I Wish More American Newspapers Sounded Like the Independent

So yesterday I was googling the words "berlin" and "gay" (I'm planning a trip) and I stumbled upon this profile of Rufus Wainwright in the Independent.

Midday in the kind of upmarket London restaurant where the waiters look like models and the chefs are busy coveting Michelin stars, and Rufus Wainwright is doing what he perhaps does best: talking about himself in highly reverential tones. To accompany his vocal patter, his knife and fork conduct an imaginary orchestra in the air while his plate of artfully designed couscous and chicory leaves lies untouched before him.

What a fucking beautiful lede. Acerbic, witty, devastatingly perceptive...check check check.

"The thing of it is," he drawls, speaking American the way Quentin Crisp spoke English, with every consonant exaggerated and every vowel extended way beyond its natural boundaries, "is that I like to tell the truth - in ev-er-y-thing. And the truth of the matter is, I really am extremely good at what I do." He laughs in his bone dry manner. "What? I should be falsely modest and pretend that, actually, I'm not that great? No, no. For me, that would never work. I am great, and that's all there is to it."

Man, Rufus is such a dick. But don't worry, the Independent interviewer puts him in his place.

Before his all-consuming arrogance and self-love threatens to suffocate this interview, let us try to put his peacock preening into some kind of mitigating context. Wainwright has just released a new album, his fifth, called Release the Stars. After maintaining cult status for the past decade, his records rarely selling more than a few hundred thousand copies (a comparatively paltry figure for someone with his profile), he wants this one to be his mainstream breakthrough, and to sell millions. In order to do this, he has to blow his own trumpet, and hard.

Here, the writer manages to critique his subject and sympathize with him. Quite a feat, indeed.

Compare this to what the Seattle Times wrote about him when he was here in July, 2007:

"You're an amazing audience ... and I'm an amazing performer!"

A packed Moore Theatre couldn't have agreed more, giving Rufus Wainwright his sixth standing ovation of the night while he and his septet linked arms, blew kisses and bowed.

The writer here just assumes we are all in love with Rufus Wainwright, and his ego deserves no extra scrutiny.

After the house lights came on, strangers beamed at each other like they'd just seen a shooting star.

Okay, yada yada, people love concerts, I get it. It's not exactly a newsflash. Seattle audiences love a big 'ol self-obsessed 'mo. I still like Britain's version better.

And Rufus? Listening to you still makes me feel like I'm living in a dramatic reinterpretation of my boringass life. So, thanks. No sarcasm intended.