Latest news with #WhenTheGoingWasGood
Ottawa Citizen
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Ottawa Citizen
Graydon Carter's toques to riches story began with 'instructive failures' in Ottawa
One of the most celebrated magazine editors of his generation, Graydon Carter grew up in Ottawa an unlikely success. Article content Article content His altogether miraculous rise from university dropout — he was a distracted student at both uOttawa and Carleton — to the editor's chair at Vanity Fair during the golden age of magazines is chronicled in his new memoir, 'When The Going Was Good.' Article content Article content Carter, now 75 and the eminence grise of New York City style, spent his formative years in Manor Park, where he was a resentful victim of Ottawa's winter, much burdened by its wools and flannels. Article content Article content The book reveals he was so directionless as a young man that he fell into the federal bureaucracy — and narrowly escaped a career as a public servant. Article content 'I had dreams, but nobody would have ever called me ambitious,' writes Carter. 'It could also be said that my parents, and indeed a good number of my friends, thought that life, in the professional sense, had little in store for me.' Article content Carter's Saskatchewan-born father, Edward, was a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot and Second World War veteran who loved nothing more than to fart and to collect wood. He won the heart of Graydon's mother, by among other things, farting loudly in a crowded movie theatre and blaming her for the crime, and he boasted to friends of his ability to bum trumpet the theme song from 'The Bridge On The River Kwai.' Article content Article content Carter remembers being press-ganged to poach firewood from the Greenbelt. His father was 'a bit tight,' Carter reports, and would regularly enlist him and his brother to help troll National Capital Commission forest in search of felled logs. Article content Article content 'Like moonshiners,' he writes, 'we did all this in the near dark, with just the jerky movements of my father's spotlight casting an eerie silent-movie aspect to the agony.' Article content Carter's mother, Margaret Kelk, was considerably more refined. The daughter of a soap executive, she grew up in Toronto's Forest Hill neighbourhood, attended Havergal College, and summered at the family's Muskoka cottage. She was dating the captain of the University of Toronto football team when Edward Carter suddenly blew into her life. Article content They married in September 1946, and welcomed their first son, Graydon, three years later. In the early 1950s, the family moved to Zweibrücken, Germany, where Edward Carter was stationed with the RCAF.
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘You Did Not!': Ex-Vanity Fair Editor Stuns Anderson Cooper With How He Trolled Trump
Graydon Carter, the former longtime editor of Vanity Fair, surprised CNN's Anderson Cooper with a story about how he once trolled Donald Trump ― and hit a particularly sore spot for the now-president. Carter's feud with Trump dates back decades when, in GQ magazine, he described Trump's 'too large' cufflinks and 'too small' hands in what was Trump's 'first national exposure,' he told Cooper. 'That drove him crazy,' Carter recalled on Monday while promoting his new memoir, 'When The Going Was Good.' Carter's Spy magazine later coined the now-infamous nickname 'short-fingered vulgarian' for Trump, a moniker Carter said 'drove him crazy' even more. 'We tried to be friends for a period, and that didn't work out,' Carter remembered. And then, just before Trump announced his 2016 presidential run, Carter said he received from him a 25-year-old ad for his 'Art of the Deal' book with Trump's hand in the promo picture circled by a gold-colored Sharpie. Next to it, Carter said, Trump had written, 'See, quite large.' Carter said he 'stapled a card to it,' writing, 'Actually quite small,' and had it hand-delivered right back to Trump. 'You did not!' Cooper exclaimed. 'I did,' Carter confirmed. 'I should have held onto it.' 'You couldn't let it go?' Cooper asked. 'It was just too easy,' Carter replied. Later in the interview, Cooper asked the Canadian-born Carter about Trump's recent rhetoric on the country, including trade war threats and his demand that it become America's 51st state. 'You cannot ask for a better neighbor. Canada is a loyal ally in times of war, a great trading partner,' Carter said. 'I'm not quite sure what he thinks the end game is here because it's not going to happen,' he added. 'Canadians do not want to be Americans. And if he goes in in the winter, he may face the same problems that Hitler did when he went into Russia in the winter. Canadians are good on ice, and they are tough.' Watch the interview here: Former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter shares details on his "short-fingered vulgarian" comment about President Trump years ago. Carter writes about that and much more in his new memoir "When the Going Was Good". — Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) March 25, 2025 Fox News Hosts Put Most Ridiculous Spin On Group War Chat Scandal Fallon Roasts Trump's Portrait Meltdown With Hilarious Blasts From The Past Critics Rip Brian Kilmeade's 'Chilling' Remark About Undocumented Immigrants
