How Many Times Does This <i>Vogue</i> Piece Make You Want to Vomit?

It's still early, but we think Vogue has published the most intolerable article of 2013. "American Pastoral: Miranda Brooks and Bastien Halard's Brooklyn Home" is horrible in every way possible; thrusting privileged quaintness at readers like a hammer bludgeoning a skull. Let's go ahead and count up all the times we wanted to vomit while reading the piece, shall we? "Did you feed the bunnies?" Miranda Brooks asks her husband, Bastien Halard, as she ladles cauliflower soup into an antique ironstone china bowl. This is the first goddamn sentence. If you can't stomach this, just close this tab and forget you ever heard of this article. Go on, save yourself. It's better this way. Still here? Grab some Pepto, because this is about to get downright nasty. And he’s replaced the hay in their hutch, which Halard, an architect, built himself this past spring on the rooftop garden of the couple’s four-story Neo-Grec Boerum Hill brownstone. This is the third goddamn sentence. You know what a hutch is? A hutch is a cage. But rich people who own bunnies and eat cauliflower soup while standing atop their million dollar homes don't own cages, you stupid commoner, they own hutches. Yes, their bunnies live in a nicer crib than you. Halard and their two daughters, Poppy, six, and Violette Grey, four. You can't really make fun of kids, so instead we'll just hope that Poppy ends up being best friends with Hamburger Roll and move on. "We said, ‘We’re going to Brooklyn, so let’s just pretend we’re moving to the country.’ " Oh, hahahaha! Brooklyn is such a weird little place! It's so very fun to play pretend while most of the country struggles paycheck to paycheck! The lifestyle the couple has created further insulates them from the urban bustle. By "urban bustle" they mean poor people. Only poor people bustle. Rich people prefer a dignified scoot. After supper, it’s up to bed, where they are read one English story and one French story each; then Brooks and Halard will cross the garden again and return to work for several hours in their respective offices. "I’m really amazed at how well we’re getting on," marvels Brooks at this arrangement—and Halard nods in agreement. Yes it is truly amazing how someone with an abundance of money can make it these days, isn't it? The world is so silly sometimes! "I’m sort of obsessed with teatime." Ah f*ck. The theme is Alice in Wonderland by way of Kings County. Okay, we don't even know that that means. It’s clear that this is not a token foray into urban farming but rather a landscape as elaborately planned as the ones Brooks fashions everywhere from Montauk to Marrakech. "I read a wonderful book about Elizabethan gardens, so I decided to do that, as mad as that sounds." "Mad" is definitely one way of putting it.

Fishbowl

How Many Times Does This Vogue Piece Make You Want to Vomit?

Chris O'Shea

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