The 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers
March 25, 2003 5:33 PM   Subscribe

New York Press' 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers The plucky paper that refuses to die, New York Press has been infuriating New Yorkers for fifteen years. Now it has started this nasty annual feature. Among the winners are Naomi Campbell, Jonathan Franzen, Jeff Koons, Sam Waksal, etc. Read 'em and weep. Ouch!
posted by ubueditor (20 comments total)
 
I guess Lizzie "cocaine SUV mayhem / perforated septum" Grubman was too obvious a choice. Although cocaine itself seems to have made the list.
posted by the fire you left me at 5:58 PM on March 25, 2003


That "plucky paper" is a fifty-percent unendurable neocon rag, with fifteen more percent in tranny personals and another fifteen in stupid music reviews written by interns [exception: Jim Knipfel]. What's weird is that the alt.cartoons they run are completely counter to their overall editorial drift. This is the kind of juvenile shit they are wont to purvey. Hey, what the hell, it's free!
If only al Qaeda could be conned into a prisoner exchange: We get the retarded adopted son of bin Laden’s plumber’s apprentice, they get Jonathan Franzen.
Oh, how clever. Sure, Franzen deserves a good roast by virtue of being the darling of the moldering book world [I liked Kavalier and Clay OK, though]. But this is nothing but a cheap weenie roast: the meat winds up underdone. I could get brainworms. And Michael Moore:
Slagging on this pandering blowhard is nothing new—especially not in these pages—but he makes it so easy.
Exactly my point. Too easy. Mugger must have run 50,000 words short at the last minute.

Exception to the foregoing: the Yoko item, except for that bit about "giving nuclear war a chance." I guess I'm humorless about things like that. And at least Kissinger makes the list.
posted by hairyeyeball at 6:05 PM on March 25, 2003


I would have placed the editor of that paper--an extroadinarily right-wing loudmouth among the first three entries. He gives Conservative a bad name.
posted by Postroad at 6:07 PM on March 25, 2003


As long as Coultier and Kissinger are on the list, I have no problem with Rall and Moore making it as well. That's certainly a fair exchange.
posted by Ryvar at 6:10 PM on March 25, 2003


what? no evanizer?
posted by quonsar at 6:10 PM on March 25, 2003


Lots of funny stuff, lots of well-directed nastiness, some duds (but not as many as you expect in this kind of list), some surprising omissions (like, as the fire says, Lizzie G.—and where's my former landlord, dammit?). Here's my favorite overall, well done (I love "the real pain was on the other side of the machine gun") and nicely summing up America's relation to Vietnam:

17 Bob Kerrey, President, New School
When the bug-eyed former senator and current New School prez got word that the New York Times was about to publish an article asserting his involvement in a massacre of Vietnamese civilians in 1969, he came forward a few days ahead of time to give his own version of the story—and was immediately applauded for his courage in facing up to his "painful" past despite the fact that 1) he’d sat on the story for 32 years and 2) the real pain was on the other side of the machine gun. Kerrey is the face of that bloated, self-centered, delusional America that somehow still manages to see itself as the victim in Vietnam—as though its pseudo-literary "loss of innocence" and, in this case, ruined political prospects, somehow compare to two million actual dead people and a mine-strewn countryside of ravaged moonscapes.

Oh, and I agree with Postroad: Russ Smith would have fit very well on the list.
posted by languagehat at 6:16 PM on March 25, 2003


When the bug-eyed former senator and current New School prez got word that the New York Times was about to publish an article asserting his involvement in a massacre of Vietnamese civilians in 1969, he came forward a few days ahead of time to give his own version of the story—and was immediately applauded for his courage in facing up to his "painful" past

A similar story arc can be found in the popular and recommended Amsterdam, by Ian McEwan.
posted by the fire you left me at 6:27 PM on March 25, 2003


Great list. It could have easily been lengthened to at least 100. I mean really.
posted by hama7 at 6:37 PM on March 25, 2003


Delightfully snotty. I was most gratified to see overrated hacks like Jeff Koons, Patti Smith, and Annie Liebovitz get skewered.

Rall's on the list because he's in a feud with members of the Press' fucking graphics department, for godssakes

And here I thought it was because he's an insufferably self-righteous, largely talentless and boring ideologue. Gosh, my bad.
posted by MrBaliHai at 7:04 PM on March 25, 2003


I liked Kavalier and Clay OK, though

That's Michael Chabon, not Jonathan Franzen. So perhaps Franzen has no redeeming virtues after all? :)
posted by thomas j wise at 7:35 PM on March 25, 2003 [1 favorite]


Fun. Makes me miss Spy magazine though.
And isn't it time to retire 'douchebag' as an insult? Has anyone actually seen a douchebag?
posted by blue at 7:42 PM on March 25, 2003


Personally, I like Rall

I'm not surprised.
posted by MrBaliHai at 7:53 PM on March 25, 2003


Although it's not a person, as is not cocaine, I would like to nominate New York Magazine to that list.
posted by ParisParamus at 8:06 PM on March 25, 2003


I would have placed the editor of that paper--an extroadinarily right-wing loudmouth among the first three entries. He gives Conservative a bad name.

This is incorrect. The person to whom you are referring, Russ Smith a.k.a Mugger, was never the editor of New York Press, he was the Publisher. The paper was recently sold. Until then, the wonderful John Strausbaugh (author of Rock 'Til You Drop) was editor. He was replaced by Jeff Koyen who, years ago, ran the legendary zine Crank.
posted by ubueditor at 8:19 PM on March 25, 2003


There is some hidden white text on that page...

CLASSIFIED TOP SEARCH
212 (212) 718 (718) New York City Manhattan Brooklyn Queens Bronx Staten Island Loni massage Asian brooklyn escort escorts www.permanenthairremover.com 212 chinese jusy queens adult personals keyla mei midtown shemale asia body rub bodywork bronx jew manhattan dream incall kayla mackenzie nanny new jersey permanent hair proofreader rooms bass bodyrub brooklyn heights carpenter coat check editor fetish fiesta gin jobs maid maintenance male dancers mature oriental photography studio upper west side video williamsburg www 516 631 acquiesce administrative assistant bilingual apartment apartments ariel ashley body work carroll cleaning computer computers couples drivers european geo in jewish nanny jobs nj no fee nude p/t panties pre-natal massage presbyterian queens apartments reiki sex sophia spanking splawn 2 br accounting acupuncture aide amazon anal apartmnets art asian massage bar jobs bartender, waitress bartenders bartending bensonhurst black body body grooming bookkeeper bronx apartments busty callgirl carpentry cars clean clubs columbia condo connecticut construction cook couples massage crosby dental lab driver drum east ebony enema felina free ad front desk germany killer girls gong graphic design greek guitar hairstylist incalls indian inwood janitor john street legal notices lost and found marc mark miss mary missy model music naked naked women new years eve no broker no fee no broker paint path personal personnals phone photos pre-natal maggase receptionist sax shemales silver singer soho spas services superintendent swinging television tile workers help wanted trans transsexual unfurnished upper east variations vespa village voice over wanted west women writing

WEB TOP 40 SEARCH
1. spiderman
2. shakira
3. winter olympics
4. world cup
5. avril lavigne
6. star wars
7. eminem
8. american idol
9. morrowind
10. warcraft 3
11. natalie portman
12. dungeon siege
13. trillian
14. las ketchup
15. neverwinter nights
16. battlefield 1942
17. pink
18. gareth gates
19. loft story 2
20. ikea
21. nostradamus 22. napster 23. world trade center 24. anthrax 25. osama bin laden 26. taliban 27. all your base are belong to us 28. cnn 29. fbi 30.
posted by banished at 9:10 PM on March 25, 2003


too bad for them that google is smart enough to not count background-coloured text when it evaluates search rankings
posted by timb at 9:32 PM on March 25, 2003


Very funny link. It's okay to laugh a bit people. I especially applaud the inclusion of one-time football player Jason Sehorn:


The underperforming underwear model with declining skills is soon to be an ex-New Yorker, having been cut by the Giants few weeks back. Sehorn was the poster child for the phenomenon of overpaid athletes who want all the idiotic trimmings of sports celebrity without having to do the very occasional "hard" part—in his case, providing run support on 2nd and 6. While more than happy to let Michael Strahan and Kenny Holmes do the dirty work up front, Sehorn never missed a chance to be in a shirtless workout video, ring the starting bell at the Nasdaq or show off his coif while bopping around town with his hideous non-actress wife, Law & Order catastrophe Angie Harmon. The cornerback position apparently being insufficiently glorious, he once begged for a job returning kicks in pre-season and immediately ripped up his knee, dooming his team’s defense for the season.

posted by vito90 at 9:33 PM on March 25, 2003


what? I didn't make the list AGAIN?

I guess because I haven't lived here a full year yet, I can't be classified as a New Yorker?
posted by Vidiot at 10:53 PM on March 25, 2003


For a scummy, dishonest attempt at SEO, though, this amused the hell out of me:

"It was up to spiderman and shakira to stop that rotten scoundrel osama bin laden and his taliban.. First he brought down the world trade center, then he created napster‹what evil would be next? Studying the works of nostradamus, they figured the best place to catch him would either be at the world cup or the winter olympics, where he planned to unleash an envelope full of anthrax on the unsuspecting crowd. CNN caught morrowind of the plot, and predicted there would be neverwinter nights for years to come. It would be a dungeon siege when these forces came together. It would be like a battlefield 1942.

"Each man involved is an american idol," eminem told avril levigne in front of the pink gareth gates of their local Ikea. "All your base are belong to us," bin laden said in a taped message. "The battlefield will run red with los ketchup. It will be star wars. A trillian bodies will litter the sand!" Natalie Portman of the FBI had heard enough. She contacted the Pentagon and ordered operation flashpoint, which involved crashing the mir space station into Afghanistan, which soon thereafter would resemble the Planet of the Apes. Segway to Angelina Jolie, who shouted to her comrade and fellow tomb raider loana, "Hurry! We must return to castle wolfenstein! Don©ˆt they realize that all this is designed to lead to big brother 2?"

They fled on foot, together into the night ."
posted by adamgreenfield at 1:25 AM on March 26, 2003


I would like to nominate New York Magazine to that list.

That reminds me. Who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to send Michael Wolff to the Gulf? His attack on Al-Jazeera at the Tommy Franks briefing was cringeworthy sycophancy of the highest order.
posted by riviera at 8:38 PM on March 26, 2003


« Older Odden's Bookmarks   |   Clear Channel Behind Pro-War Demos Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments