True story: I had a job at Gawker.com -- for about 24 hours.
Just a couple of days after my firing from CNN became public knowledge, I was contacted by Noah Robischon, managing editor at Gawker Media and high-level minion to site founder, internet mogul, and notoriously mercurial pain-in-the-ass, Nick Denton. He sent me an e-mail asking whether I thought my foul mouth and Jedi-like mastery of the dark art of the cheap punchline might be well-suited for a home at New York City's premier online destination for astringent snark. Being suddenly out of a regular paycheck and admittedly enticed by the possible opportunity to say a figurative "fuck you" to my former employer by landing a new, high-profile job so soon after being canned, I agreed to meet with his boss and engage in a little mutual rear-sniffing. Denton and I wound up grabbing a quick lunch in SoHo on a Saturday afternoon and by the end of the meal he had offered me a provisional gig writing about television for Gawker, with instructions to report to work the following Monday morning for whatever training and orientation I might need.
Turns out I never got that far.
The next morning I received a short e-mail from Denton saying, in so many words, that after taking a closer look at the kind of material I was putting up on my own site, he'd decided that I wouldn't, in fact, be a good fit with Gawker. I admit that I was caught slightly off-guard by the quick dismissal; it seemed startlingly schizophrenic, even for someone with Denton's reputation. The impression that I got from the e-mail, though -- the rationale I could glean from the words of Gawker's publisher as to why his site and I just wouldn't be right for each other -- was that I was actually a little too caustic and vicious, ungovernably so, when it came to my opinions. For a moment, I couldn't help but think that being told you're too much of a prick to work at Gawker is like being told you're too gay to audition for the lead in Torch Song Trilogy. Almost immediately, however, I realized something: Denton was absolutely right; I'm the furthest thing from Gawker material -- and taking a somewhat righteous stand against the abuses I witnessed at CNN and in the mainstream media, only to then turn around and crank out snotty, Fountainhead-referential one-liners about celebrities, Manhattan socialites and Chuck Klosterman probably wouldn't do much for my credibility, to say nothing of my long-term career.
It's right about now that I should mention that I have nothing against Gawker.com or any of its sister sites. On the contrary, the kind of writing -- the kind of thinking -- popularized by Gawker's rotating cast of quick-witted wonder kids has been eminently entertaining over the years (although a lot of folks will tell you that the one-note joke, coupled with an overabundance of in-house drama, has worn very thin). For a long time, I was an avid reader of several of the titles under Denton's hegemonic banner and, in the interest of full disclosure, his people have linked a few of the pieces I've written for my own site, bringing me exposure that I might not otherwise have had. That said, there's been an awful lot of negative press aimed at the House of Gawker over the past year or so, and even the most unctuous of Denton apologists would have to admit that quite a bit of it is well-deserved.
Gawker's biggest problem -- the most looming threat to its own success -- has always been, ironically, its own success. The namesake site and its counterparts, at least the ones based in New York, were founded as a place where elite (and elitist) members of the city's self-described "creative underclass" could come together and do what they did best -- stand at the bar or in a corner at the party making fun of everyone they considered beneath them -- on a grand scale. The trouble, of course, is that those kinds of people are generally callow, insecure, obnoxious, monumentally narcissistic and, whether they'll admit to it or not, want nothing more than to be a part of the very crowd they mock so venomously; give them a taste of the fame they purport to be so openly hostile toward and not only will they become the very thing they supposedly despise, the entire concept of the place they work for will be put at risk. Put simply, Gawker and sites like it, to be effective, need to have some sort of Menudo-like policy when it comes to the notoriety of their writers and editors: Once the kids hit that personal fame ceiling, their time's up and they're out.
But Gawker and its siblings probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for the voices of writers who are, in reality, interested in self-obsession above all else.
Which makes it even more of a shame that, on paper at least, Jezebel.com was supposed to be different.
Jezebel's been in the new media press quite a bit lately -- for all the wrong reasons. A couple of weeks ago, Lizz Winstead, co-creator of The Daily Show and an undeniably whip-smart lady, invited two of Jezebel's most potent and popular contributors to take part in an off-the-cuff talk show called Thinking and Drinking. Moe Tkacik and Tracie Egan -- whose nom de plume is "Slut Machine" -- are fulltime staffers at Jezebel, a site which casts itself as an edgier alternative to the glossy, Oprahfied banality of most media aimed at female audiences these days. As writers, both kids fit the Gawker Media mold almost perfectly: street smart, acid-tongued City Girls with an obligatory air of ironic detachment and, in Egan's case particularly, more than a passing affection for the dramas that make up their personal lives. Winstead claims to have propositioned the Jezebelles because of a respect for their reputation as standard bearers for the new model of female empowerment; what she found out in short order, however -- at least if you believe her story about being unaware of what she was actually getting -- was that Tkacik and Egan come off a hell of a lot smarter in print.
During the course of their conversation, which can be viewed in its entirety on Winstead's website, the ladies of Jezebel managed to embarrass themselves and their employer in ways so pronounced that you were kind of left feeling sorry for them rather than pissed-off that anyone had ever made the mistake of holding them up as models of savvy womanhood. Tkacik and Egan each seemed to punctuate every sentence with "like" -- as in, "I guess I, like, regret being date raped," and "I think (not being date raped) has to do with the fact that I am, like, smart," respectively; Egan -- remember, "Slut Machine" -- was a trucker's mouth full of requisite in-your-face navel-gazing, defiantly offering up that she "once paid someone to rape me once." Both women were drunk. Neither one gave a shit about how the two of them looked to anyone sitting in the studio audience or watching at home, nor how swiftly and entirely their dumb-ass, giggling party girl act may have been undoing the very mission statement of Jezebel.com.
Insulted by the Jezebelles' behavior and offended at their glib treatment of the very serious subject of rape, Winstead wrote a scathing column in the Huffington Post late last week, basically taking Tkacik and Egan to task by publicly taking them apart. In response to the piece, which brought the entire miasma front and center for both fans and critics of Jezebel.com and its Gawker Media mothership, Sarah Hepola fired off a column of her own in Salon.com, lambasting the girls for their lack of maturity and rightly recognizing that, as with far too many of the Gawker kids lately, neither thinks beyond her own self-mythology and potential stardom. This led Jezebel.com's managing editor, Anna Holmes, to post an apology on the site in which she called the whole thing "a fucking shame" for everyone involved -- including Winstead, whom she accuses of having "unrealistic expectations" -- and explicitly stated that the actions of Tkacik and Egan are not representative of Jezebel.
Except, of course, that they are.
To react with shock that a writer who calls herself "Slut Machine" and blogs ad nauseam about -- and stop me if you've heard this one before -- all the partying and hot, indiscriminate fucking she does in New York City might be apt to embarrass the hell out of a site that aims to be taken seriously on the subject of women's issues seems comically disingenuous. Likewise, to allow two girls to speak for you in an official capacity who as recently as late last year were gleefully engaging in their best Courtney Lovecraft for a drugged-up-chic promotional photo shoot smacks of trying to have it both ways. I can't imagine that Anna Holmes is a stupid woman, which means she's either really good at self-deception or really bad at deceiving everyone else. She had to know what would happen when Tracie Egan and Moe Tkacik took the stage at an event that actually had the word "drinking" right in its name (although to be fair, if she did any research at all, Lizz Winstead should have known as well); being surprised that these two made drunken asses out of themselves is like being shocked your house in bone dry, brush-laden Big Sur is burning down.
I've never met Anna Holmes personally, but interestingly, I have met Moe Tkacik -- specifically because I didn't meet Anna Holmes when I was supposed to.
Let me explain: Holmes was scheduled to take part in Gelf Magazine's "Non-Motivational Speaker Series" on New York's Lower East Side last month, an event I'd also been booked for. At the last minute she canceled, telling organizers that she'd just come home from her honeymoon to discover bedbugs in her apartment and simply couldn't make it. (If this strikes you as the kind of hilariously horseshit excuse that only a borderline sociopath would expect anybody to actually buy, you once again don't understand the earth-shattering importance of each of the millions of mini-dramas that make up the daily life of the average New Yorker.) In her place Holmes dispatched Tkacik, who was introduced to the small crowd only as "Moe." Although it's unfair to be too harsh on someone who was forced into a tough spot at the last second -- improvisationally tap-dancing on behalf of her boss -- the issues I had with Tkacik at the time had less to do with her obvious level of discomfort at having been put in such a difficult position than it did with her way of thinking in general.
To be blunt, she was just so damn Gawker. She made cracks about needing Adderall -- the official drug of children and 20-somethings who have the maturity level of children. As with Winstead, she carpet-bombed every sentence with enough "like"s to make a college English professor give up and go sell Amway. She struck an almost admirable pose of aloof nonchalance, seeming at every turn to be playing the part of the cool kid who just doesn't give a shit but whose insecurities can practically be seen swimming around just beneath her thin skin. I had no doubt at the time that Moe was a nice enough girl -- just young and completely wrapped up in her own self-perpetuating bullshit. She was, quite frankly, the one thing I doubt she ever wanted to be (though if you asked her, she'd probably pretend to insouciantly embrace the label in the same way that a hipster might wear a t-shirt emblazoned with the Ghostbusters logo as a badge of ironic honor): She was a cliché. I found myself wanting to give her a fucking hug or something and tell her it's not her fault.
It's Emily Gould's.
If you have no idea who Emily Gould is, you A) don't live in New York City, and B) are very, very lucky. The Gould fiasco from a couple of months back was so outrageously stupid that even though it dealt directly with the subject of new media-versus-old, I didn't dare touch it, lest I in some small way perpetuate both the nonsensical "controversy" that so many seemed to be talking about and the career of Gould herself. To recap quickly for the blissfully uninitiated: Emily Gould rose to fame blogging for Gawker and at her own personal site, both of which, to some extent, became a daily treasure trove of Gould's personal exploits (relationship and otherwise), neuroses, dropped names, schoolgirl giddiness and general self-absorption. The wholly unimaginative within the media, clamoring to find a reference point that the unwashed masses would understand, tried to dub her at one point "The Real Carrie Bradshaw." Still, there were plenty of people out there who had no idea who Emily Gould was -- much to her own dismay, I'd imagine. That changed this past May, when The New York Times Magazine published a cover story on Gould that not only featured some of the most hysterically awful writing and unabashed narcissism ever to grace The Times -- and this is a paper that employs Thomas Friedman -- but also a suggestive cover photo of Gould lying on a bed giving the camera her best "morning afterglow" look (in case you needed reinforcement for the idea that Blogging = Inviting You Into the Bedroom). The backlash from Times readers wanting to know why the hell the paper had stooped to legitimizing someone like Gould in such grand fashion was so furious that editors actually shut down the online comment section to spare their cover girl, and themselves, any more invective.
Emily Gould's neck-breaking, yet strangely dull, confessional introspection -- her lamentation of "I've Never Been to Me" -- seemed to confirm everyone's worst fears about young bloggers: they're shallow; they think the world revolves around them and their problems; they grow addicted to the rush of instant feedback or instant fame; they become nothing more than caricatures of real people after a while. For someone who now writes fulltime, mostly via the internet, I couldn't help but see Emily Gould as a kind of new media literary Stepin Fetchit, setting the whole damn movement back by a decade or so by smiling broadly and doing the happy little shuffle that would guarantee her minor fame -- at least that of her idol, media gadfly and real-world nobody Julia Allison, whom Gould name-drops with Tourette's-like consistency -- but would also ensure that any larger responsibility toward women in new media (and women in general for that matter) went unattended. By greedily grabbing the lowest-hanging fruit on the massive tree available to women bloggers -- writing mostly about her love life, which seems to always assure an audience of one kind or another -- Gould helped to lower the bar and set a new standard for the women who would follow in her wake.
Women like Tracie Egan, who's seen her dreams of New York-centric notoriety come true by writing about, what else, how much she loves to have sex and get drunk.
Women like Moe Tkacik, who is, I have no doubt, far too smart to be acting so goddamned dumb.
The point that Lizz Winstead was trying to make by raking these kids over the coals was that, as women with a forum and an audience, they have a responsibility not necessarily to represent or speak for all women, but at the very least to understand that what they say matters -- that people are listening and give a crap. There are often larger consequences to what those with a forum say and do. Winstead believes that acting stupid isn't feminist, or even neo-feminist -- it's just stupid. I on the other hand look at the behavior of Egan and Tkacik from the perspective of a writer and a journalist, but the conclusion is the same: What we say, what we write -- whether in long form pieces or in quick deadline-driven bits on sites like Gawker; whether in print or on the internet -- all of it matters. It's easy as hell to be clever and glib, and God knows I'm guilty of both quite often, but provocative doesn't always equal insightful, and it damn sure doesn't always equal smart. It's an old cliché that sarcasm is lazy humor, but that's only true if there's nothing to back it up -- if there's no substance under all that incisive wit and no real point or passion to bolster all that flowery sound and fury. Detached irony simply for detached irony's sake will only take you so far.
I can't help but feel, unfortunately, like Gawker has already found this out.
It'd be a shame if Jezebel followed the same path.
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Nice! Somebody writes something well thought out and intelligent, that takes a more than a few seconds to read, and it gets a whole 30 comments! Don't let that get you down Chaz.
And to think about all the HuffPo people who go crazy at any mention of Obama...
Well-written post, and a point well made.
I made it through most of this piece but had to stop reading because, not being from New York, I got the feeling that I'm too unsophisticated and stupid to understand Mr. Pazienza's point. I'm sure he speaks exactly how he writes. Plus, what's wrong with girls who, like, get drunk and want to have sex?
Another notch in the belt of this (CNN) administration.
Manuel
All this is new to me but its 6 in the morning and I'm in the middle of nowhere. So, I read the whole thing and now I know......what?
The famous remark that "sarcasm is lazy humor" by the way does not refer to the content but to the manner in which it is conveyed. To be sarcastic is to take an easy approach. Literate folk look for a more elegant path. It is a quaint snobbery, in my opinion.
Excellent post.
all other points aside, you have obviously never had bedbugs...
It ain't the bedbugs. Read the excuse again. The woman came home from her honeymoon only to "discover bedbugs in her apartment" you don't discover bedbugs..bedbugs discover you. You only find out you have bedbugs when the doctor checks those funny bites you start to notice. Even if that was the truth, how would that prevent you from making an engagement? You decide you are the only qualified bedbug exterminator? c'mon!
"...as women with a forum and an audience, they have a responsibility not necessarily to represent or speak for all women, but at the very least to understand that what they say matters -- that people are listening and give a crap. There are often larger consequences to what those with a forum say and do."
This point really stood out. Because what we are dealing with here is a pervasive personality disorder that is spreading rapidly into all corners of modern life: Narcissism.
Narcissists don't care. It's only about the attention. They are addicted to receiving as much attention as possible from people they deem 'beneath' themselves. What they say, write, and do, is for one purpose: it is only valuable in terms of how much attention it brings them.
What it means, and whether or not it 'matters' to others is of NO consequence to the narcissist.
While the pile-on for the "Drinking and Thinking" debacle has been extensive, it seems to me that Lizz Winstead set the tone when she joked about her three abortions. (That was the most cringe-worthy moment of this entire saga, until Winstead decided that the Jezebels should be held to account for their words.)
I watched the entire tape and read Winstead's post and, after comparing both, something didn't pass the smell test. Finally, I read this on Spencer Ackerman's blog:
"Winstead says that she doesn't know if Moe and Tracie arrived to her studio drunk or got drunk before they got on stage. Yes, she does. Her crew immediately handed them beers and encouraged the two to drink up. Then they got Moe and Tracie more beers before the cups were empty. On stage, Winstead herself put a table in front of Moe so she'd have a place to put additional beers, and joked that beer cans are "water" on Thinking and Drinking. What stupid whores! How foolish of them to expect to be treated in good faith!"
He also discusses how Winstead sandbagged them "to talk about such topics as rape," though "Moe and Tracie were told that Thinking and Drinking is a comedy show.. "
The show was a trainwreck, tis true. But after watching the entire hour (as opposed to those segments Winstead chose to highlight), the treatment of Moe and Tracie hasn't been fair. This whole thing has been overblown and mean-spirited.
gotta agree on this one. I think when you try to bait people who know that you're trying to bait them, they can stick it two you in one of a couple ways. they can play along, as these two did, and just drag the whole thing down, or you can overtly fight back, which doesn't seem like their style. I agree about narcissism, I know girls like this and they are annoying as can be. I just don't see Winstead as being of that different an ilk. how much of a cliche is it for a middle aged woman to lecture younger girls about how their promiscuous lifestyles are going to get them raped (and since she tried to make a number of points about how/why to not blame the victim when it comes to this topic, this basic question she asked did in fact, basically blame women for rape)? pretty damn cliched. how cliched is it for a feminist to lecture younger women for not talking about rape 'enough', when the cultural climate they've grown up in is already far more open about the subject and far more likely to address it already? there are women and men who are turned off by feminists because often talking to them simply degenerates into yet another discussion about how bad rape is. as if anyone who cared didn't already know.
Interesting that none of the moderated comments here disagree with you. I thought this was a forum for thoughtful discussion. I submitted a comment after watching the entire video. Based on the other comments, I am not sure that the others took the time to watch. I thought it was a fairly insightful look at their lifestyles. It may not be your thing, it certainly isn't mine. But I think you criticism is biased and unfair.
Just my personal experience here, when you find someone who is a great blogger, witty, fun, irreverent, and seems to have an incredibly exciting life.... beware.
That person may just be a very good writer, with a very boring life and is full of fish tales.
I think the incongruity of what the interview contained sort of spelled out what happens in real life.
Someone can have a fun and exciting way to describe their life, and then you see and hear them and find out that they are self centered a*holes, and with these two, drunks on top of it.
I imagine many people saw these two interviewed and realized they probably wouldn't have them over for dinner, why are they reading their blog?
Brevity is the soul of wit.
Let me give you a brief rundown on many of the the modern NYC/LA "third wave" feminist blogger and a goodly portion of her audience:
-promiscuity = liberation (we're aping men's worst characteristics while calling them virtues, deceit, diseases and self-perpetuating/inflicted traumas be damned)
-fashion/trends = self-awareness/happiness (what's inside really doesn't count, especially because to look at it honestly hurts too much)
-shallowness = survival skills (if we try to understand/improve ourselves on any substantial level or criticize ourselves or others, we're being 'fundie'/'reactionary'/'uncool')
That's a quick summation, and somewhat glib and stereotypical, yes, but I assure you that the basic points are correct. What's worse is that in keeping with general, immutable human law, these relatively few women end up controlling the discourse for many women, as you point out in this post.
It's amazing how when I meet some young women from the middle of the country, or from outside the U.S., how much more self-aware, comfortable in their own skin, pleasant and attractive they are. Our culture for many young urban women (and men, for that matter) is rotten, and it does no good to do chicken/egg philosophizing. It won't stop until someone gets seriously hurt and crashes to the city pavement--hard, and on a large scale among many people.
This subject makes me sound like a conservative like few things can.
Let's not forget failure = never your fault. See also: Clinton, Hillary.
What the hell are you talking about? Why would you put Hillary in with these women?
Failure = Barack Obama (just wait and see. He will redefine 'crash and burn')
Good one!
with mommie's money you can drink in tribeca with her friends.
Ooooh - well said.
Nick Denton dodged a bullet.
So what if those bloggers were shameless drunk sluts who hired people for sex. Add some bar fights and you'd have Hemingway.
add some fabricated bar fights and you have mailer.
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects...
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Posted July 11, 2008 | 12:44 PM (EST)