After reading the feature, one thought: ``Jerry Seinfeld is the last good man on Earth.'' After reading about the amendments Vanity Fair allowed him to make, one thought: ``The National Enquirer is the last good magazine on Earth.'' Because the more fawning and forelock-tugging the glossies become, the trashier the trash papers get.

The National Enquirer is Vanity Fair's twisted reflection. Vanity Fair will tell you about Jerry Seinfeld's love for his mother. The National Enquirer tells you about his Scientology and taste in women. What Vanity Fairairbrushes out, the Enquirer brushes back in.

American journalism needs the National Enquirer to offend. It was the Enquirer that printed a photo of O.J. Simpson wearing the ``ugly ass'' Bruno Magli shoes he claimed never to have owned, whose sole-print was at the murder scene. And it is the Enquirer that, week in and out, keeps a vigil for JonBenet Ramsey. Its rage is awe-inspiring, and the standard of its investigative journalism shames the serious magazines.

Vanity Fair is supposed to be the last bastion of serious journalism. Yet one editor privately confessed that when Barbra Streisand was photographed she insisted her clothes be credited to DKBS rather than DKNY because ``that gown was my idea''. Vanity Fair's ``serious'' articles report the same murder trials that the Enquirer covers -- unadulterated sex and violence -- but with a smug detachment and in more than 8,000 words.

The Enquirer is certainly less snobby than VF in its attitude tocelebrity. Once you are a character you are a character for life: Mary Tyler Moore and Sylvester Stallone may not have had a hit in 20 years, but they are treated in exactly the same way as Leonardo DiCaprio and Mariah Carey. Glossies only take risks when they know they won't be interviewing that celebrity again. Three years ago VF accused Courtney Love of taking heroin while pregnant. It didn't worry because she was clearly an overweight junkie who was never going to be a serious Hollywood contender. Big mistake. Huge.

The fawning film magazine Premiere finally printed an unflattering profile of Kevin Costner, only daring to do so because his career is completely in tatters.

One imagines that the New Yorker bitterly regrets having given Roseanne copy approval a few years back. Meanwhile, Allure recently pulped every single example of its February issue because Jennifer Aniston's publicist didn't like the picture chosen for the cover. I recently did an interview with an up-and-comingstarlet for a British fashion magazine. She behaved very badly, although I admitted, that I was an admirer of her work, found her very beautiful and, by the end, began to warm to her. Her outraged publicist claimed it was the most mean-spirited article he had ever seen and that the starlet's Los Angeles' agents were absolutely horrified. Of course they were. We're talking about a country where Gary Shandling -- Larry Sanders, for Christ's sake -- is suing his manager for ``not showing him enough love''. And that's what it comes down to. Everyone wants to be loved. If you're a big star, big enough to make the cover of Vanity Fair, then you really can force people to love you.

-- The Guardian News Service