Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

Alternate Headline: New York’s Most Finely Polished Turd Loses Its Luster

Posted on | September 2, 2010 | No Comments

Quick question: Is Gossip a good thing or a band thing?

Outside of a few media moguls, yellow newspapermen, daytime talk show hosts and their wannabes, the answer will be “no,” no matter who you ask. In most people’s day to day life, they don’t like being gossiped about whether or not the gossip bounty on your head happens to be north of five figures. Most half-decent people try to cut down on the gossip they engage in, whether they’re a “Good Christian” or a well-worn Brooklyn hipster sick of their friends being douchebags.

That’s what I thought when I read Foster Kamer and Joe Coscarelli’s requiem for the “golden days” of Walter Winchell, Page Six, and Liz Smith. Kamer, who’s a great writer and one of the better talents Gawker’s had in its post-Awl generation, is still just 25. His success in New York’s gossip industry, and his lack of naievete about what it would take, have made him a good writer and the perfect person to write the article he wrote for the Village Voice (where I have freelanced). The problem is the flaw of Kamer’s entire premise: that being in a position of power to ruin someone’s career at the drop of a pen on notebook paper is a good thing for for individuals, society, or anyone other than the one wielding that power at that particular moment in time. And yet, thousands still flock to New York each year to try to obtain a 1-1,000 chance of effectively obtaining that stink bomb, thinking that being that kind of jerk is something to aspire to.

See: Burt Lancaster’s monstrous, Winchell-esque J.J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success, who Kamer idolizes somewhat in his Village Voice feature. See also: John Hamm’s Don Draper in Mad Men, the dreamy, hard-drinking, slick New York ad exec from 1962 who ruins the lives of multiple good-enough people (and some bad ones), treats everyone around him like meat, still can’t get over his daddy issues, and is the envy of every New York media personality in 2010 (both as wanting to be him and, however implicitly, wanting him).

I’m not knocking Kamer himself, his piece, or his career goals; he’s more accomplished and relevant than I am, and I’ve enjoyed his work bringing people who are theoretically and practically much more important than him down to size. But as a 25 year old just a few years removed from leaving the school where Sarah Palin got her degree, he’s got a lot to learn about being a good New Yorker. If nothing else, I do have almost two decades worth of experience as a New Yorker n him, and there comes a point as a New Yorker, be it 10, 15, or 20 years down the road, when you realize that behind all the asshole window dressing that New Yorkers embellish, kindness (also known as simply not being a douchebag), wins out (see: Greenberg, kinda.) Yes, there will always be bigger douches to fry: Kamer’s not the first person to lose millions insulting James Dolan, however obliquely, but that’s not an excuse to live a lifestyle (or make a career) of doing so.

In or out of context, the gleeful tone Kamer takes when writing the following graph makes sense in New York media circles, but sounds horrific just about anywhere else:

In 2008, Vanessa Grigoriadis, a reporter for New York magazine, wrote a profile of Gawker, daring to question the necessity of Page Six and calling them “emasculated.” The column responded all but threatening to rape her. The males on staff of Page Six would “take her someplace private and disprove her theory,” but, “lucky” for Grigoriadis, they, at that time, did not “like a woman with a mustache.” It might be worth noting that Grigoriadis, in a previous article on Page Six, called [Pager Six Columnist Richard Johnson] “movie-star handsome.”

How Draper-esque.

Look, the point is not whether the quality of fact-checking and sources makes a gossip columnist more or less robust. Nor is it, as Alex Williams sand-throwing feature on Kamer and his contemporaries, about the fact that “the lines between ‘reporter’ and ‘blogger,’ ‘gossip’ and ‘news’ have blurred almost beyond distinction.” The issue, as with every person in the world (and especially New York), is whether you are a gossip who looks for reasons to dismiss people for their shortcomings, or a person who judges people by their strengths, geniality, and accomplishments, (see: 39-year-old Liz Lemon on Season 4 of 30 Rock.)

Ironically, as I started to write this, Kamer was publishing a post on “Fox News” vs. Hipsters” with a conclusion that’s pretty much the along the same lines, but still aligning himself with hipsters in an “us vs. them” mold. But the reality is that hipsters and the aspiring NYC media types who make them can be no less full of hate speech than Fox Newsers (there was even a popular but short-lived hipster column named after it). The hipsters from previous generations who based their lives on hate speech tend to end up on Fox News now, and I doubt that pattern is anything new beyond the particular medium in question. As far as gossip-mongers not practicing what they preach, Kamer has just committed a small-scale Maureen Dowd-ism, something that his lack of naivete should clue him in on. More to the point: it’s nice not to be naive; the vast majority of people are naive, and yet no one in the gossip business can ever be. But if your career is based on polishing a turd, it’s not going to be substantial, and while it may be true that the turd-polishing industry in NYC has declined from where it was 30 years ago, it’s only because the money for preservatives has dried up with the recession.

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