Gotta love the New York Press alternative weekly for its list of 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers. Among those on
the receiving end of its full-bore contempt are movie director Sofia Coppola (50), ad man Donny
Deutsch (40), liberal pundit Eric Alterman (39), author James Frey (30), anchor woman Diane
Sawyer (23), Dean of the Actors Studio James Lipton (17) and a host of bankers, politicians,
media moguls, corporate chiefs, lawyers, professors, pro-smoking activists, bloggers, gossip
columnists, actors, comedians, publicists and reporters.
Topping the list is former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now a businessman. Rest assured,
the luminaries who made the list are not likely to gaze upon its wonderful screed. They
would gag if they did. Here, for example, is what it says about James Lipton:
It’s not just that his sycophantic interviewing technique has transcended
butt-kissing to become all-out analingus, or that he’s sullied the stage where Pacino performed
Mamet with paeans to Ben Affleck. It’s not the fey cadence and maddening British affect. It’s that
Lipton has become so obsessed with full-penetration starfucking that he’s allowed the Actors
Studio to deteriorate into a fifth-rate factory whose graduates aren’t prepared for a two-liner on
“Law & Order.” In the days of Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg, the Actors Studio was considered
more important than the Yale School of Drama; today it competes with continuing education
classes at the Learning Annex. Memo to Lipton: Taking it from Jay Leno and Ethan Hawke isn’t
doing much for your students. And you look ridiculous.
About James Frey:
It still boggles the brain that so many fell for this brawny brat’s 2003 rehab
memoir, “A Million Little Pieces.” Clearly there’s a huge audience starved for dimestore, parodic
Hemingway machismo. And Frey, the self-proclaimed “greatest writer of his generation,” is the
man to give it to them. He boasts about getting in real old-time fistfights with his fellow junkie
patients and about beating a priest almost to death for daring to touch Frey’s very masculine
thigh—classic 1930s retro-prose, homoerotic and homophobic at once. His characters are as
anachronistic as his writing; there’s a steelworker “as hard as the material he works with” and
endless tearful farewell scenes with a fisherman, who actually says, “I ain’t much for words, kid.”
Frey’s fellow patients all talk like outtakes from a Spencer Tracy movie, pasted into Frey’s poorly
written, 400-page ode to his family-funded self.
About Diane Sawyer:
The queen of broadcast journalism infotainment, Diane is ABC News’
incessant ingenue that we hope one day interviews a hungry Siberian tiger. As Good Morning
America’s 50-something going on 30-something blond and blue-eyed eternal debutante, she coyly
sucks pudding from Wolfgang Puck’s spoon, creams over celebrities and moguls of any stripe,
cries like an insipid crocodile for the victims of fêted daily tragedies and bats her eyelashes while
touting her Nixon-White-House-past. For her current multi-million-dollar-per-year contract,
Diane guarantees an overdose of saccharine sufficiently strong to send viewers into a coma, but
not strong enough to flush the fourth-place network’s morning ratings out of the
toilet.
About Donny Deutsch:
Deutsch represents the latest trend in that most loathsome of New YorkAbout Rudy Giuliani:
traditions: the selling of adolescent greed, egomania and narcissism as charisma and depth of
character. The chief of David Deutsch Associates says he only hires “Jews, chicks and fags,” and
is known for tearing off his shirt during office hours and saying—without irony—things like, “I
can kick the ass of any CEO in advertising!” Think Steven Seagal meets Charlotte Beers. The
“Elvis of Advertising” has been dabbling with a CNBC talk show and even told New York
magazine that he’d consider running for mayor. Qualifications: good at selling shit, does lots of
pushups. Look out, Bloomie.
For running around the streets of Lower Manhattan without visibly crapping himself, Giuliani
was elevated from the world’s most hypocritical goon to He-Man, Master of the Universe. Forget
his violating federal handicap laws, his wars on rent control and community gardens, his refusal to
test DNA rape kits until the five-year statute of limitations was up, or his corporate real estate
giveaways—Rudy is now considered a Great and Heroic American Mayor. After office, Rudy
wasted no time cashing in on his immaculately conceived new stature, riding into a post-mayoral
sunset of private sector millions, five-figure lectures and flattering rumors about his political
future in the GOP. It was toward this last end that Rudy came out in defense of Bush’s Ground
Zero campaign ads last month. And why not? He’s co-chair of the Republican National
Convention host committee, and the tragedy saved his sinking ass too.
Congratulations, Rudy. Though we prayed you’d fade away, your insistent grandstanding,
lingering influence and threats of future public office leave us no choice. For actions past and
present, you are hereby crowned 2004’s Most Loathsome New Yorker. If we didn’t have a rule
against it, you’d probably be here for life.
Alistair Cooke did not make the list, I am happy to report.
