Check this out (via Gawker, who bitch about it) and prepare to spend the next hour or so occupied and annoyed. It's the NYPress' "Best of" Media & Politics section, and it's, um, interesting.

I have a few questions about it.

#1: Do you guys really think this reflects well on you?

Best Media Whore
Over the Age of 25
Ian Spiegelman

Everyone’s churning. Gossip writer Ian Spiegelman introduced himself shortly after we took over the helm of this ship. He contacted us for two reasons. One, to plug his debut novel, Everyone’s Burning, a slim volume that’s been written about by other gossip scribes more than it’s been read. Two, he wanted us to whack a young writer with whom he’d had a failed sexual relationship. (The sex part’s not true, so far as we know, but it would make sense, he was so apoplectic with hate.) Not exactly fans of the little hack in Spiegelman’s sights, we gladly accepted several hundred words that lambasted—and possibly libeled—the author.

Since he has connections at Page Six and Details, b-list-fucker Spiegelman thought he was doing us a favor by skewering another b-list fucker—thus his insistence that his hands remain unsullied and face hidden. We must allow him use of a pseudonym (against our policy) and guarantee that nothing would be traceable to him.

"It can’t even sound like me," he whined, as if he bore a strong authorial voice in the first place.

This is why we keep a safe distance from the incestuous circle of dimbulbs who think they’re contributing with their gossip pages and idiotic blogs. They’re cowards and hypocrites, happy to mock and deride as long as they don’t have to take responsibility for their actions. Ian Spiegelman, nice as he may be in person, is as useless as a stopwatch at the Special Olympics.

Let me get this straight: you publish a premeditated, unmerited, untrue attack on someone, under a pseudonym, as a favor to a "dimbulb" gossip columnist, and you think this is supposed to show how the NYP is better than all those "cowards" out there? (As for "cowards," see #3.) Are you just trying to tell us something about Mark Ames?

Besides which: b-list? What the hell do you think you guys are, the New Yorker?

#2: Do you really think it's a good idea to publish kind of lengthy bits about how you jerk off to Teen People?

Best Kiddie Porn Magazine
Female
Teen People

Touch it, Avril. On the topic of Camille Hall, who’s just been given a whole new look: "With her sultry, smudgy eyes, dark lipstick and fanciful ’fro, Camille’s funky style practically screams diva. ‘It’s very rock and roll,’ says NYC-based makeup artist Scott McMahan… ‘She could be up onstage with Lenny Kravitz as his backup singer.’"

Staring longingly at Camille’s plum-red, fuck-me lips parted just-so to suggest fellatio, we’re thinking of several other stages that might be more appropriate for this fetching woman. And then we realize that Camille’s 16 years old, and this is Teen People.

Oops.

As a young teenager discovering the special gift our boy parts had to offer, we "borrowed" our older sister’s Cosmopolitan. We could always count on Helen Gurley Brown for a glimpse of a nearly naked woman, which was plenty for our young minds to, er, work with. Were we to return to that age again and the internet didn’t yet exist, we’d be sneaking our little sister’s copies of Teen People, the Time Inc. publication that features more exposed underage flesh per page than any glossy this side of Barely Legal.

In the May 2003 issue, for example, the photo spread for the 50 Best Swimsuits is touted as "model-free fashion," which sounds like pornography code for "amateur girls." In one layout, Lara, the eldest amateur at 19, bends forward on a Vespa; in another, Gabrielle, 17, nibbles on a lollipop. Two pages later, Cynthia, Brooke (13) and Gabrielle pose together inside a hula hoop, while across the spread, Jane (15) jumps for the cameraman. Her bikini bottom is pulled so far up her crack that an eagle-eyed OB-GYN could probably tell if she’s a virgin.

We’d never deny wanting to fuck Avril Lavigne—if only to shut her up for five minutes—so maybe her ubiquity is why we always flip through the latest issue of Teen People. (Just how we got on that comp list, we’ll never know.) Or maybe it’s the dependability of seeing underage girls dressed like whores.

Fortunately, we’ve reached an age where it’s more appalling than titillating. Or just about.

Is this supposed to be shocking or something? You sound like Dear Abby, just with jackoff jokes, which were shocking in strip clubs in the 50's. Except not. Clearly you don't mean this as a sincere comment, since there's way better kiddie porn out there (cocks and everything), so is it supposed to be media critique? A larf? What? If critique, what are you saying? That the media exploits young women? That'd probably be more convincing if you didn't sound like, well, like you hate women. I'm just sayin'.

#3: What's up with this "we" shit? Why in the world would you do all this bitching about dishonesty in the media in the midst of spewing forth a bunch of gossipy unsigned items? Which one of you jerks off to Teen People? Which one of you applied to the stroke mag? And what the fuck is up with the weird kiss-off to people you fired? Strikes me as yet another symptom of the big dogs getting caught up in pretending they're the continual underdogs, since in their world that's the highest thing you can aspire to, but what do I know?

The assumption is that most of this was written by editor Jeff Koyen, Mr. Intense-Irrational-Hatred himself, also the presumed author of the 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers list, which had the laughable gumption to try and pretend like "New York Press readers" overwhelming thought the fucking editor of Maxim was the most loathsome New Yorker. Really? More loathsome than everyone else on the list--Henry Kissinger, Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein, David Rabin...and, honestly, do you expect us to buy that anything approaching a majority of city citizens thought cocaine is loathsome? To me, it seems a wee bit more likely that it was y'all libertarian grumpy-pusses.

Like I said about the Klosterman review, there's no denying that this shit is interesting, but so is Man v. Beast, and despite the Press' apparent desire to be, I dunno, the Vice of Manhattan (I'm not even gonna get into their loathsome slobber over Vice), they're skewing way closer to the former than the latter. No one cares about your bullshit gripes, but we will happily gawk at someone shitting in their hand on the sidewalk, staring at it briefly, and then eating it.

But I guess I'm just one o'them bloggers...
posted by Mike B. at 7:44 PM 0 comments