In a recent poll of influential DC blogs, Literature R Us came in dead last. No one of any consequence reads this blog. So if you thought you were a person of consequence, well, you just got some bad news. Nonetheless, I’m going to give you my opinion of why Sarah Palin bailed. Because she’s…
Pimp my charmingly unpretentious Chevy Chase bungalow
According to a reliable source—and I do have them—Katy Weymouth does not own a mansion. Furthermore, in a recent memo Katy has asked for a “review” of “recent events” at the Wash Post—most notably, one presumes, her recent offer to rent out herself, her house, and her paper to the highest bidder. It’s a good…
Elvin Jones—“A Night in Tunisia”
Pimp my mansion—the continuing saga of Katy Weymouth
Is Wash Post publisher Katy Weymouth that much worse than the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and the Atlantic Monthly, not to mention the New Yorker? All Katy wanted to do was rent out her fancy mansion, her paper, and herself to corporate lobbyists anxious to meet government movers and shakers. In a fascinating follow-up…
Katy Weymouth puts tit in wringer and turns the handle, hard
The Washington Post just committed suicide today. Unfortunately, the Post isn’t quite yet aware of that fact. Former Post reporter Mike Allen, now at Politico, is the messenger, informing us of one DC’s most remarkable invites: “Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate,” says the one-page flier. “Underwrite and participate…
Alas, Poor Farrah!
If poor Farrah never quite mastered the giddy bicycle of Success, it wasn’t for lack of trying. But if she had been smart, I think she would have stayed with Jill Monroe. Once an Angel, kid, always an Angel.
Alas, poor Michael—you were really disgusting
Michael Jackson was a pathetic and finally repulsive case of arrested development, marinating in his obsessions with lost innocence, which led him to violate the innocence of any number of children who often enough were all but thrown at him by their corrupt and greedy parents. Years ago I wrote a long piece on Michael’s…
Wolcott Gibbs
Wolcott Gibbs is practically unknown today, except to that small and no doubt dwindling band who know a great deal about the early days of the New Yorker. Founder/editor Harold Ross once told James Thurber “There wasn’t anything the three of you [Gibbs, Thurber, and E.B. White] couldn’t do. You could have got the magazine…
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EDITING NEW YORKER ARTICLES
The average contributor to this magazine is semi-literate; that is, he is ornate to no purpose, full of senseless and elegant variations, and can be relied on to use three sentences where a word would do. It is impossible to lay down any and complete formula for bringing order out of this underbrush, but there…
The Customer Is Always Wrong
by Wolcott Gibbs Just as the advance agent for a circus is not likely to be disturbed by even the largest elephant, so his metropolitan equivalent, the Broadway press agent, can look on the most succulent actor and still remain composed. This is a natural condition, since both actors and elephants, observed for any length…