Gotta love the New York Press alternative weekly for its list of Topping the list is former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now a businessman. Rest assured, About James Frey:<\/P> About Diane Sawyer:<\/P> About Donny Deutsch:<\/P> For running around the streets of Lower Manhattan without visibly crapping himself, Giuliani Congratulations, Rudy. Though we prayed you’d fade away, your insistent grandstanding, <\/P> Alistair Cooke did not make the list, I am happy to report.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-9G","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthe receiving end of its full-bore contempt are movie director Sofia Coppola (50), ad man Donny
\nDeutsch (40), liberal pundit Eric Alterman (39), author James Frey (30), anchor woman Diane
\nSawyer (23), Dean of the Actors Studio James Lipton (17) and a host of bankers, politicians,
\nmedia moguls, corporate chiefs, lawyers, professors, pro-smoking activists, bloggers, gossip
\ncolumnists, actors, comedians, publicists and reporters. <\/P>
\n
\nthe luminaries who made the list are not likely to gaze upon its wonderful screed. They
\nwould gag if they did. Here, for example, is what it says about James Lipton: <\/P>
\nIt’s not just that his sycophantic interviewing technique has transcended
\nbutt-kissing to become all-out analingus, or that he’s sullied the stage where Pacino performed
\nMamet with paeans to Ben Affleck. It’s not the fey cadence and maddening British affect. It’s that
\nLipton has become so obsessed with full-penetration starfucking that he’s allowed the Actors
\nStudio to deteriorate into a fifth-rate factory whose graduates aren’t prepared for a two-liner on
\n“Law & Order.” In the days of Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg, the Actors Studio was considered
\nmore important than the Yale School of Drama; today it competes with continuing education
\nclasses at the Learning Annex. Memo to Lipton: Taking it from Jay Leno and Ethan Hawke isn’t
\ndoing much for your students. And you look ridiculous.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\nIt still boggles the brain that so many fell for this brawny brat’s 2003 rehab
\nmemoir, “A Million Little Pieces.” Clearly there’s a huge audience starved for dimestore, parodic
\nHemingway machismo. And Frey, the self-proclaimed “greatest writer of his generation,” is the
\nman to give it to them. He boasts about getting in real old-time fistfights with his fellow junkie
\npatients and about beating a priest almost to death for daring to touch Frey’s very masculine
\nthigh\u2014classic 1930s retro-prose, homoerotic and homophobic at once. His characters are as
\nanachronistic as his writing; there’s a steelworker “as hard as the material he works with” and
\nendless tearful farewell scenes with a fisherman, who actually says, “I ain’t much for words, kid.”
\nFrey’s fellow patients all talk like outtakes from a Spencer Tracy movie, pasted into Frey’s poorly
\nwritten, 400-page ode to his family-funded self.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\nThe queen of broadcast journalism infotainment, Diane is ABC News’
\nincessant ingenue that we hope one day interviews a hungry Siberian tiger. As Good Morning
\nAmerica’s 50-something going on 30-something blond and blue-eyed eternal debutante, she coyly
\nsucks pudding from Wolfgang Puck’s spoon, creams over celebrities and moguls of any stripe,
\ncries like an insipid crocodile for the victims of f\u00eated daily tragedies and bats her eyelashes while
\ntouting her Nixon-White-House-past. For her current multi-million-dollar-per-year contract,
\nDiane guarantees an overdose of saccharine sufficiently strong to send viewers into a coma, but
\nnot strong enough to flush the fourth-place network’s morning ratings out of the
\ntoilet.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\nDeutsch represents the latest trend in that most loathsome of New York
\ntraditions: the selling of adolescent greed, egomania and narcissism as charisma and depth of
\ncharacter. The chief of David Deutsch Associates says he only hires “Jews, chicks and fags,” and
\nis known for tearing off his shirt during office hours and saying\u2014without irony\u2014things like, “I
\ncan kick the ass of any CEO in advertising!” Think Steven Seagal meets Charlotte Beers. The
\n“Elvis of Advertising” has been dabbling with a CNBC talk show and even told New York
\nmagazine that he’d consider running for mayor. Qualifications: good at selling shit, does lots of
\npushups. Look out, Bloomie.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>About Rudy Giuliani:
\n
\n
\nwas elevated from the world’s most hypocritical goon to He-Man, Master of the Universe. Forget
\nhis violating federal handicap laws, his wars on rent control and community gardens, his refusal to
\ntest DNA rape kits until the five-year statute of limitations was up, or his corporate real estate
\ngiveaways\u2014Rudy is now considered a Great and Heroic American Mayor. After office, Rudy
\nwasted no time cashing in on his immaculately conceived new stature, riding into a post-mayoral
\nsunset of private sector millions, five-figure lectures and flattering rumors about his political
\nfuture in the GOP. It was toward this last end that Rudy came out in defense of Bush’s Ground
\nZero campaign ads last month. And why not? He’s co-chair of the Republican National
\nConvention host committee, and the tragedy saved his sinking ass too. <\/P>
\n
\nlingering influence and threats of future public office leave us no choice. For actions past and
\npresent, you are hereby crowned 2004’s Most Loathsome New Yorker. If we didn’t have a rule
\nagainst it, you’d probably be here for life.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\n