NEWS & COLUMNS

Best Worldwide News Coverage
Of a New York Death

John Gotti

You Talkin’ to U.S.? We were traveling in Europe when the King of New York bit it last June. Needless to say, we weren’t disappointed by the European reaction to his death. The Europress managed to turn Gotti into an American icon on the level of Elvis and Marilyn–and the thuggish archetypal counterpart of today’s U.S. corporate malefactors. Yes, there were the usual tumbling assortments of cultural cliche and artifact–the Guardian went for The Sopranos and The Godfather, Le Monde plumped for Scorsese. (Germany’s Spiegel even mined The Smoking Gun.) Hell, Gotti’s death was big news in Belgrade’s newspapers and magazines–and that city teems with a mob violence reminiscent of Chicago in the 1930s. Let’s just say that the Dapper Don would’ve been proud of the international impact that he had at the final curtain.

Best Put-Down Of Rock Critics

Michael Corcoran and Robert Wilonsky Austin American-StatesmanMarch 14, 2002

To Be Read While Hottubbing with Marilyn Manson. Poking fun at rock critics is like hand-grenading fish in a barrel–and it’s so much fun it’s irresistible. Last March, as hundreds of "rock scribes" descended on Austin, TX, for the SXSW music festival, the Austin American-Statesman’s Michael Corcoran and Robert Wilonsky offered an hilarious guide to rock critic foibles with the hed "‘Yes, you are a groupie’ and 35 more things every rock critic should know." Among the items on the list:

• Writing for rollingstone.com isn’t the same as writing for Rolling Stone.

But then, these days writing for Rolling Stone isn’t the same as writing for Rolling Stone.

• Your band stinks.

• Lester Bangs is dead. What’s your excuse?

• Three...of the most frightening words ever: "Robert Christgau protege."

• Let’s see if you can write a concert review without using any of these words: pulsating, pounding, post-(something).

• Greil Marcus has earned the right to not make sense. You haven’t.

• Having Courtney Love hit on you during an interview is as special as a free coffee refill.

• Three things you know nothing about: dance music, hip-hop and jazz.

• Re: the Strokes. Make up your mind already.

Best Cartoonist

Ward Sutton

It’s No "Mr. Wiggles," But... Not surprisingly, given his print vehicle, Ward Sutton’s politics are on the same page as faux-populist Michael Moore’s and just a smidgen to the right of the hysterical Ted Rall’s. But let’s be fair: Locating an illustrator who doesn’t think George W. Bush is a brain-dead cowboy is harder than finding a high-school graduate who can name at least 30 of this country’s 50 states.

Sutton was given a full page in the Voice’s Sept. 11 issue and it was by far the most poignant piece that tabloid has published in 2002. The "cartoon," headlined "Visitors," shows a hopeless man on a top floor of the World Trade Center a year ago asking the question, "Can anyone out there see me? Anyone?" In quick succession, a number of people appear in the haunting panels.

An amateur photographer says: "I can see you! I just took a photo and if you look at it closely you can see that towel that you’re waving. I’m right down there... On my roof... Still in my pajamas. I can see the whole thing. I’ll show the photo to people for the rest of my life. It’s an amazing shot."

A soldier: "I can see you. Your death will motivate me to kill others."

Bruce Springsteen: "I can see you. Your story will inspire songs that will launch my career comeback."

John Ashcroft: "I can see you. The fear your fate will induce will allow me to limit civil liberties nationwide."

An ambulance chaser: "I can see you. Your worth. And it’s a lot more than the piddly $1.6 million the government will offer in compensation! Don’t worry. I’ll fight to get your survivors a sizable, respectable settlement."

And Osama bin Laden: "I can see you. Right now...on television. I can see you. And I’m laughing."

As we said, Sutton’s worldview is scripted by the likes of Susan Sontag, but this single page in the Voice was more valuable than all the mawkish television programming provided by self-congratulatory, pampered talking heads that fouled the airwaves on Sept. 11, 2002.

Best Rapist

David Mills, Village Voice, Aug. 13, 2002

It Wasn’t Your Fault, Dave. David Mills’ Village Voice review of a collection of June Jordan essays in the Aug. 13 issue was certainly laudatory–until Mills got carried away with showing his love for the sisterhood:

Jordan’s personal ferocity and rectitude compel me to doff my critic’s cap and break my own decade-long silence about a violent act that I committed. A women I loved hurt me with incessant barbs of "Leos have thicker dicks." She even joked about it as we made love. I vomited repeatedly, had nightmares about these men. Following an argument one evening, we fooled around. After I entered here, she asked me to stop. I didn’t. Jordan’s eponymous essay "Some of Us Did Not Die" intimates that, because living is not a given, we owe something to those whose lives have been taken. Jordan succumbed to breast cancer on June 14, 2002, but her words continue to rattle in my psyche. So I offer my admission as an initial payment on a long overdue debt of silence, both mine and other men’s.

Thanks, Dave, but credit for your sexual assault can stay entirely with you. Jordan might be pleased, though; after all, she was such an avid apologist for Mike Tyson.

Best Thoroughbred Handicapper

Paul Moran, Newsday

Picking, Then Grinning. Most of the time, when Paul Moran says the horse can do, he does. Picking winners at the racetrack is a tough racket, and a good handicapper is like a good baseball player: hitting three out of 10 counts as remarkably successful. Moran, a handicapper for Newsday’s horse racing pages, regularly outpicks his colleagues.

Predicting which big fast animal will make it first around the track is a voodoo craft. Moran makes it look simple, and seems to have a special knack for tabbing longshots. (We ate out four nights running, including a trip to Bouley, thanks to a $20 bet that returned $850 on Moran’s advice.) Plus, his columns in Newsday have long beat up the mismanagement at OTB and he’s one of the loudest voices noting that winter racing at Aqueduct is like the four-legged version of the Mets this year: it stinks and most of the participants are losers. He has off-days like all horseplayers do, but when Moran is on, put your money where his mouth is.

Best In-Absentia Conviction

Teddy Kennedy

Ethel’s Nephew Takes the Fall. So, on Aug. 29, 2002, 32 years after Sen. Ted Kennedy went AWOL after driving off a bridge in Massachusetts, leaving a woman to die in the submerged car, Michael Skakel (Bobby Kennedy’s nephew by marriage) was convicted of a 1975 murder. Skakel, who was sentenced to 20 years-to-life for killing teenager Martha Moxley, is now 41 and has led a pathetic life. As a fat, recovering alcoholic and divorced father, who was in and out of private schools, rehab clinics and apparently the victim of an abusive father, Skakel didn’t present a sympathetic defendant to the Connecticut jury.

The evidence in the musty case was muddled–whether Skakel is really guilty of the crime is a legitimate question–but the media bloodlust for finally nailing a Kennedy (even if he isn’t a "real" one) was perfectly clear.

The day before the judge’s verdict, Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr (usually terrific) couldn’t contain himself. He wrote: "Judge John Kavanewsky, Michael Skakel’s life is in your hands today. So give him life. Life in prison... Wipe that smirk off his smug, dissipated face... For once, we’d all like to see a Kennedy get what’s coming to him... The Kennedys’ rule is, even if there is an autopsy, there’s still no foul, at least if it was one of them who killed or raped ‘some girl,’ as Ted once described his nephew’s [William Kennedy Smith] AuBar...date, shall we say... [Skakel] killed a female, he’s a rummy, he’s a druggie, he’s stupid, he struts around in suits he’s 80 pounds too fat to be bearing, he’s never worked a day in his life and he thinks he’s better than anyone else. All of which makes him, at the very least, an honorary Kennedy. A Kennedy with an asterisk... Ruin their Labor Day weekend, Judge. Give the fat murderer life. For once, make the Kennedys play by the same rules the rest of us do."

The special treatment the Kennedy family receives after brushes, both minor and major, with the law, is hardly breaking news. Nor is the hypocrisy shown by Kennedy elected officials when it comes to women: You can’t find a more vociferous supporter of abortion rights and sexual harassment suits than Teddy Kennedy, or his son Patrick, but in their personal lives it’s been documented time and again that they treat women like dirt.

Convict a Kennedy? Maybe 20 years down the road, when the fourth generation misbehaves, but even as Camelot crumbles there’s still enough mythology left to spare the family’s survivors any meaningful justice. But Michael Skakel, a man born to aristocracy whose life subsequently went to seed, was different. He was expendable, an inoculation for the next time a "real" Kennedy commits a felony.

Best Dick Gephardt Quote

Presidential Twig. The GOP can only hope that House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt somehow manages to capture the Democratic nomination to oppose President Bush in 2004. Even more than Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts aristocrat who believes he’s communing with "the people" when he drinks a beer straight out of the bottle, Gephardt is a lost-in-time loser.

As recorded by The New York Times on Sept. 15, Gephardt told reporters: "I have strong beliefs, but I have never known that I was right on everything. In fact, I have never known that I was right on anything."

Best Website Parody We
Wish Somebody Would Do

www.andysully.com

Signorile Did Not Write This. Didn’t you think Hitch’s take on Howie’s interview about MoDo’s column on Rummy was fabulous? Who has a more masculine jawline, me or the Mickster? Does my facial hair make me look fat? Yay Dubya! Whoo-hoo, Condi! Didn’t you love Pod’s editorial about Dick and Kenny and goo-goo gaa-gaa ooga booga la la la blah blah blah...

Best Bushism

Now Am I in Arden. More Fool...Some Guy or Other... Whatever you think of our current president, or his policies or his leadership, you have got to admit he’s the very worst extemporaneous speaker to bumble around in the White House since at least Gerald Ford, if not Ulysses S. Grant. The guy just can’t talk too good, on or off the cue cards. His apparently total inarticulateness doesn’t necessarily make him an idiot, as liberals universally insist–but he sure does sound like one. Between the malapropisms and the simply bizarre facial tics–he makes the weirdest faces since LBJ, and, like LBJ’s terrifying grins and grimaces, they often seem to be completely disconnected from what he’s saying–the guy is painful to watch.

Maybe it’s intentional. Most politicians really don’t want us to listen very closely to what they’re saying.

Anyway, of all the celebrated "Bushisms" Our Leader blurted out this year, probably our favorite was the one uttered in Nashville just this past Sept. 17 and instantly spread around the world:

"There’s an old saying Tennessee–I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee–that says, fool me once, shame on [pause]–shame on you. Fool me [painfully long pause]–you can’t get fooled again."

Oh yes we can. We prove it every four years.

Best Public Identity Crisis

Stephen Schwartz

A Boy Named Suleyman. Neocon Weekly Standard writer Stephen Schwartz first popped into wider public view during NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia, spouting a virulently anti-Serb line and scribbling about his conversion to the Sufi branch of Islam as a result of his Balkan travels. (Schwartz’s confession of faith, written under the name "Suleyman Ahmad Stephen Schwartz," can be found easily on the Internet.)

After 9/11, Schwartz was out in front of the "Saudi Arabia is the enemy" camp, railing in print about the dangers of Wahabbism–but not exactly advertising his own Muslim faith as he did so. Schwartz’s inflamed opinions on this topic even copped a mention from New York Times columnist William Safire. In a July column, Safire argued that Schwartz was canned from a job at the Voice of America in part because of his fierce anti-Saudi punditry. The piece also prompted Slate to out Schwartz as a Sufi Muslim, with columnist Timothy Noah dubbing Schwartz as "the Weekly Standard’s House Muslim."

In a reply to Noah’s queries, Schwartz confirmed his Sufi faith and proclaimed his belief "in the ultimate unity of the Abrahamic faiths." When it comes to publicizing Schwartz’s forthcoming Doubleday book, The Two Faces of Islam, however, the Abrahamic faiths are unifying faster than anyone expected. Not only is the author’s Muslim background left unmentioned in the Amazon.com book description, but Schwartz is described as "a Jewish historian" who "has devoted years to the study of Islam." His Amazon bio also prominently foregrounds his work "as a reporter for the Weekly Forward"–and still has him at that VOA job. Another conversion that we haven’t heard about yet–or just an out-of-date bio?

Best Hypocritical
Response to an "Outrage"

The "Opie & Anthony" Stunt

No, You Should be Ashamed. This past August, Catholic groups were in a frenzy after a Virginia couple was caught having sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral as a stunt for WNEW’s "Opie & Anthony" show. The couple (as we’re all well aware) snuck into a side vestibule with one of the show’s producers, who broadcast the event live during the popular afternoon program.

Opie and Anthony had broadcast similar stunts before, but never in St. Patrick’s.

Well, the Catholics went nuts, quickly organizing a phone and e-mail campaign demanding that the FCC revoke WNEW’s license. The show went on hiatus, Opie, Anthony and two station executives were canned. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the courthouse to jeer the couple as they left their first hearing on public lewdness charges.

In the midst of it all, a friend of ours brought up a very good point: Why weren’t these same people in Boston, or New Mexico, or California, or here, or any of the dozen other places where hundreds of priests were being charged with molesting thousands of young boys (often on church property)? Why weren’t they "outraged" about that? Was it just because there was a woman involved?

The blatant hypocrisy in this snit about a silly radio show, though not surprising, is still mind-numbing.

Best Edward R. Murrow Imitation
by a Baseball Broadcaster

Michael Kay of the YES Network

Glopping the Paint on the Word-Picture. Word on the baseball broadcast front is there’s nothing worse than a radio man who has switched permanently to television. His attention to detail will inevitably hamstring his on-air performance in which the viewers can see the action and therefore do not need the line, "Rondell White looks up, has it in his sights and backs to the track. He settles under it and makes the catch, firing to Derek Jeter at short who holds the runner at second base..." Oh, this is the Braille version of the Yankee game for cable viewers fortunate enough to have George Steinbrenner’s boutique network coming in on the idiot box? Kay should just retire and do his thorny Charlie Rose imitation on the embarrassing Centerstage for the rest of his career, then–when Kay finally retires from broadcasting–maybe he could be employed as a busboy at Joe Franklin’s restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen. Joe would certainly treat him well.

Best Blog

The Bazima Chronicles
www.bazima.surreally.com

Doin’ It in the Name of Social Science. The Bazima Chronicles comprises the about-thrice-weekly Web entries of a single Brooklyn woman who conducts her active sex life with a half-opened eye toward fulfillment of the monogamous kind, i.e., a boyfriend who meets her standards. Sound like every Sex and the City episode ever aired? You betcha. Only this is nonfiction and noncommercial. And to the extent that it covers sex and relationships in these times, better than a lot of what we’ve seen in print lately (and definitely more titillating than the stuff that shows up on the likes of Nerve.com).

As much as it hurts, a nod should probably be given to the medium itself. Lacking the need to manipulate her essays so that they conform to some bankable single-clause aperçu (read: contrived bullshit theory), the author is free to simply tell her story, modulating in intensity as reality dictates, offering up insight at her own pace. However, for any of that to work, the goods’ve gotta be there. They are. In evocative, self-effacing and often gut-bustingly funny detail. And Bazima makes it easy on us too. Wanna cut through the fluff and get straight to the muff? She provides a sub-index entitled "Selected Hayrolls" that chronicles recent dates that’ve gone the distance.

What we know about the author of the Bazima Chronicles is that she is black and Jewish and, as she puts it, "in love with boys, sex and the good rock music." It was around February when a friend with a weblog first tipped us to her. We didn’t pay much attention at the time, feeling that too much of blogging is just solipsism without the payoff. We were also turned off by what appears to be a tendency on the part of Web diarists to anguish over the topsy-turvy mess that their blogger lifestyles have made of the rest of their world. "Monday, June 5th: I guess I just never realized that naming names and posting the sordid details of my personal life online would create so much awkwardness and tension with my best friend Suzy and Mom and Frank Smith, the premature ejaculator I’m dating..." Disingenuous or stupid: pick one. Thankfully, Bazima knows all this and is unapologetic when it comes to what and about whom she writes. Be it a disaster date, mediocre one-night stand or that once-in-a-blue fantasy coupling, she gives good story. For that, we follow her like a soap.

Best Bullshit Slogan

"Free Trade Is an Oxymoron"

Free English Lesson. The idiots who printed up this sticker and plastered it all over downtown are dumber than your average sloganeering cretins. Even those know not to use a slogan that invites an easy, accurate comeback. In this case: "No, it’s not." The "free" in "free trade" means "unencumbered" and that’s all there is to it. The idiots meant to say, "Free Trade Is Expensive," which would have been debatable, thus potentially thought-provoking. We suspect they didn’t know what "oxymoron" actually means, and only used the word because the "moron" in it makes it sound like an insult. What morons.

Best Wrong 9/11/02 Prediction

Michael Wolff
New York Magazine

Stick to the AOL Debacle. There’s little to recommend in New York these days, as the media recession has forced lightweight editor Caroline Miller to cut back on copy to compensate for a downturn in advertising. Fair enough, that’s a problem every editor’s had for the past 18 months. But Miller’s priorities–keep the fashion, home decor and Best NYC Doctors specials, gut the political commentary–are tilted to the innocuous writing that some readers used to ignore in favor of the more substantive material. For example, it’s an election year in New York, yet the magazine’s excellent columnist Michael Tomasky appears infrequently. Surely Miller could sacrifice one page of high-end real estate transactions to accommodate Tomasky’s analysis of the gubernatorial contest.

But we digress. Michael Wolff, the infuriating but entertaining "This Media Life" columnist, maintains an almost-weekly schedule. He’s ardently anti-Bush–even claiming the President was hitting the bottle last year–but was ahead of the curve on the administration’s plans for Iraq, giving it credit for superb media manipulation. Weeks before Bush’s address to the UN, which mollified those who called the President a unilateralist cowboy and accused him of "dithering," Wolff anticipated exactly how the White House would hog the headlines this fall.

He wrote: "Someone has likely deduced that the prospect of war–whether or not we actually end up going to war–is a beautiful backdrop for the president... What’s more, it’s all about him. He’s the center of the drama. He’s the man. And the suspense only increases that focus on him. He has the ability and, we have been led to believe, the will to exercise the power (with Clinton, we would have doubted his will). Therefore, he becomes the power. The greatest power, arguably, that history has ever known resides in him. Debate is fine, but in the end, as the White House keeps saying with quite a leap of logic, it’s decision."

But for such a reputedly media-savvy guy, Wolff really blew it last June when he suggested the first anniversary of Sept. 11 would arouse anger in Americans and not the orgy of tv exploitation and tremendous national unity.

Wolff predicted: "But by death’s first anniversary, we often tend to be in something less than a commemorative or reflective mood. We’re querulous. We’re finally getting pissed off. We feel guilty ourselves [We do?]. The symbols are tired by now (the flag in my apartment-building lobby is certainly grimy–we’re all just waiting for someone to step up and take it down). We want closure, and it ain’t there. We’ve been good sports for a whole year. But now it’s time to stick it to someone."

Wolff’s apartment flag might be "grimy," but just a few weeks ago, on Sept. 11, citizens weren’t "querulous" at all, and Wal-Mart no doubt rang up huge sales for another batch of fresh American flags.

Best Gay Paper

The New York Sun

"This Embargo Debate Is Just Scrumptious!" Different conservatives certainly had different expectations for the debut of New York City’s daily right-wing paper. Still, it’s kind of a surprise to see that the Sun is, in fact, a fine celebration of gay life in New York. This is partly reflected in the paper’s front-page headlines, which often examine obscure issues that only affect a certain kind of man who spends a lot of time in the Hamptons–and, you know, a select few other social scenes.

There’s also good reason that "Daily Candy" is featured regularly in the paper. Given the Sun’s general tone, there’s no reason to think that a rave for facial scrubs is targeted just for women readers. Meanwhile, Gary Shapiro’s column is easily the most breathless nightlife report among all the dailies. His tone is matched by the paper’s mad love for camp. If the Sun is culturally elitist, then so is your pet groomer who collects terrycloth portraits of Jesus.

The Aug. 27 issue even mentioned "the Strokes’ revival of the 1970s CBGB scene." Any NYC editor who’d let that sentence get by obviously spent the 70s boogy-oogy-oogying at Studio 54.

Best Unconditional Surrender

Jann Wenner

Will You Still Need Me When I’m 64? No. In fact, the only people who’ve needed Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner since he was 34 are the small circle of entertainment and political celebrities that he uses the magazine’s pages to mythologize. Who can forget–although we’d like to–the way Wenner claimed a vote for Bill Clinton in 1992 was an affirmation of baby boomer culture? Or when he interviewed Clinton at the White House in ’93 and his first question was, "Are you having fun?" Or the countless times Wenner’s put the mug of friends Michael Douglas, Tom Cruise or Mick Jagger on RS’s cover? Or his five-star review of Jagger’s last album, a work so universally panned that Wenner had to hunt ’n’ peck the piece himself?

Those are the indulgences, of course, of a magazine owner who, until recently, minted money every two weeks. Wenner became so besotted with the friendship of those he lusted after as a precocious publisher in 1967 that he let a once-classic magazine go to seed. In 1985, Bob Guccione Jr. first pointed out Wenner’s vulnerabilities with his ground-breaking, next-generation Spin; but when the Gooch cashed out his monthly it quickly went the way of Details, a mishmash of dumbed-down, unreadable crap.

It took the brilliant entrepreneur Felix Dennis to bring Wenner to his knees. Dennis, the muscle behind the awful but popular monthlies Maxim and Stuff, last year introduced Blender, a dopey music pub that made no bones about directly competing with the ossified Rolling Stone.

And what was Wenner’s reaction? Like the French in 1940, he bent over, then hired Ed Needham, an editor from FHM, another beer ’n’ babes semi-stroke book, and all but admitted that he no longer had any idea how, or desire, to make his magazine relevant. So the "new" Rolling Stone’s first issue had the Vines (an exhausted topic) on its cover and a vastly expanded section of CD reviews, a direct cop from Blender.

It didn’t have to be this way. Wenner’s only in his 50s, and despite the comforts of his wealth, stately homes and ex-model boyfriend, he could’ve taken off the cufflinks, rolled up his sleeves and summoned some of the vision that made Rolling Stone the most important cultural publication of the late 60s and early 70s. Just as Tina Brown and David Remnick each revitalized The New Yorker, Wenner might’ve shocked the incestuous publishing world and reinvented Rolling Stone by hiring a smart young editor with his or her pulse on both the entertainment and political spheres. He might’ve said to critics, "We’ll still publish long, investigative articles, but this time around the authors won’t be washed-up hacks with nothing to say."

It wasn’t to be. Instead, an out-of-touch Wenner, apparently more fascinated by his dreadful celebrity-worship magazine US, ceded the rock ’n’ roll category to Dennis. Which doesn’t mean that Jann won’t be hanging out with Mick, Yoko and Hillary Clinton anymore, just that he doesn’t give a shit about the legacy of Rolling Stone, his lifetime achievement.

In the Oct. 3 issue of RS, Needham wrote an embarrassing "Letter from the Editor" that further soiled the magazine’s reputation. He said: "We have added more color and excitement to the Rock & Roll section to enhance it as a dynamic source of music news. We have added more pages and sections to the ‘back of the book,’ to make the world’s most authoritative music-review section even more comprehensive. And we have changed some of our formats to reflect the vitality that you deserve from a twenty-first century magazine... These improvements are part of that commitment [to the ‘profound importance’ of music in readers’ lives]. I hope you like them."

A generation ago, that last sentence would’ve read: "And if you don’t like them, fuck you."

Best Upcoming Curiosity

The American Conservative

Lay Off Taki. Although we find Pat Buchanan vastly entertaining, his protectionist, anti-immigration, anti-Semitic views make him a more likely bit character in a remake of Pleasantville than the frontman of a new conservative biweekly. The American Conservative, bankrolled by our friend Taki and edited by another New York Press alumnus, the brainy Scott McConnell, is scheduled to debut in late September with a modest 12,000 circulation (which is minuscule even by the low expectations of other political magazines).

We hope Buchanan leaves most of the editing and choice of stories to McConnell; otherwise the potentially interesting publication will become an instant Beltway joke. David Carr, in a Sept. 9 New York Times article, wrote: "Mr. Buchanan sees [competitors such as The Weekly Standard and National Review] as practitioners of neoconservatism, which he believes is a corruption of conservative values. With his current jeremiads against adventurism in Iraq–isolationism is a fundamental tenet of Buchananism–and his protectionist bent toward the American worker, he has more in common with the left in the current debate over where the country is headed.

"‘Where are the conservatives who are against the war?’ he says. ‘Kristol, Podhoretz, Will and Bennett–they’re all hot for war and can’t wait to get started.’ He referred to the conservative commentators William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, George F. Will, and William Bennett."

Goodness gracious. One wonders, if Buchanan has such objections to the aforementioned, just where is his readership going to come from. And on the subject of Iraq, what would it take for the Buke to realize the real threat that Saddam Hussein poses to the civilized world? Maybe a nuke in downtown Tel Aviv?

Oops, wrong question.

We do take issue with Bill Kristol’s snide assessment of Taki, a terrific writer whose mixture of levity, self-deprecation and descriptions of his jetset life are an asset to any publication. Kristol told Carr: "I’m all for another magazine, but I think the inclusion of Taki, who is a pretty loathsome character, will hurt their credibility."

Kristol’s Weekly Standard, an excellent journal that nonetheless publishes wishy-washy stiffs like David Brooks, could do with a writer of Taki’s caliber, if only to leaven its heavy concentration on DC. Besides, Taki’s "High Life" column in London’s Spectator hasn’t hurt that profitable publication; in fact, it’s one of the weekly’s most popular features.

What are The American Conservative’s chances of survival in an already-glutted political market? Who knows. It’s not as easy to handicap as was the preordained demise of Tina Brown’s horrendous Talk. But if Buchanan actually writes frequently for the magazine, and sets the agenda instead of the more measured McConnell, we’d say there’s trouble on the horizon.

Best Sports Website Serving the
Silent Majority Of Soccer Fans

www.graferspants.com

Trouser Gallery. Somehow connected with the already excellent Metrofanatic.com, the only site worth checking for local fans of the long-neglected New York area Major League Soccer franchise called the MetroStars, Graferspants.com is what the nerds at Stanford and Michigan and Illinois intended way back when when they invented the Internet. See, there is nothing more obscure than being a backup goalkeeper in the MLS, and that is just what Port Washington-native Paul Grafer was, the back-up goalkeeper for the MetroStars. This site defines the man, who is well-coiffed and actually looks like he could be a sommelier at Vong or somewhere that used to be trendy. When Grafer first appeared on the scene, the vocal members of the Empire Supporters Club–the Anglophile rowdies who stand behind the Metros’ home goal–noted his rather unnecessary penchant for long black pants.

This site has all the details about said garment, which apparently was pilfered and has traveled to the far corners of the Earth, as documented by actual photos on Graferspants.com. At presstime, Grafer, who now wears the standard short pants, was pressed into service to help the Metros avoid becoming one of the two teams in the 10-team MLS that did not qualify for the "playoffs." So if the Metros do make it to the postseason, it will be by the seat of Paul Grafer’s pants, and may God and former Metro joke Kerry Zavagnin bless us all.

Best Excuse to Dynamite
The British Press

The Observer’s 9/11 Satire Issue

Was the Blitz This Hilarious? Oh, that dry British humor. It’s so droll, so hysterically funny, especially when it takes the 9/11 massacres as its subject. The Observer of London’s "Absolute Atrocity Special"–an alleged "satire" of the terrorist attacks published last March titled "Six Months That Changed a Year"–might be the most vulgar, vicious and stupid parade of garbage we’ve seen this year.

"Figures show that even as the second tower fell, people were switching off their televisions, complaining they’d seen it all before," quip Britwits Armando Iannuci and Chris Morris–the comic geniuses behind this appalling project. Much of this atrocity "hilarity" is predictably banal: the Bush-as-moron jokes. The Christopher Hitchens drinking jokes. And yet, some flashes of perverse nastiness stick in the mind. Take this representative entry: "New figures reveal that the number of people who perished in the attacks on 11 September may be as low as three. Counsellors are on standby to help New Yorkers deal with the trauma of being more upset than they needed to be. Pressure mounts on Mayor Giuliani–already criticised for his insistence that Ground Zero be kept shrouded in smoke–after the dust cleared briefly last week to reveal that the South Tower was still standing. Psychologists say original estimates of 6,000 were probably much larger due to ‘all kinds of shit.’"

Yes, indeed. The sound of shrill mocking laughter about mass murder from across the pond is remarkably therapeutic.

Best Crybaby

Matt Drudge

Get Out of the Kitchen. We weren’t very shocked when Internet gossip Matt Drudge–known primarily in media circles for breaking the Lewinsky stained-Gap-dress story and endlessly lambasting the Clintons–delinked this paper, and columnist Taki, from his highly trafficked Drudge Report, his readership be damned. This summer, New York Press columnist Michelangelo Signorile penned a column with a lede that called Drudge a "nasty faggot." Apparently, Drudge–whose entire career is built on taking down the Fourth Estate with salacious gossip and embarrassing the elite by publicizing their sexual peccadilloes on his site–can’t take the heat. Well. Cry us a fucking river, Matt. As for still refusing to link to our site, we say: Grow up and get over it.

Best Argument in

"What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?"
Gary Taubes, July 7, 2002

Fat Scoop. Gary Taubes’ "What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?" was the Sunday Magazine cover story. It was about how medical research seems to be confirming the theory behind Dr. Atkins’ low-carbohydrate diet, and it had a big influence on a lot of New Yorkers. That’s nothing special. Thousands of New Yorkers don’t for a second doubt anything the Times reports, and don’t believe anything is important until the supercilious paper runs a story on it. What made "What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?" stand out was the way it presented its case without employing readers’ assumed biases, or using a high tone to mow down unmentioned opposition. It actually led every national publication in arguing against a status-quo bias. The most powerful newspaper in the country almost never does that.

The story didn’t say that Dr. Atkins was right. But it broke the very big news that the official advice about nutrition–maintain a low-fat diet with carbs as its foundation–is not backed up by solid science. At all. Not even close. There’s more support for the notion that such advice, amplified a thousandfold by the food and restaurant industries, led to a fatter America.

We took a skeptical approach to the Times long before its editors sacrificed their credibility on the altar of anti-Iraq-war protest. Seems to us the old guys who run the paper have an agenda and profit imperative just like any other amoral committee of big businessmen. But Taubes’ piece persuaded us to put this fat thing to the test. For two weeks, we decided, we’d completely abandon the low-fat diet it took us years to get used to. We maintained the same intake of fruits and veggies, but substituted more meat, fish, seafood and dairy for the bread, rice and pasta we used to consume. On the third day of snacking on nuts and lush avocados instead of fatless pretzels or rice puffs, we said to ourselves, "If this works, I’m going to laugh." There seemed no way that the publication that this year reported that hipsters are moving to Williamsburg could cut across the grain of its readers’ culture. But laugh we did.

Best Freudian Repetition
By a Failing Magazine

"Necessary" in the September Spin

Proscribed Prescription. As soon as we saw that Spin could cough up nothing for its September outing but a "Metal Issue"–not even a Hives cover, guys?–we swarmed onto the Hudson News pile like a hungry vulture. Axl Rose’s glower warns us not to bother trudging through, but we couldn’t resist. And, damn, there it all was–lad-mag-style featurettes about the 40 best metal records ("Diamond Dave’s first solo album is actually the last great Van Halen album…"), the history of Sunset Strip metal, interviews with metal gods like Robert Plant, a diagrammed page of how to make the horns of the goat with your fingers, ruminations on The Osbournes and more and more illustrations of how neither editor Sia Michel nor any Spin staffer knows what the identity of the magazine ought to be in an endlessly self-referential pop music universe whose most insightful observer is Felix Dennis.

Desperately sprinkled through Spin’s metal meltdown was a certain little word, a clandestine justification for the issue. It recurs frequently enough to make itself noticeable, but not often enough to lose the subtlety. A creepy thing, it reads like a snapshot into the severed attention span of a burnout editor. Appetite for Destruction, see, makes a 2 a.m. party in Hollywood sound "absolutely necessary." The fourth Led Zeppelin record made drugs "completely necessary." In case you missed it, they made that one the page’s pull quote: "‘Zoso’ (and Jimmy Page) made drugs completely necessary." To finishing the issue, maybe. Rarely does one word offer a surreptitious apology for so much in a magazine. We thought of Dave Itzkoff, Spin’s new associate editor, the guy who defected from Maxim out of disgust with its elevation of vapidity into a virtue. Hey, Dave: ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

Best Greetings From Mayberry

Baltimore Magazine

Hey, Goob! As a longtime resident of Baltimore–alternately dubbed "Charm City" or "The City That Breeds"–we’re on firm ground when it comes to giving an affectionate Pigtown Cheer to the city’s severe inferiority complex. Why this feeling exists we can’t figure out: it’s not as if B’More is a hole like Ann Arbor or Memphis. The seafood’s terrific, U.S. history permeates the streets and neighborhoods, Mayor Martin O’Malley is a dynamic leader and the cost of living is remarkably cheap.

But read this blurb Max Weiss wrote in last January’s Baltimore magazine and tell us something goofy isn’t afoot in the Land of Pleasant Living.

Cal Ripken, according to Weiss, healed the city after the terrorist massacres of Sept. 11, 2001.

After some goo about Ripken’s retirement tour around the Major Leagues last year, in which he was feted by baseball fans–"And we here in Maryland glowed with that special pride, that Cal pride"–Weiss really mixes up flesh and fantasy.

She writes: "Then September 11 came. Suddenly, we needed Cal to do more than save baseball. We needed him to save the country... Because the day that Cal Ripken retired everything was just right. In a weird bit of ‘something good comes from this whole mess’ irony, his final game was at Camden Yards, not Yankee Stadium as originally scheduled. And he did bring a smile to our faces, he did help us heal. He told us it was okay to appreciate the small things, because it’s the small things that make our country great. He was, as ever, there when we needed him most."

We’ve met Max a few times, and she’s a sweet gal. But the gibberish quoted above says one thing to us: she must’ve attended journalism school.

Cal Ripken was a very good ballplayer, but if he hadn’t broken Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-game streak, there’s no way he’d be heading to Cooperstown in four years. And let’s be honest, the Orioles, once an excellent team, boast a number of former superstars who outshine Max’s dear Cal. Jim Palmer, for one, not to mention Eddie Murray, Brooks Robinson and Boog Powell.

As for Ripken saving the country, let’s put this in perspective. Yes, it was swell that baseball provided a distraction after Sept. 11, but even in that small way there were far more dramatic moments than Ripken’s last game. Like President Bush throwing out the first ball at Yankee Stadium during the World Series, and then the Yanks winning all three games at home. Or the New York ballplayers, often anonymously, donating time and money to the families of those who perished at the World Trade Center.

Bobby Valentine, the Mets manager who’ll undoubtedly be fired sometime before next season, deserves a ticket to the Hall of Fame just for his ceaseless charity work last fall. Ditto for Roger Clemens, who, in our mind, atoned for his atrocious behavior after beaning Mike Piazza in 2000 by quietly immersing himself in the travails of New York City, giving comfort to a number of FDNY stations that were shattered by that infamous day.

More importantly, we’ll go way out on a limb and say that the U.S. military was of more use than any baseball star.

Best Overblown Sports Flap

The Potsmoking Mets

Hash Pipe. Oh come on now. Really. From the way Newsday has run with this story, you’d think there was surveillance-camera footage of Grant Roberts and Tony Tarasco mainlining smack in a South Bronx shooting gallery, instead of merely that funny shot of Roberts planting his face in a bong back when he was in the minors. So they and some other Mets smoke pot. And? You’re making a big deal of this because?

Now, if Newsday had discovered that none of the young men on the Mets smokes pot, or drinks, or does anything else to get high once in a while, that would be headline news. And cause to worry. But the unremarkable fact that some of them smoke dope, like most everyone else in America under the age of 75, doesn’t seem to warrant the WAR IS OVER treatment. And the false shows of surprise and dismay are laughable. Like professional athletes aren’t already the most doped humans walking the planet. It’s okay if the team physician prescribes it, but if the shortstop buys it by the nickelbag from a bike messenger in his motel room, it’s a horror? Please. What are you smoking?

Best Reason to Leave the Democratic Party

You’re Not Jealous of Rich People and You Don’t Fear the Christian Right…

…In Which Case party leaders have nothing to say to you. Every debate with a Democrat leads back to one of those two bugbears–usually both. If you happen to actually know and like some wealthy people and at least one politically active Christian, it quickly starts to feel as if your intelligence is being insulted. Jealously and fear are painful emotions. Anyone who wants us to experience more of them than is necessary, we figure, deserves our contempt. We want to debate the war on terrorism, the business scandals, homeland security, school choice and the national economy. But we’re going to do so thoughtfully. The Democratic Party seems to think that appealing to irrational emotions makes tactical sense. Maybe it does. Maybe it’s even worth losing a few rational intellectuals who are turned off by what we see as shameless frauds, enormous missed opportunities and decades’ worth of squandered political energy. Problem for the Dems is, that’s a lot of smart cookies, and we’re not all going to just sit on the sidelines. After all, the other side enjoys real debate.

Best Failed Congressional Candidate

Jeff Brauer

Your Comeuppance Is Our Best Revenge. Regular readers will remember the feud east-side congressional hopeful Brauer started this summer with New York Press, and a bunch of other papers, when his overzealous, underbrained supporters plastered huge Brauer-for-Dogcatcher stickers on all the newspaper streetboxes in his wannabe district. Then, when we complained in print, papers were dumped from our boxes all over that same district. Brauer always claimed innocence, but he never really did satisfy us that he (a) gave a shit or (b) was doing anything to curb the enthusiasm of his idiotic volunteer vandals.

So imagine the big, fat grins we wore when we received the press release in late August announcing that a New York State Court of Appeals had disqualified Brauer from the Democratic primary because he’d filed improperly. Most successful politicians have more money than brains, but it’s nice to see a failed politician with the same qualities.

Best Howell Raines Impersonator

Ira Berkow

Coming Soon! Classifieds for Democrats Only! Here’s a grudging admission: We think The New York Times’ sports section is a-okay, better than that of the Post or Daily News. It’s well-organized, has a handy chart of games on tv for the day and the writers aren’t blatant boosters for the home team.

But just as executive editor Howell Raines has transformed the paper’s front page into a second editorial forum, partisan politics has now invaded the escapist world of baseball. Writing about the controversy over which fan is entitled to Barry Bonds’ record-setting 73rd home run ball last season–a legit topic–Ira Berkow strays beyond the stands of Pac Bell Stadium to take a gratuitous jab at President Bush.

Bad enough that Berkow, in his Sept. 14 column, opens with a quote from Horace (whom he identifies as "the Roman poet" for the benefit of the great unwashed), but then he poses as a locker-room attorney. Berkow writes: "On Thursday, Judge [James] McBride decided that only a jury trial should determine the outcome of who owns the ball. And why not? If, in this litigious land, a court can pick the president of the United States, it can certainly decide who should be the proper claimant of a baseball."

We’ll expect Berkow’s endorsement of Carl McCall any day now, probably in the context of Mariano Rivera’s return as the Yanks’ closer.

Best Website

eBay

The Global Village’s Perpetual Yard Sale. Fact of the matter: no matter what you do, you can sell crap on eBay and make an extra $150/month. We do. We sell those promo CDs that you’re not supposed to sell; we sell old Walkmen, pencil holders, board games, guitar equipment–anything we can get our grubby mitts on. Our eBay account is set up so that it connects right to our bank and we never have to deal with any checks or money orders. When we have a zine or comic book we want to distribute to the unsuspecting public, we open an eBay Store and take advantage of the cheapest and easiest way to sell merchandise on the Web. Plus, of course, every time we use eBay we remember that a free, instant global marketplace is something humanity dreamed about for centuries. Who knew we’d be the lucky bastards to get it?

Best Nostalgia for the "Old" Mafia

Jack Newfield

Gotti Wasn’t the Only Mob Murderer. Apparently Jack Newfield, New York’s head cheerleader for the old Brooklyn Dodgers, doesn’t confine his nostalgia to baseball. In a repellent June 24 article in New York, in which he correctly slammed the late John Gotti for his terrorism, Newfield recalled the good old days when the Mafia had a "code" and an aversion to publicity.

He wrote: "Gotti will go down in history as the man who did more to destroy the old Italian Mafia than anything since Robert Kennedy, the rico statute, the Witness Protection Program, and Joe Valachi... John Gotti broke every old-world, old-school code of the American Mafia. He killed his own boss (Paul Castellano) in a hit never sanctioned by the mob’s Commission, using some assassins who weren’t even ‘made men’ at the time of the ambush at Sparks Steak House...

"The old-school mob bosses understood omert, the code of silence. They were born in Sicily, or the Italian Mainland, or, in Meyer Lansky’s case, Poland. They hated publicity. They never wanted to be mentioned in a national magazine, much less on the cover. They knew it meant trouble. Aniello Dellacroce, Tony Salermo, and Chin Gigante did not have publics. In the fifties, the libraries of tabloid newspapers didn’t even have a picture of Carlo Gambino in their files. Secrecy and discretion were in the blood of the earlier generations of godfathers."

So? It’s incredible that Newfield, whose hero is Bobby Kennedy, actually defends the likes of Gambino who, if much shrewder than a "made" celebrity like Gotti, still killed people at will. Newfield accuses Gotti of being too influenced by films like The Godfather. He ought to look in the mirror.

Best Urban-Lifestyle Magazine

The Fader
www.thefader.com

High Fives to Fader. It’s no secret that it takes a certain kind of attitude to live in this city. Some would even say that attitude’s the lifeblood of most New Yorkers. Urban lifestyle magazines attempt to portray it in their pages, but usually fall short, offering nothing but p.r. puffery from record labels and fashion designers.

There’s one magazine, though, that exemplifies the spirit of social living in the big city. The Fader, a quarterly, captures the zeitgeist of this city by covering the latest trends in music, fashion, art and even social issues with sharp photo essays and intelligent writing. We’re starting to become jealous of these cultural elitists: Fader manages to always be one step ahead of their monthly counterparts by writing about lifestyle trends long before the mainstream takes notice.

By combining unbiased cultural/social criticism with innovative imagery, this relatively young title has accomplished what most other lifestyle mags have not: intelligent, thoughtful and even inspiring coverage of all things urban. Any hack publication can report on urban lifestyle trends, but it takes a certain attitude to turn it into art form. We tip our hats to The Fader, for doing it in typical New York fashion.

Best TV Spokesperson
For the Arab Cause

Hussein Ibish

Lonely at the Top. Toss a rock in any direction in downtown Washington, DC. There’s a good chance you’ll hit a kickass spokesperson for the Israeli side of the Middle East conflict–articulate, on message and unflappable. On the other side? Well, there’s James Zogby of the Arab-American Institute...and then there’s Hussein Ibish, the communications director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Ibish is the only spokesperson for the Arab cause who inspires dread in the opposing chair, and his loquacious appearances on cable tv shoutfests have made him the bete noire of the Israeli lobby and the "Bomb Iraq Now" crowd. One of Ibish’s best tv lines this year came on an August Crossfire, when he dubbed a lawsuit over an Islamic reading assignment at the University of North Carolina as "people suing the university for the right to remain pig-ignorant and still get a degree from the University of North Carolina."

Ask the New York Post’s Daniel Pipes about Ibish’s devastating blasts. On a March 5 edition of Alan Keyes’ now-defunct chat show, Ibish reduced the Middle East Forum director to impotently ranting, "Shut up." Pipes’ response to this public spanking was to pen a column for the Post a few weeks later, demanding that the doors of American tv "be closed" to Ibish. Pipes’ column was pathetic, undignified and all-too-obvious–and it demonstrates how Ibish can drive even his smoothest opponents completely batshit.

Best Magazine Baseball
Point-Counterpoint

But He’s Keith Hernandez! What else but the recent spat between Mike Piazza, the greatest-hitting catcher in the history of baseball, and Keith Hernandez, a onetime great glove man who would have died a quiet death had he stayed in St. Louis. Somehow, Keith-the-ex-Met has been elevated to undeserved greatness by a bunch of coke-addled Seinfeld fans. For once, it is time to agree with Venus de Piazza.

Best Guide for the
Straight Homosexual

Esquire’s "Things A Man Should Know"

Homo Imbecilis. Sweet limping Christ, where to begin with this one? We found this on Esquire’s website, and at first blush it seems like a good idea: who couldn’t use some advice about style, sex, marriage, money, etiquette and women? But as we dipped into the various guides, our interest turned to disgust. This is just further evidence of the vast media conspiracy to turn men into nattering nabobs of neurosis, consigned to the dismal world of eating disorders and self-loathing that the aspirational women’s magazines have heretofore ruled with an iron speculum.

What’s most telling about these guides is how detailed and fussy they are on picayune matters of style, but suspiciously uninspired and repetitive when it comes to sex and marriage. For example, after telling us the shocking news that many women own vibrators (which the editors would know if they, like, spent any time with women), here’s Esquire on sex: "Very few women achieve, shall we say, resolution solely as a result of, shall we say, intercourse." Why the, shall we say, wussy tone? Is it because you are all, shall we say, homosexual? (Are you trying to say, "Bitches don’t get rocks by humping"?) Here’s Esquire on marriage: "The man said for better or worse. And it can get bad, real bad." Look, we know this guy who got married because he couldn’t get his inheritance if he was still single and childless by 35. Seriously. Evil rich fucks think of things like that to torture their grandchildren.

When it comes to style, Esquire suddenly becomes a Chatty Cathy, positively gushing about lots of things that no self-respecting man would ever worry about: "The only thing worse than wearing socks that don’t cover one’s calves is wearing patterned socks that don’t cover one’s calves." Oh please. Can’t you get a sock that covers your mouth? "Drape your scarf on that chair and you’re going to lose it, and we are not your mother." Of course not, silly. Our mother isn’t gay.

Welcome to the world of the Straight Homosexual, which Howard Stern regularly (and rightly) hammers, and which ex-Press managing editor Sam Sifton notoriously wrote about for Talk a while back. These guides are for and by men who pluck their eyebrows, wax their asses, then don a blue buttondown shirt and go "cruising" at coke-slut hellholes like Joe’s Pub or Veruka. These are for "men" who think Tara Reid is hot and who have secret white-knight fantasies about Lizzie Grubman.

"When in doubt, ask a woman." Sorry boys, she’s got her mouth full. "Know that she will often be wrong, too, and that ultimately a man is alone in a vast sea of indecision that he must ply." Well, you didn’t ask us, but our advice is: Don’t eat out his ass until the third date.

"The most important thing about selecting a hotel is the ability of the staff to press a shirt instantly, anytime, day or night." Arrrgh! No no no! The most important thing about a hotel is its proximity to strip clubs, prostitutes and hard drugs! Idiots. "It is never acceptable to loosen your tie, except during the process of its removal." We weren’t taking it off, we were just going to hang ourselves with it.

"Numbers to remember: one half inch of shirt cuff; one and a half inches of trouser cuff; two inches more belt than inches on your waist." Wait, didn’t you forget "seven inches of hard dick up your ass"?

Look, boys, you can write all the style guides and show all the fine female coochie you want, but for our money you’re still a bunch of fags.

Best Example of How the Is Still…

The Sept. 11, 2002 Issue

Comfort Reading for Bald, Ponytailed Men and Wymyn. Alissa Solomon’s ridiculous article in the Sept. 11 Voice, "Vanishing Liberties," is bad enough, filled with enough propaganda to earn her an internship at The Nation, but that’s not even the most amazing feature of this edition of the Voice.

First, a snippet of Solomon lore: "Wrapping themselves in the flag, [Ashcroft, Bush and Cheney] have shredded the Constitution. They have sneered at, ignored, or defied the courts and legislatures that are designed to provide checks and balances on uninhibited executive power. They have eroded the precious Bill of Rights protections of free speech, assembly, and association and its assurances of privacy, due process, equal protection, legal counsel, and a fair trial–practically everything but the right to bear arms."

Of course, if that were true, Solomon and her comrades would be singing Joan Baez songs in the pokey right now, but no matter.

What’s truly remarkable is the cover illustration that accompanies her story. There’s a dignified George Washington, front and center, shedding a tear, presumably at the current police-state that Solomon tries, in vain, to describe.

But what we wonder is this: Why was Washington, a dead, white, heterosexual male who owned slaves, depicted as the bereft Founder? You’d have thought the Voice would fall into line with Jesse Jackson’s warped version of history, which he fully enunciated to a tiny crowd at Michigan State University a few weeks ago. Jackson said: "[D]emocracy as we know it did not begin in Philadelphia, where a bunch of white men wrote the laws. These men’s wives were not allowed [to vote], these laws were made at a time when only white men had the right to vote."

Jackson insisted that the United States didn’t become a democracy until 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress.

Has the Voice abandoned Messy Jesse?

Best Reason To Send
Money To the Democrats

Bush’s Press Conference on the Golf Course

The W Stands for "Whoops." Any credibility that may have accreted to George Bush disappeared in an instant when reporters caught him on the Cape Arundel golf course last summer. Videotapes captured our Fearless Leader, driver in hand, restating the noble Bush doctrine: "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you," said the leader of the free world. "Now watch this drive."

Best Political Strategy

Golisano’s Potentially
Dangerous Vanity Campaign

Great–Another Millionaire Man of the People. If Gov. George Pataki had balls bigger than raisins, he’d immediately propose a biweekly series of debates with Democrat Carl McCall and Independence Party kook Thomas Golisano. We still believe Pataki will prevail in November’s election, but with Golisano promising to spend Bloomberg-like millions on television advertising (he’s already laid out $33 million for the primary), not to mention the Governor’s alienation of upstate conservatives, Pataki can’t take anything for granted. Before the Golisano factor put a wrinkle in his reelection plans, the Governor was looking at a romp against McCall or Andy "Quitter" Cuomo; with those two Democrats battling it out, Pataki tacked left and courted unions, Hispanics and black community leaders.

This was unsettling to traditional conservatives, but in a heavily Democratic state it was smart. Pataki had already built up a reservoir of good will for his conduct after Sept. 11, and by grabbing votes from the enemy’s camp he could wink at skeptical allies and give the unspoken promise that he’d return to the fold once he secured a third term.

Now he’s got a fight on his hands.

On Sept. 14, Randal C. Archibold wrote in The New York Times that Pataki "absolutely" wants to debate McCall but dodged questions about including Golisano. And Pataki wonders why he’ll never be asked to join the Bush administration. There’s no downside to debating Golisano. The billionaire is a political novice who takes advice from Pataki adversary Roger Stone and isn’t likely to fare well under the questioning of reporters. Unlike Ross Perot, whose Everyman anger and homilies resonated with voters in 1992, Golisano’s a stiff whose nonstop tv commercials offer nothing but attacks on Pataki and the promise of cutting taxes. Frankly, the latter is a necessary proposal (take note, Mayor Mike), but the Paychex Inc. founder is the wrong messenger, if the incoherence of his advertisements is any indication.

Once Golisano, after two or three debates, is exposed as a vanity candidate, it won’t matter how much money he spends, and Pataki can confine his worrying to McCall, who’s bound to receive bundles of DNC money because of the sudden tightening of the race.

Unfortunately, a frequent debating schedule is probably beyond Pataki’s limited imagination.

Best eBay/Loot Alternative

Craig’s List
www.craigslist.org

List Serves. Hard to say whether Craig’s List is a "secret" or not. Judging by the robust activity on the site, we’re inclined to say no. Yet when we’ve suggested Craig’s List to a friend in search of an apartment rental or cheap tv set, the response comes back: "Who’s Craig?"

All right then. Craig is Craig Newmark, a young pocket-protector from Morristown, NJ, who had a vision of creating a free classified-ads website with an emphasis on "community" and "people helping people." Would a credo like that normally tickle the gag reflex? Sure. But in this case Craig, bless his little soul, actually meant it. So seven years ago he launched his first site in San Francisco. The growth since then (more than a million regular users, 16 city sites) has been due strictly to word of mouth, which in turn helps preserve the "community" idea of self-policing and flagging miscategorized as well as misrepresentative or abusive postings. The whole thing runs on an implied notion of honesty and an understanding that neither buyer nor seller is out to wring the last bloody red cent out of a transaction. (Which is increasingly the case on eBay these days.) The .org address ought to be a tipoff to all this, but surf over to the site and you’ll also notice the absence of blinking banner ads and annoying come-ons. (A plus vs. LootUsa.com.) The simple tri-chromatic, all lower-case letters look of things is a plus too. Very, as the ad guys say, user-friendly.

Not long ago we bought a Martin Backpacker guitar off some dude in Queens using Craig’s List. The deal went down with ease, consideration and zero haggling. The site has been getting props in New York lately for facilitating the dreaded apartment search. Some have even credited it with having caused certain brokers to stop charging fees. The law of supply and demand, record-low lending rates and a cyclical housing market near its peak might also have something to do with this, but we’re not about to pick nits. We believe that anything that cheeses off the broker worms is an absolute good. Which makes Craig’s List a very easy best.

Best Fuck-Up of a
Cable News Network

CNN’s Walter Isaacson

Zahn with the Wind. It hasn’t been a great summer for cable news. (Hey! Another child is missing!) Maybe it’s just us, but MSNBC looks lost these days. And Fox News’ mincing conservatism? It’s wearing thin–and fast.

But it is CNN that has fallen faster than any cable channel in recent memory. Vast stretches of its news landscape now have been laid to waste. One recent day says it all. Paula Zahn and her cast of lightweights on American Morning tackled Labor Day getaways. Talkback Live? More missing kids. Inside Politics had a real scoop: Women are gaining influence in U.S. political life. Moneyline’s trumpeted feature wasn’t even about money, but Iraq. Connie Chung wanted to know why America was becoming a nation of cheaters. Larry King recycled a 16-year-old murder case. Aaron Brown gazed deep into a pressing issue: Why don’t we care about George Washington anymore?

Even MSNBC and Fox News’ worst moments (breaking into an inarticulate county sheriff’s missing-child news conference to bring viewers...another inarticulate local sheriff’s press briefing) never wander so consistently off the track. Back in July, TVPredictions.com boldly predicted that CNN’s Walter Isaacson would can both Larry King and Aaron Brown in the coming year–or lose his own head. Given this evidence, we’d bet on Isaacson beating his two employees out the door.

Best Sign of Jann Wenner’s Uselessness

If He’d Had Big Tits They Would’ve Gotten His Name Right for Sure. Like a lot of folks who retain a genuine fondness for rock music, we deplore Jann Wenner’s decision to reduce his once-mighty, now hopelessly clapped-out, magazine to just another Maxim imitator. There already are two rock music magazines out there that slavishly imitate Maxim–they’re called Spin and Blender (a Maxim spinoff). Who needs another?

So we heaved a great, resigned sigh when we flipped through August’s issue #904 of Rolling Stone and there, on page 56, was a photo of John Lennon...misidentified as Keith Moon. We guess all dead rockers look alike. And it was an easy mistake for a twentysomething underassistant editor with no knowledge of rock before Bleach and his cokebottle glasses steamed from staring at spreads of big-boobed girls to make. But it’s just so representative of how far off-course Wenner’s sinking flagship has strayed. When is Wenner just going to give up the pretense and throw in the towel?

Best Posting

"The Breakfast Table,"
Week of June 3, 2002

A Nosehair Better than Salon. Not everyone who writes for Slate is earnest and dreadful. Yes, founding editor Michael Kinsley is one of the most overrated journalists of this era, and his successor Jacob Weisberg isn’t much better. William Saletan is plain unreadable. But Mickey Kaus’ Slate blog is almost always noteworthy, and it’s a shame that iconoclast Jack Shafer lost out to Weisberg as Kinsley’s replacement.

A "Breakfast Table" exchange between Nora Ephron and Kurt Andersen last June was the quintessential Slate feature.

Ephron: "As for Israel, I feel very bleak about it and the whole mess in the Middle East... Sometimes, when I think how close Clinton came to some sort of peace agreement last year, I’m more hopeful. But then, of course, I’m forced to face the worst thing of all: our president.

"What would it be like if Gore had won? I keep wondering–and having to remind myself that he did win. OK, if Gore were president. Would we be happier? Probably not. We’d complain bitterly because in some horrible way he’s One of Us–he’s educated, he’s literate, he’s a Democrat, etc.–so we find him particularly irritating. But no question we’d be better off with him than with this awful, banal, illiterate (but alas, sporadically charming) yahoo, who doesn’t seem to cause any of the anger or bitter complaint he ought to in people like us but instead a kind of exhausted resignation. Bush, doing a terrible job, has a high approval rating; I can’t help suspecting that Gore would be doing a much better job, with a low approval rating."

Andersen: "[Y]esterday or the day before when you described Al Gore as ‘one of us,’ I virtually winced. I’ve never met the man (although when I was editor of New York magazine, he once called to ask me not to run an item about one of his kids), but I don’t think he resembles any friends of mine.

"You really think ‘Gore would be doing a much better job’ than Bush? If not at ineffable, inspirational leadership, then at what? Protecting us against terrorists? Brokering peace in the Middle East? I mean, I voted for him, but his overwhelming hypothetical superiority doesn’t seem self-evident to me."

Best Regular Magazine Feature

Vice "Do’s and Don’ts"

Vice’s Virtues. We hate Vice, really. But their monthly photo spreads of fashion Do’s and Don’ts, with accompanying commentary, is so g.d. funny that we can’t bring ourselves to throw away any of the back issues, which is becoming a serious problem in our space-challenged apartment. And who could throw away gems like this: "The problem with dressing up as a magical Mad Max cyber-gypsy is that eventually you have to get on a bus and go buy cigarettes. There’s no dry ice at the 7-11. Just you and your stupid fucking stupid-ass face." Or this doozy, aimed at an incredibly fat, ugly kid wearing big goggles and with a water bottle tied to his belly with his sweatshirt: "Hey, look! It’s an ad for condoms! Next time you think about busting a nut within 100 feet of your girlfriend’s vagina, think about this little turd. This piece of human garbage could be eating chips in your house and shitting his pants right next to you if you don’t use contraception."

In the Do’s section, the humor is less cutting but no less on-target. Referring to an incredibly beautiful All-American type, they write: "Pigtails are really hard to pull off but when it goes, it goes off like a rocket ship. She’s so corn-fed and pure the only thing that could make her better would be some amazing flaw like a burn or a lazy eye." Amen. A lot of other magazines have bitten Vice’s idea, and are running similar gags, but Vice’s remains the best.

Best Shallow Bitch

New York Times Style Reporter
Ginia Bellafante

Bagged. One day this summer, a man of moderate height, slim build and neat brown hair got ready to go out. He buttoned up a nondescript light-blue shirt, roughly ironed, and rolled up his sleeves to prepare for the broiling Manhattan humidity. He pulled on a pair of slate-gray slacks, and made sure not to forget his watch this time. He shoved everything he needed–cellphone, bills he had to mail in, something to read on the train–into his blue-and-black JanSport, a slightly bulky but thoroughly useful backpack, and checked himself in the mirror for a second before he headed out. Not bad today, fella, he thought, and threw the bag over his right shoulder as he turned the doorknob.

Weeks later, he sipped his Sunday cup of coffee in his shorts and t-shirt, took his copy of The New York Times out of its blue plastic sheath and promptly learned why he will never again have sex for the rest of his life. Accompanying an article headlined "To Get the Girl, Lose the Knapsack" was a photograph of an Any Manhattanite, sauntering along in a nondescript light-blue shirt, and a pair of slate-gray slacks and a blue-and-black JanSport, and in his horror, he couldn’t stop himself before he defensively blubbered underneath his breath that the bag was slightly bulky, sure, but it was thoroughly useful. He couldn’t believe the finality of the sentence, the bluntness of the editorial condemnation. Next to his picture, the caption pronounced him "overthinking," and before he knew what he was doing, he had his hand down the elastic of his underwear, grabbing the counterexample to the wretched style section’s clear implication.

This was impossible. Just a few weeks ago, he sputtered to himself, almost out loud, he chatted up an absolutely enchanting woman at a party thrown by a mutual friend. He had been on that night, explaining the crucial but oft-ignored details of the ImClone scandal, musing about the strengths and weaknesses of former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas’ 1992 presidential campaign platform and was even getting ready to explain the plot line of The Big Sleep at an opportune moment. He had been erudite but not didactic, and she had laughed, and asked questions, and passed along related observations. They had left together, and though she had abruptly remembered she needed to stop by a sick friend’s place, they had exchanged information. And it wasn’t as if she wasn’t also bright, and charming and elegant. After all, she had said she was a style writer with The New York–

He was furious. There was no way he could ignore the story, but every few sentences he had to whip the paper down onto his coffee table. The dismissive tone she affected for the story felt like an indictment. She had sketched a psychological profile of every postcollegiate man who had committed the venal sin of spending $20 for a Manhattan Portage shoulder bag or plunking down a few dollars more at the EMS on Broadway for something sturdier. "Although the knapsack implies a certain boyish free-spiritedness, the wearer is infrequently a free spirit," she wrote. "He may be riddled with ambivalence about everything from whether to buy an apartment in Dumbo to how many slices of turkey to have in his sandwich for lunch. At his worst he is emotionally inert and commitment-averse." He swept his hair back from his face. How could he possibly have signaled his emotional engagement more prominently that night? But he was hardly the issue–she wrote in the second paragraph that the only reason she hadn’t gone home with the man she herself wrote was smart, funny and warm was the JanSport he would forever be lugging in the accompanying picture. Clearly, he wasn’t the one who was "emotionally inert."

Rifling through his cellphone databank, he pulled up her number. He didn’t want to call, though. That would be too awkward, and a little desperate. He didn’t want to argue his merits, and he didn’t want to hear her backpedal. (She had vacillated in the article, as if embarrassed by the coldness of her own judgment, and tried to soften the blow by writing that knapsackers are "generally well-intentioned and enormously complex.") No, she had given him her e-mail address as well–was she really so uninterested?–and he would make her read his missive just as he had been forced to bear hers.

Ginia, he wrote. Leaf through your stack of bedside magazines for the July 22 issue of The New Yorker. Open it to a confessional essay by Katha Pollitt called "Learning to Drive." You might not have finished it the first time you read it. Keep the magazine on your duvet open to the appropriate page while you go to the bodega for a pint of ice cream. Something chocolatey. When you get back to your apartment, microwave the container for 15 seconds so the ice cream glides onto your perfect Tiffany spoon. While it melts, pick out a Nico CD. Now read that miserable Pollitt story while you eat your ice cream, and at the right intervals whisper along to the German chanteuse with your mouth full of runny chocolate, spitting drips of melted ice cream onto the pages to mark them as your own.

He felt better, but on the subway platform that afternoon, he stuck a piece of gum he was chewing on a poster advertising the new season of Sex and the City.

Best Race-Baiting

U.S. Senate Candidate Ron Kirk

Iraq’s No Vietnam. Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, the black Democrat running against Republican John Cornyn to replace Phil Gramm in the U.S. Senate, is a smooth politician.

On the one hand, he was considered a generally pro-business, Lloyd Bentsen-type executive who vacationed at Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen’s chateau in Southern France. He also said, according to The Washington Post, that at 48 he was at the "tail end" of the civil rights movement and "I’m not saying it’s easy... But now there are more of us at the table. And we get to go and focus more on being mayor than trying to be a [hero to the black community]. We have a little more liberty to go and focus on the guts of the job than trying to fulfill so many roles."

But now that he’s running neck-and-neck with Cornyn in overwhelmingly Republican Texas, surprising not only political consultants and pollsters but the White House as well–a Kirk win would be seen as an embarrassment to President Bush in his home state–the Democratic golden boy has changed his tactics.

On Sept. 13, Kirk and Cornyn had an exchange about the possible Iraqi invasion, with the latter accusing the Austin native of being soft on national defense. In San Antonio Kirk said: "Look who would be doing the fighting. They’re disproportionately ethnic, they’re disproportionately minority... The point is, I would be curious to see if we would go to war without any thought of loss if the first half-million kids to go came from families who made $1 million."

Cornyn fully supports Bush’s Iraq strategy, while Kirk, following the line of Democratic senators he hopes to join in Washington, questions the timetable of a possible invasion. Translated: Like most members of his party, he’d like to put Iraq on the back-burner until after the November elections.

But it’s Kirk’s race-baiting that promises to turn this contest into one of the ugliest in the country. First, there’s no draft today so no one is forced to join the military. Second, Kirk’s assertion that the "first half-million kids to go" is demagogic hyperbole. Class warfare is another phrase that comes to mind. The Bush administration, while likely to force Saddam Hussein from power, hasn’t yet laid out a military strategy; and only antiwar dissenters have raised the possibility of 500,000 soldiers being necessary for the war.

Kirk has already embraced the Clintons as fundraisers; can Jesse Jackson be far behind?

Best Overused Journalistic Cliche

"Fear and Loathing," Village Voice

The "Write" Stuff. Get It? Get It? Shit, it’s gotten so bad that we can’t use the Voice to funnel a hamster up our rectum without the wee one’s feetsies traipsing over this tired old phrase at least once. There’s fear and loathing in Minneapolis! Fear and loathing in the produce aisle! Fear and loathing in your mother’s crack! Wherever you are, whatever the fuck kind of product or problem you got, be assured the Voice has a "fear and loathing" for it. Sometimes they even get creative. Angry gay demonstrators? Queer and loathing! Hip new bakery? Fear and loafing! It’s reason enough to hate Hunter S. Thompson. And the Voice, for that matter.

Best Self-Righteousness

Knute Berger
Seattle Weekly

It’s an Embarrassing Business. Let’s be honest: The so-called independent "alternative press" died sometime during the Reagan administration. There are well over 100 weekly newspapers in the United States today, but just a handful that don’t take marching orders from the Democratic Party. The exceptions are rare, such as the San Diego Reader (whose owner is pro-life!), S.F. Weekly and Washington’s City Paper.

More typical is the Seattle Weekly (owned by the Village Voice), which competes with The Stranger, a once-perky tabloid that as it matured financially has also devolved into a depressing rut. Knute Berger, a former editor at the Weekly, recently returned to the fold after a brief absence.

In a Sept. 5 column, Berger explained to readers his renewed mission at the paper. He writes: "During my previous stints as editor, I tried to steer the paper on a more populist course, investigating rich folks who built driveways on public property. I also guided coverage of events like WTO long before they happened and long after the tear gas cleared. More recently, the editors have tried to keep the paper from graying by making it a little more like Capitol Hill. Call those the nose-ring years...

"What did I do on my two-year vacation? I started a book. I traveled to Washington, D.C., to protest the Bush-Cheney coup d’etat. I became a regular commentator for KUOW-FM, appeared regularly on NPR’s Rewind, wrote a political column for Washington Law & Politics magazine, and saw my two children off to college...

"During that time, I realized that the alternative media is more important than ever. I stood in the streets with tens of thousands of angry protesters on Inauguration Day 2001; that night the TV news featured ball gowns. As Boeing left town and bit the hands that built it, I looked in vain for stories that challenged free trade’s impact on local culture and its preservation."

Oy. The "alternative media" is not "more important than ever." Usually it parrots the mainstream dailies–it’s not as if Berger came up with the absurd claim that the 2000 election resulted in a "coup d’etat"–and the only "alternative" it offers is a larger, and racier, adult advertising section and superior listings of what to do on Saturday night.

Best Dissection Of a
Pretentious New York Film Critic

Balint Vazsonyi, The Washington Times, June 2, 2002

Sherbet? We Love Sherbet! In a show of polite unity, the New York media ignored a recent column by Balint Vazsonyi in The Washington Times. His piece, "Confused Analogies," begins with this quote from New York Times film critic A.O. Scott’s review of Thirteen Conversations About One Thing:

"[The director’s] conception of form is, ultimately, musical. Watching ‘Thirteen Conversations’ is a bit like listening to a Schubert piano concerto; you perceive, at the far boundary of consciousness, echoes and foreshadowings, and you encounter, always by surprise and always in retrospect, at exactly the right moment passages of intense and ravishing emotions."

Vazsonyi, a concert pianist and director of the Center for the American Founding, spends several paragraphs revealing how Scott’s metaphor is useless in both politics and the arts. It’s a clever and insightful article. Here are Vazsonyi’s nicely sadistic closing paragraphs:

Evil is evil, but comparisons must fit, or they just add to the confusion. Take Schubert. True, he composed around 1,000 works–symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, hundreds of songs. But the expansive reference to his piano concerto(s) in the film review is most confusing. Because, you see, Schubert didn’t write any.

Best Conversation Ice Breaker

"So, Do you Think the Mayor Is Gay?"

Nah, Just a Confirmed Bachelor. It was finally time to meet the future in-laws, after successfully avoiding the moment for close to eight years. We were all rather uncomfortably assembled in an Upper West Side Italian joint that reeked of Mafioso, and there we were, the lone WASP in his family’s hornet’s nest–Mom, sisters, brother, assorted spouses and children. After the antipasti pleasantries and the vino-lubricated "So, what do you do"s, there wasn’t much to carry us through the entree. The beloved was no help–he slurped his spaghetti and smiled a pre-powwow pot grin. We were on our own to hold up the conversation. Luckily, brother-in-law was kind enough to see our chagrin and introduced this little gem into the fray: "So, do you think the Mayor is gay?"

Funnily enough, everyone had an opinion. In the wake of the testosterone-laden, chest-thumping Giuliani years, Mayor Mike does seem a little, well, closeted. There’s a lady on his arm infrequently. There’s hardly a whisper of romance in the air or in the tabloids. Yeah, he has kids. So? And on it went, well into the coffee and cannoli. The best part was, we could fade into the background, nodding, smiling and non-committing toward the check. Sort of like, well, Mayor Mike himself.

Best Argument That Maybe
Al Qaeda Has a Point After All

New York Magazine, "Baby Panic,"
May 20, 2002

Fuck You–Wait, No... The cover kicked us in the chest like an air hammer: a hopelessly tired, Lichtenstein-style cartoon woman in a state of panic was screaming, "Investment bankers are so last year...this year, I need a SPERM BANK!" Even if you didn’t read the article, you can imagine the rest: babies are this year’s Blahnik sandal, or Gucci bag, or Fendi tampon or what the fuck ever. Babies are the latest "must-have" for a generation of swinish whores who have suddenly awakened, at 33, to realize that they’re paying an outrageous mortgage on a 200-square-foot shithole in a former crack den, and that for all their type-A, Mary Tyler Moore aspirations, they’re basically glorified secretaries. Oh, and that their boss at Conde Nast hates them. And that all the men they work with are gay. And that their lives suck. And that they have no lives.

Welcome to "the new sobriety," where those smacking lips of Soho who last year wouldn’t have spit on a fireman now want, in the immortal words of a friend, nothing more than to "bury themselves like a tick into the haunches of a stud dog and have him swim her across the river to Montclair." In one shot, that New York cover summed up everything that makes dating in this city the degrading, disgusting experience that it is for most men. It’s why, by age 35, so many New York men are cynical and borderline misogynists. It’s why some of us despise Sex and the City every bit as much as the racist goombah bullshit of The Scumbaggos. This is why Candace Bushnell raced to the altar after an eight-week courtship and with about 15 seconds left on her ovaries. (No doubt rushing to position herself as a leader of the new "maternity craze." Hey Candi, is the book contract signed yet?)

This is why God invented Internet porn. This is why we’re going to Montreal, or Baton Rouge or Minsk to find a woman, but why you won’t find us anywhere near the hordes of vapid, shitty, narcissistic trolls who swarm the bars and clubs of our home city. Thanks a lot, New York, you bunch of man-hating cokehead cuntrags: it’s so romantic to know we’re nothing better than wallets with spermsacs attached. Well, we’re holding onto both, thank you. A year ago your type laughed at us, but guess what? We’re 36, trim, employed and have all our hair. Suddenly we’re looking like God’s left nipple to you. Good luck, ladies, we hope you find your stud dog.

Best Parody

Sept. 9 Issue

Kicking Howell Raines. There’s no indication that he really cares–megalomaniacs rarely do–but Howell Raines’ New York Times this past summer finally was subjected to mass criticism, even in the mainstream media, for its blatant distortion of the day’s news. It appears that Raines, along with puppets Gail Collins (editorial page editor) and Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (publisher), would prefer anyone in the White House to George Bush, whether it’s Al Sharpton, Sen. Barbara Boxer, Rep. Dennis Kucinich or sadsack Mark Green.

Under the headline "Bush Seeks Regime Change at New York Times" in a fake page from the New York Post, the Weekly Standard’s issue-ending parody of Sept. 9 was one of its most successful of this year.

It read, in part: "After a series of heated discussions, the Bush administration has concluded that it has no choice but to seek to overthrow the dictatorial leadership of the New York Times. ‘We have a satellite network monitoring World Evil,’ a top administration source said. ‘And there’s been a lot of activity emanating from 43rd Street.’

"Communications intercepts revealed that the Times was readying a series of articles investigating potential effects of a war against Iraq: ‘Part 1: War Against Iraq Would Lead to Genocide, Starvation, Global Warming, End of Human Life as We Know It’; ‘Part 2: Invasion of Iraq Would Mean Longer Lines at Zabar’s’; ‘Part 3: Invade Iraq? Off-Broadway Says No’; ‘Part 4: Peace Chic! Activist Fashions Revive at Dalton School.’"

Best Gay Newspaper Feud

Gay City News vs. New York Blade

Newspaper Queens with Claws. We’ll admit to being amused by all the petty oneupmanship that’s characterized the ongoing feud between the Window Media-owned New York Blade and Community Media’s Gay City News. Four months ago, the Blade was shrinking its arts coverage, laying off editors and dropping to a biweekly schedule. Meanwhile, Gay City News found a new owner, expanded to a weekly schedule and brought in a fresh crop of talent. Last we heard, Window Media was being sued by the former owners of the Blade for payment delinquency in last year’s sale of the papers. Well, they’re not gay-owned, sniped an editor at the Blade. Give us a break, please. We were taken aback by an angry phone call from one indignant Blade editor, who could not fathom why we hadn’t written the press release, bullshit version of the story he’d fed to us. Duh.

Best Really Stupid Idea
The Mayor’s Had (So Far)

The Smoking Ban

Smokey Is the Bandit. The city economy was starting to get back on its feet, but had a long way to go. Schools and apartments around Ground Zero were found to be filled with asbestos. The families of victims were having a damned hard time gaining access to the billions of dollars donated to help them out after the attacks. There was a pay dispute with the NYPD. The Fire Dept. was desperately trying to refill its ranks. The homeless were crowding the streets again. The debate over what to build on the old WTC site was raging. Subway service was deteriorating. But what became the biggest, most important issue on Mayor Bloomberg’s agenda?

Smoking in bars.

The sheer idiocy of the proposal–not to mention its timing–was staggering.

First he nearly doubled the price of a pack of cigarettes. This did not stop people from smoking, as he had hoped–this only drove them out of the small delis and bodegas and other local shops where they used to buy them, onto the Internet, where they could buy them tax-free. He helped the local reservations out, sure–but what about the local business owners?

Now he’s after the bar owners, too.

Trying to frame his crackdown as a "worker’s health" issue is simply ludicrous. Bartenders know what sort of environment they’re getting into–and what’s more, most of the bartenders we know smoke anyway.

Despite some fanciful number-juggling on the Mayor’s part, if you ban smoking in bars, you are going to drive business away. That’s very simple to see. So how does that help the economy?

Likewise the fact the European tourists (the ones with all the money, who are astonished and confounded by this American trend toward banning cigarettes) will start avoiding New York if they can’t smoke here. They’ll fly to Michigan, maybe, or North Carolina instead.

All because the Mayor quit smoking 20 years ago, and has now decided to go all "12-Step Righteous" on the rest of us.

We suggest he keep in mind a little lesson: People need their simple vices. They’re what keep a city alive. For all his talk about "quality of life," he forgets what sort of things really constitute that "quality." Trying to criminalize those things–believe us–is never, ever a good idea.

Best Bad Media Critic

Cynthia Cotts

Little Voice. Pity poor Cynthia Cotts. Hounded by the ghosts of "Press Clips" past (Stokes, Ledbetter), the Voice’s media columnist has not delivered the goods during her tenure. So why has Cotts’ "Press Clips" withered into irrelevance? We can put our finger on three reasons that shout: "lazy as dirt."

(1) The puff pieces. Cotts loves to lob softballs–such as August’s cozy klatsch with overexposed Heeb editor Jennifer Bleyer, or July’s big wet kiss to Slate. In the latter piece, Cotts corralled four people–all Slatesters–to rave about how fab Slate is. The most hilarious quote? Slate editor Jake Weisberg extolled his publication as being "like a cocktail party on e-mail." Gee, we guess that explains why Slate’s been victimized by editorial fraud a few times in recent memory (monkeyfishing, diary of a fake auto exec). Cotts never brings that up, however, preferring to let Weisberg pat himself on the back for Slate’s "light editing and zero fact-checking."

(2) The rain of "no comments." The phrases "declined to comment," "could not be reached at press time" and "did not return calls" show up far too often in Cotts’ "Press Clips"–and not only when she calls The New York Times. In the last six months, we counted 31 folks who took the Fifth with Cotts.

(3) Mistress Anonymous. When it comes to sourcing, Cotts digs the cloak and dagger–emphasis on the dagger–of anonymous quotes from nameless staffers and mysterious outsiders. Two columns–a June "Press Clips" about problems at National Law Journal (a "prestigious weekly" where Cotts once worked) and a June column about the closing of Time’s Mexico City bureau–are cases in point. The first story employed six anonymous sources; the second article bettered it with 11. It’s a catty and petty tactic that infects Cotts’ entire oeuvre.

Best Take on Martha Stewart

Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 4, 2002

Martha on the Cutting Board. We carry no paring knives for Martha Stewart. Don’t watch her tv show, certainly don’t read her magazine. Couldn’t care less about her "sightings," as reported by the Post’s anemic "Page Six," at Nobu and other celebrity haunts.

But the woman, her well-earned fortune decimated this year, is clearly a high-profile scapegoat in the current witch-hunt conducted by the media and Congress in the backlash against Big Business. As if Stewart is a patch on Enron’s Andrew Fastow or DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe.

In his Sept. 4 "Business World" column, the Journal’s Holman Jenkins put the frying of Stewart into perspective. He wrote: "[Rep. James] Greenwood’s subcommittee is pursuing Ms. Stewart solely because she’s a celebrity, just like Mr. Greenwood wants to be. But having had his jollies and appeared on a dozen talking-head shows, the moment has come to notice that the evidence is circumstantial and it all points to no crime being committed by Ms. Stewart...

"Under the worst interpretation, Ms. Stewart did not violate a fiduciary duty to anyone. She contributed trading volume to the market. Whoever bought her stock got a slightly better price than he would have if she hadn’t been there....

"The ImClone follies indicate another problem, for which perhaps the only solution is a large pay raise to improve the social status of congressmen. Then we might hope they’ll gain a higher conception of their own dignity. Mr. Greenwood, like one of those bozos who jumps and waves in front of the TV cameras at a ballgame, might find that the distinction that comes from being willing to act like a bigger jerk than anybody else is taking him where he wants to go."

Best Source of
Misplaced Paranoia

Intelligence Report

It’s Falling Over Here, Chicken Little. For years, Morris Dees and his crew at the Southern Poverty Law Center have made their living–a very handsome living, as Alex Cockburn has often pointed out–scaring the bejesus out of skittish ninnies like the Village Voice’s borderline-hysteric James Ridgeway by reporting on all the evil underground hate-groups it claims are lurking in the shadows around the country, around the world and all over the Internet. If you’ve been following–and swallowing–the Center’s scare-tactics over the last decade or so, the way Ridgeway has, you must be astounded that the Republic has not yet been overthrown by an evil global cabal of neo-Nazis, skins, the KKK, anti-abortionists and other assorted racist and white-supremacist and anti-immigration and anti-Semitic groups. The Center’s quarterly magazine, Intelligence Report, makes your garden-variety conspiracy theory look like child’s play.

The funny thing is, while the Center was so busy throwing its spotlight on a half-dozen idiot skinheads drunkenly fomenting insurrection in some tiny town in Idaho, pumping them up as integral facets of some global hate-group conspiracy poised to unleash Armageddon on us all, the real enemies of the Republic were busy plotting the WTC massacre, with nary a word of "intelligence" from the Center. Last fall, while the towers were tumbling, Intelligence Report was yammering about the evil global influence of white-power record labels and radio stations. In the year since, the closest it’s come to dealing with the implications of 9/11 has been to claim, on the cover of its spring issue, "HATE GROUPS UP 12% AS SEPTEMBER 11 STIRS A MOVEMENT."

Yeah&