• by May 2, 2007

Before even writing a word about Condé Nast Portfolio, the new business magazine, I feel compelled to disclose that I'm a charter member of the Schadenfreude club. Since its mid-April debut, the premiere issue has gotten mostly negative reviews on the Internet, and I was certain I knew why: because journalist-sorts comme moi want to hate any new, lavishly-funded publication boasting a star-studded roster of overpaid editors and writers -- especially if we're not one of them.

Allowing for my worst instincts, I tried to bring a cruelty-free mind and less jaundiced eyes to the job. But the reading experience was far worse than I expected, in so many infuriating -- and even cheesy -- ways that I lost count.

After all, how bad can the business version of Vanity Fair really be?

Let's put it this way -- the words ''smug'' and self-satisfied'' don't begin to cover it, although they describe the magazine pretty well. Imagine reading endless articles about people who are the Wall Street equivalents of Mr. Larry and Mrs. Laurie David -- she's the gorgeous eco-warrior who produced Al Gore's Oscar-winning movie, and lately suggested that we all limit ourselves to one square of toilet paper. And at least Larry David, of ''Seinfeld'' and ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'' fame, is a writer who cops to being a jerk -- a really, really rich jerk, at that. I use these two only as a basis of comparison -- there's no couple nearly as interesting as the Davids profiled here. Instead, among others, we get the Ken Griffins (he turned his hedge fund Citadel 'into "a financial juggernaut''-- yes, the magazine actually uses those three words!) The eyes would completely glaze, if not for Griffin's beautiful French wife, who's also smart. Do we care that, as the ''Photo Genesis'' page reports, ''in-between takes, Anne and Ken sat with dueling laptops in the location van.'' How very Suzy and Jack Welch of them!

The magazine is all about hedge funds and private equity, but before we can get to any meat, there's almost ten pages of self-congratulatory background on the background -- including the aforementioned Photo Genesis, ( or ''how we get that shot.'') Here again, do we really need to know about the problems in getting Stornoway Diamonds' CEO Eira Thomas photographed in the cold rain somewhere in British Columbia? (She's tricked out in diamonds and an evening gown, btw.)

Let's get to the Passover question -- why is this magazine different from all other magazines? I can't find an answer. I assumed that with the existence of Forbes and Fortune, both worthy publications, one difference might be that Portfolio would target itself more to a female audience. That does not seem to be the case. You'd think that a piece called ''What's Wrong with this Picture?,'' talking about the dearth of female dealmakers in the major private equity firms, would take a stand about that inequity, but it ends with a quote from a female, 35-year-old partner at such a group, saying, ''being the only woman can be an asset.'' Let's hear it for sisterhood!

So while it fastidiously kisses up to power (like we need an interview with Mel Karmazin that never asks him if he thinks he's overpaid), and also manages to present the marketing directors at such companies as GM and Procter & Gamble in a very attractive photo gallery, it saves the sniping for such easy targets as embarrassingly expensive bar mitzvahs.

If you think I'm being overly critical about the insular, clubby tone, take a look at Matthew Cooper's article, "Valerie, Scooter, and Me.'' He's the guy from Time Inc. who, along with Judith Miller of The New York Times, was ordered to testify in the Valerie Plame case. He opens the piece by talking about being ordered up to ''34'' -- the mount from which the Time Inc. execs rule. ''When I arrived on 34, I went to the office of Norman Pearlstine, the editor in chief of Time Inc's 100-plus magazines.... My late father-in law, Henry Grunwald, had occupied the same office, so I felt an odd kinship with the room and increasingly with Pearlstine.'' He had to get that disclosure out of the way, sure, but still, it reaches a whole new level of ick.

''Big Swinging Ticks'' is the humorously titled piece on pricey watches, but it applies, in D-form, to the Tom Wolfe piece on the new hedge fund managers, ''The Pirate Pose.''(And nowhere is it disclosed that Wolfe's daughter, Alexandra, late of The Wall Street Journal, is a staff writer at the magazine.) It's illustrated by a Annie Leibovitz photo of Wolfe at the wheel of his pimped-out white Cadillac GTS -- but that part is not supposed to be funny. Basically, Wolfe brings his Bonfire of the Vanities schtick to ''these people'' -- the ''bratwursts in blue jeans'' hedge fund managers who are the new class of power guys. It really, really bothers Wolfe that these people wear their striped shirts hanging over their pants, and sometimes go barefoot.

The piece starts with ''Not bam bam bam bam bam bam, but bama bampa barama bam...'' Lest you think it's another high-spirited riff, the bam is the sound of the rude hedge fun man who has the temerity to knock on the door of a fellow Park Avenue co-op owner. In reading the whole, slightly anti-Semitic piece, I really couldn't tell if Wolfe was trying to illuminate prejudice, or just show his. The gist is that ''these people'' are desperate for status and that they can't get into any clubs, so they had to make their own. Bam Bam!