next election. I told her I was a journalist and she insisted that she didn’t want me to be mean and quote her in a way that made her look stupid. So many impeccable responses emerged in my mind at once that I couldn't actually settle on one, it was a blur in my head due to overload of patronising material. So we’re surrounded by thousands of gay people who had created this spectacular event that we were lucky enough to be brought to as guests, most of them had donated their time and skill for free, and she told me she was voting Republican no matter who it was.

I could have bitch slapped her then but I had a feeling that sooner or later someone would manage to discover and report on how she was an undeniable contributor to something like genocide, so I just clucked my tongue and rolled my eyes and looked as though I didn't approve.

But isn't it interesting how things turn out. It's only three months later and look what happened. [source]