Shots in the Dark

One of the more unpleasant developments in the world of media criticism—a generous term in this context—is the website Gawker, a cynical, bitchy site about celebrity and the media. The people behind Gawker are anonymous, their writing unsigned…but that doesn’t stop them from sniping at virtually anyone who’s ever appeared in the media (including, yes, yours truly). A typical Gawker item: making a joke about Paris Hilton having “the clap.” As you might imagine, Gawker—like just about any site that plays on people’s jealousies and insecurities, and is sometimes funny—is wildly popular.

So it was a delight yesterday to read this item on the New York Post’s Page Six. I’m going to quote the whole thing here (sorry you can’t see the photo), because this level of vitriole in the New York media is indeed unusual:

“July 17, 2005 — THIS is the face of snarkiness incarnate. Unknown outside the dork-infested waters of the Blogosphere, her name is Jessica Coen, and she’s the co-editor of Gawker.com, where she regurgitates newspaper and magazine stories and slathers them in supposedly witty sarcasm. Every time we bump into Coen, 25, who likes to accessorize with a stuffed dog poking out of her handbag, she smiles and showers us with sycophantic praise. But her every mention of PAGE SIX on her Web site is snide and snarky. Word to Coen: Next time you see us at a party, keep walking. Or slithering. You can’t be a boot-licker and a back-stabber at the same time.”

Gawker’s response? A weak attempt at parody:

“There’s This Pot. And This Kettle.

This is the face of hard newsiness incarnate. Unknown outside the skeeve-infested circles of gossip-mongers, its name is Page Six, and it serves as the gossip column for the New York Post. (Incidentally, the Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who isn’t even American.) Page Six, which eats only the kittens they choose not to drown, loves to set fire to your furniture while wearing last season’s skeevy H&M. Page Six hates Live 8 and was thrilled to hear about what happened in Iraq this weekend. On their way to a vacation in North Korea, Page Six tried to kill a recently adopted Ethiopian baby. Word to Page Six: Watch your step, ‘cause Brad Pitt ain’t gonna have none of that.”

Advantage: Page Six, whose attack has the ring of truth, while Gawker’s response is just…lame.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a big Page Six fan either. But Page Six is buried within the NY Post—not exactly highbrow media—and in a weird way, it does have its own set of moral codes.

At its best, Gawker is a vehicle for social satire of our celebrity culture. More often, it’s just a way for kids whose careers aren’t going as planned to be mean without having to be held accountable for their nastiness.

I’m in the New York Post this morning, in Keith Kelly’s media column. Keith writes about the fact that I’m doing a little consulting for a new environmental magazine called Plenty, helping them out with their political coverage….

I like Keith, but he sometimes gets things a little off; his column implies that working for Plenty is a full-time gig, which it isn’t. I hope to have some (good) news about Book III soon….

Anyway, check out Plenty. It’s a new magazine and a little rough in spots, the way new magazines usually are, but it’s got a lot of energy and some very creative stuff inside. I like it.

With all the debate about sourcing these days, I’m surprised that the Times ran this story on Karl Rove the way it did.

The gist of the story is that Rove mentioned that Joseph Wilson’s wife was a CIA agent to Robert Novak, but only in passing and only when Novak called him, thus discrediting the idea that Rove was planting this information with anyone who would print it.

But there’s just one source for this: “someone who has been officially briefed on the matter.”

The source is later described thusly:
“The person who provided the information about Mr. Rove’s conversation with Mr. Novak declined to be identified, citing requests by Mr. Fitzgerald that no one discuss the case. The person discussed the matter in the belief that Mr. Rove was truthful in saying that he had not disclosed Ms. Wilson’s identity.”

Sounds a lot like Robert Luskind, Rove’s lawyer, to me….but then, that term “official” suggests that it’s a White House staffer…perhaps White House counsel Harriet Miers (who?).

Regardless, we know just that there’s one source, with a clear agenda, describing the details of this conversation. Is that really enough for the Times to go with it?

I’m not sure at all on this one….

A number of folks have e-mailed me to point out that Larry Summers will be throwing out the first ball at the Yankees-Red Sox game tonight…and that he’s been getting pitching tips from the Harvard baseball coach.

Okay, this one is too easy.

And because it is too easy, I am not going to have the obvious fun with it. Because if I were throwing out the first ball at a baseball game, I’d probably throw the damn thing into the crowd on the first-base side.

But does anyone else remember the milk-drinking scene from one of my favorite films, “My Life As a Dog“?

I’m going out tonight, so this makes me particularly glad for my new DVR….

Wrote this for the Huffington Post, but thought I’d transplant it over here as well….

<Kelly Preston’s post on the alleged danger of prescribing anti-depressants to children needs to know one very salient fact: Preston is a Scientologist, and Scientology, as we all know by now, doesn’t accept the validity of either psychiatry or prescription drugs. In any instance.

Ms. Preston, are there any circumstances under which you could support the prescription of anti-depressants for either children or adults?

But you don’t actually need to know Preston’s fundamental bias to see the holes in her reasoning.

It would be helpful, for example, to see a copy of her and Kirstie Alley’s letter to the FDA regarding anti-depressants, signed by 20 “doctors,” including “researchers” and “nutritionists.” Without a link to the letter, we can’t know what it actually says or who these signatories really are. What are their credentials? (Could they be fellow Scientologists?)

Preston argues that anti-depressants are turning kids into “walking time bombs.” That’s an irresponsible and alarmist statement. She claims that 8 of the last 13 school-shooters were taking prescription drugs. Even if that’s true, it hardly proves cause and effect. It could show only that the drugs didn’t work.

Preston quotes her doctors saying, “We can no longer sit back and let the clock tick, waiting for more deaths, suicides or people driven to violent acts by psychotropic drugs.”

It’s unclear what “deaths” she’s talking about, but it’s worth pointing out that the FDA advisory she’s referring to is based on studies of 4500 kids taking anti-depressant drugs—none of whom committed suicide.

And yet, Preston says, “a ‘troop of drugged-out zombies’ is frighteningly real.” If she really means “troop” and not “troupe,” she’s talking about something out of The Manchurian Candidate. Look out, President Bush.

One could go on, pointing out that Partnership for a Drug-Free America studies are notoriously biased, and DEA classifications for drugs are notoriously politicized.

Preston’s right on one point: The issue of prescribing drugs to children is a serious one, and it’s good that the FDA is studying potential risks. But I’m not sure that any practitioner of Scientology—which rejects science and holds that space aliens populated Earth—has anything of value to contribute to the debate. Those interested in finding more objective information should turn to this page.

Preston’s hysterical treatise might be amusing if it didn’t have a real downside; she could scare parents of troubled kids away from getting help for their children.

“The worst outcome from this complex situation would be failure to treat children with serious depression,” Dr. Steven Hyman, former head of the National Institute of Mental Health, told the Dallas Morning News.

And that really could lead to kids committing suicide.

A truck bomb has killed some 27 people in Baghdad, many of whom were children; American soldiers were handing out candy to kids in the neighborhood.

While we can and should criticize the Bush administration for much about the way it has sold and conducted this war, acts like this remind us that, if our president is not completely good, our enemy is completely evil.

How in Allah’s name could anyone blow up children?

I’m starting to wonder.

Here he criticizes the Harry Potter novels, saying that they are “are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.”

Jesus.

I guess that since the Church has begun attacking Charles Darwin, trashing J.K. Rowling was the logical next step….

Nooooooooo!

That’s my first reaction, anyway, to this report that New York’s MTA is considering wiring subways for cell phone use. I love the fact that New York subways are one (perhaps the last) urban space where you can escape constant talkers who a) have absolutely nothing of interest to say, and b) no hesitation about letting you hear that they have absolutely nothing of interest to say.

My reaction is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the impetus for this reconsideration is the London bombing, and the fact that cell phones would be useful in case of a terrorist attack on the subway.

But still…in the subterranean subway world, manners are really important, and the emphasis upon them seems to be waning. Fewer people than in the past stand aside when the doors open to allow passengers to exit; the other day, I couldn’t get out of a train because an MTA employee—an MTA employee!—was standing squarely in the middle of the doors, pushing to get in as passengers tried to get out. A couple of nights ago, I saw a man emit two long, discolored strings of saliva on the train floor next to where he sat—and he would have spat a third time if I hadn’t told him that he was disgusting.

For the most part, the New York city subway is a marvel of civility in dehumanizing conditions. But permitting cell phones to function in them…that just might be the tipping point.

There’s a lot of hubbub in the blogosphere about the news that Oliver Stone is directing a film about 9/11. Mickey Kaus thinks it’s a terrible idea because of Stone’s loony politics; James Wolcott defends Stone.

I’m with Wolcott on this one. (I’m with him on most things, actually. Smart guy.)

Yes, Oliver Stone’s politics are out there. Yes, if you give him a microphone, he’ll be sure to say things that shock and awe. But he’s a hell of a filmmaker. How many directors could list Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, JFK, Any Given Sunday (an underappreciated classic), The People vs. Larry Flynt, Nixon, The Doors, and Born on the 4th of July in their credits? That’s a pretty impressive list.

More to the point, when have we become so scared of politics in our art? Let’s assume that the worst happens and Stone makes the 9/11 equivalent of JFK—a brilliant piece of filmmaking with a loopy political premise. Well, the loopiness will be argued about, debated, dissected. The country will survive. And there’ll be more serious conversations about the relationship between art, politics and history than there otherwise would have been….

That’s why I’m so pleased that Steven Spielberg is making a movie about the terrorism at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Spielberg has shown that he’s capable of dealing with serious issues—the most serious—when he sets his mind to it. Now there’s controversy about the fact that he’s making this movie. Some of that is political paranoia; we’re constantly on the lookout now for people who are soft on terror. But much of it—too much—is because the right wing hates directors who try to think seriously about politics; they don’t trust Hollywood, and they don’t trust historiography that forces people to ask questions.

Ever notice how conservatives wildly distort liberal views so that they can then attack them? Yup, me too. So I think I’ll point that out whenever I see it happening….

Here’s one good example, from today’s New York Post:

“[Hillary] Clinton and other liberals maintain that it is up to the government to make sure children are properly fed, clothed and educated. The conservatives, on the other hand, argue that children need fathers and mothers, preferably one of each, and not bureaucrats to look after them.”

By implication, Democrats don’t think that children need mothers and fathers, but want children raised by “bureaucrats”….