The Free Press
If you’ve been on X this week, you’ve probably caught yourself reading a lot about the image on the front of the latest issue of New York magazine.
Not since Paper had Kim Kardashian pop champagne onto a coupe perched on her own tush has a cover set off more discussion than this one. The picture features dressed-up Gen Z Trumpers toasting and taking Washington, and it came with the headline “The Cruel Kids’ Table.” It was an image that launched a thousand posts including ruminations that we might be in the midst of the next roaring ’20s (or possibly a lamer version); about how the mainstream media would have you believe it was a whites-only party; and about whether or not the New Right should play ball with reporters who hate their guts.
If you haven’t seen it, we don’t know where you’ve been! But here it is:
According to half the people on the internet, the cover is aspirational. They say the revelers represent a triumphant return of the Reaganite ’80s, except this time with contouring. A recent article in The Atlantic argued that America needs to Party Hard Again, and these fresh-faced yuppies—with iPhones and Juuls glued to their palms—are doing just that. According to the other half, the kids on the cover are just what the headline says: cruel. And not just that—they’re representative of an age-old conservative losing streak when it comes to aesthetics. The partygoers are clad in polyester. They’re fratty—drinking High Noons and swaggering around. They’re nouveau riche trying to be old money. In other words, their worst sin isn’t just that they’re “cruel”—it’s that they’re tacky.
Today, Josh Code, our resident Gen Z party animal, and Suzy Weiss, who hates D.C. so much she refused to go to our own inauguration party, weigh in on the magazine cover seen across the internet.
You might be thinking that doing an autopsy of a magazine cover and the online discourse it spawned is a waste of time. And you might be right. But whether New York captured it well or not—we’ll get into that below—there has been a vibe shift to and within the cultural right. Think of this cover like a right-wing Rorschach test.
Suzy Weiss: Okay, Josh, I’ll bite. Pure aesthetics: This worked. It’s a grabbing image. And I love a pun. But the headline—which was trying to frame this party as a bacchanal of young supervillains newly unleashed for Donald Trump’s second term—didn’t match the photo, or actually, the piece. The subtext of Brock Colyar’s story, for me, was: “Are we all a little MAGA now?” And that’s the headline I would have gone with. What did you think of the cover image?
Josh Code: I think it’s beautiful. It looks like the first sorority formal after Covid lockdowns—there’s a nervous, excited air of “Guys, we can party again!” They’re dancing with their masks off! They’re wearing bow ties and cross necklaces! It’s the antithesis of the septum-pierced set you’d find at a Brooklyn warehouse rave. It’s MAGA-topia.
Let’s be real—the writer is pretty transparently jealous of these people. I think as much as Brock Colyar wants to be a wrecking ball to the “cruel kids,” he also wants to be one. He admits it feels “freeing, empowering,” to make off-color jokes and is amused when someone refers to him as a “friendly queer.”
SW: I’m not sure if it’s jealousy, or more like a deep suspicion that everyone there is supposedly evil. It felt, while I was reading, that the reporter was waiting for one of the MAGA people to suggest they all go out curb-stomping. That never happens, so the thrust of the piece seems to be that Trump’s coalition has widened to include a lot of urban influencer types and gay guys, which—let’s face it—those groups of people would go to the opening of an envelope. I’m curious: Do you see the people on the cover as cool kids? Cruel kids? Or a secret third thing?
JC: Conservatives aren’t cool. MAGA isn’t cool. But these kids—these cruel kids—they don’t care. And that is what’s cool. It’s 2025: Trump is president; identity politics are in retreat; canceling doesn’t work anymore. There’s an earnestness in these young Trump supporters; they’re not ashamed to be reactionary. They’ve already won, and lefty writers like Brock are dying to be in the room as conservative cultural dominance comes into view. These people are desperate for permission to admit that Ann Coulter is funny. They want to say tranny and retarded without risking expulsion from their polycules.
SW: We agree, Josh, that these people are not cool. For starters, they are in D.C. during the inauguration, which screams “senior class president.” The girl at the center of the cover image, in the black dress with the lace, is a confirmed sorority president, which suggests popularity and hotness, and not to split hairs here, but those things are different than being cool. I think where we disagree is that the people partying during inauguration weekend are emblematic of anything new or bigger than their own subculture: People with personal online brands and a crypto project to shill. As Richard Hanania pointed out, “Pretty sorority girls from middle-tier schools have existed forever.”
Basically, I’m not holding my breath that the next Harmony Korine was hanging out at the Power 30 Awards, though I think he’s out there and would bet he voted for Trump. If you are on a list or at a party where the number 30 is involved—you are not cool. I’m all for letting policy nerds fly their freak flags—I was a Senate page! I stand with them!—but I don’t buy the “cool” angle, or the “cruel” one. I think it’s more: The barbarians have crashed the gate.
“Trump’s coalition has widened to include a lot of urban influencer types and gay guys, which—let’s face it—those people would go to the opening of an envelope.” —Suzy Weiss
JC: There are two big debates that have broken out on the online right in the wake of this article. One is whether or not conservatives should even talk to the mainstream media at all.
Anna Khachiyan of Red Scare said, ”People should stop letting journalists into their events because they’re not used to getting media attention and secretly flattered by reading negative press about themselves.” Others like Chris Rufo disagreed, at least in part. He said, “There is a way to jiu-jitsu coverage in the left-wing press and use it to one’s immediate advantage. But this is a delicate process and cannot be sustainable in the long run. The Right must eventually set the terms.” Whose side do you take?
SW: Anna’s for sure. You can’t be in the new world—the one occupied by Substackers, YouTubers, podcasters, people who have rejected the mainstream—and the old one at the same time. You have to choose. And if you choose the new one, you cannot care what the old one thinks of you, or what they write about you. In short, don’t invite a fox into your henhouse and complain when your hens get called cruel. Harvard’s a nice logo, and The New York Times is a pretty font, but that’s all they are. Rufo is an operator, and a very effective one, so I do see where he’s coming from vis-à-vis using the mainstream and agree with his larger point that the right shouldn’t be reliant on the left to do their marketing.
Which leads us to the second big debate which is why the right is so terrible at aesthetics.
JC: For starters, it’s a shame that the right is so terrible at self-marketing because, in my opinion, conservatives are generally fitter and better-looking than liberals. Trump’s marketing project was political, but the one his supporters have taken on is cultural. Right now, they’re failing upward. How is it that a New York mag photographer who seems to have intentionally lit his subjects to appear evil and ugly actually made them look. . . kinda cool? If anything, they should thank New York mag for the free promo. That’s why I’m inclined to say to the New Right: Let journalists come to your parties, even if they’re sinister.
SW: Who knew we could get so much fodder out of a single party picture?
JC: I will die on the hill that conservatives are hotter than libs. But I will never understand why conservative aesthetics are so horrible. Look at Breitbart. Your eyes will bleed. Look at the New York Post. I’m trying to read about Tren de Aragua while getting huge pop-up ads for Flat Tummy Tea. It’s appalling.
SW: As a former Postie, I will go down fighting for that freaky website, which I can vouch is held together by duct tape and chewing gum. There’s something great about it—like old Gawker—where you feel like you’re getting in on the ground floor, like things aren’t polished up yet and that they’re a little rough. My take: The right is never going to beat the left at the art and design game. They basically invented the category. I think it’s better to be an outsider with a bad website and a bad haircut. But what happens to that scrappy vibe when you win and become an insider? I guess we’re about to find out.
For more on the new conservative aesthetic, read Kat Rosenfield’s piece, “The Raunchy Right Has Triumphed.”