If Vanity Fair covers are any bellwether of which issues merit our attention, you may have to knock the environment farther down the list.

After three years of publishing its May "green" issue, complete with celebrities like Julia Roberts, Madonna and Leonardo DeCaprio, the monthly magazine decided to do away with the earth-friendly theme. The Guardian reports that some say the global financial crisis has such issues down the international priority list, and environmentalists are worried, but parent company Condé Nast says that’s not true. In fact, it’s more because the rest of the media has finally started paying attention to the topic on which Vanity Fair doesn’t need to dedicate an entire issue.

"Vanity Fair remains committed to covering the environment, and we’ll spread our coverage throughout the year, instead of relegating the bulk of it to a specific issue," a company spokeswoman said. "With so much else going on relating to the global financial crisis, we have been focusing on that of late."

The Earth is not the only reason Vanity Fair is in the news today.

Author Michael Lewis is catching some flak for his article on Iceland’s financial crisis in the April issue. Icelanders aren’t taking too kindly to being called "among the most inbred human beings on earth" or "mousy-haired and lumpy" in his report, which details his views on how Iceland’s economy has melted, and also includes a little about how some Icelanders believe in elves. His descriptions of the native people, whom he says love to "drink themselves into oblivion and wander the streets until what should be sunrise," raised eyebrows in the blogosphere.

Writes Gregory A. Burris on CounterPunch:

Lewis’ article is chock full of cringe-inducing generalizations and racist anecdotes. He likens Icelandic men to ‘moose, rams, and other horned mammals’ and calls one particular Icelander he sees at a bar ‘a bearded troll.’ So barbaric does Lewis find the people of Iceland that he even goes so far as to describe overheard throes of passion coming from his Icelandic neighbors at a Reykjavík hotel as ‘Orc shrieks.’ As I masochistically forced myself to continue reading Lewis’ article, I could not help but wonder: how did such a dimwitted diatribe ever make it through Vanity Fair’s editorial process? Did the editors really find it fit to print? Yes, unfortunately for us, they really did."