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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I'd love to know why my Letter defending Gawker was starred with an Editors' Choice, only to be demoted 3 hours later to "blather ".
How does one's post go from being starred as Editors' Choice get demoted in this way?
Havrilesky's article missed the mark on Gawker by a mile, and I said so. I'd suspected Salon Letters censors posts critical of their writers, but HOW shit-heel of you to take my Editors Choice star away from me, seriously cowardly.
On behalf of those of us who enjoy Gawker, and disapprove of Salon's egregiously dumb comparing of Perez to said site, a hearty screw-you.
Whether famous or not, even unknown, certain people who make their living as performers just have a weird light about them, a charisma that the rest of us don't.
While working in gee-gaw shops on Fisherman's Wharf in the years right after college I met my share of celebrities. Janet Jackson came into the store where I worked during her "Rhythm Nation" tour (boy, am I dating myself or WHAT?). She was sweet and shy and almost unfathomably sexy. From that height we descend to Leon Rippy, who came into the same store a year earlier. Rippy has had prominent co-starring roles in many films over the years, perhaps his biggest as the colonial militiaman who commits suicide after seeing his murdered family in "The Patriot" with Mel Gibson. Anyway, he also had that charisma, and was quite nice, fretting about spending any money lest his wife "kick [his] butt." And from that mid-level we descend to some guy hired as a "Young Elvis" impersonator for a 50s theme party at a former employer. This guy was a nobody, but he had that charisma in spades, and was also a very cool dude, quite nice.
This kind of thing is why these people get work in the entertainment biz, and keep getting it, at whatever level they are situated. This is why it is so sad to run into "actors" and "singers" without one ounce of that wonderful energy, knowing they'll never get anywhere, but seeing the ferocious ambition blazing in their eyes.
I've gotten real news from Gawker.com-when the MTV permalancers lost their benefits and went on strike, Gawker reported. I didn't see anything about that on NYTimes.com. When the street exploded near Grand Central, I read about it on Gawker. I've gotten more real, useful news from Gawker than I've ever gotten from Salon.
Just about every anti-Gawker article I've read seems to come from people who are very much like the people Gawker focuses its lenses on--rich, privileged public and semi-public figures. If they want to pool their money and start a little website poking fun at me (I can see the stories now--exposes on shopping at Payless, how all my gloves are made of cloth, and I actually need my salary! The horror!) they can go right ahead.
A long, long time ago - way before most of the readers of Ms. Havrilevsky were even gleams in their parents' eye, maybe even before Ms. Havrilesky was wearing plastic pants while she played with her toys in the playpen, I had the opportunity of spending a considerable bit of time with a Hollywood Legend. My writing mentor, who had written Mr. Hollywood Legend's least-favorite movie he made - but had become his good friend in the process - told me as he introduced me to Mr. HL that "he needs someone who hasn't heard his stories to listen to them, and if he chooses you, youll learn something if you listen up." My mentor was right, and I did indeed get a better "graduate" education than one could get at either UCLA, USC, or any other cowtown college with an MFA program in "fillum". Mr. HL read my stuff and told me "there's hope for you, kid." We used to eat a very nice top-of-the-line delicatessen lunch twice a month in his office while he talked and I listened. It was the best education a screenwriter could get, because most of it was about the business of being a screenwriter, which is where most screenwriters fail.
One thing he taught me was, be polite to everybody and don't mess them over. You never know where they're going, and you never know when you might need a good word from them. The guy who's down will be up, and vice versa. This wasn't new news, I had figured that out in ten years of professional politics-as-a-blood-sport, but all that was mere boot camp for the Real Deal - which is Hollywood.
I've survived as long as I have for knowing that, and every "bump in the road" has come from not remembering those words of wisdom.
Too bad Generation Y-bother hasn't figured it out. The two articles about Gawker prove that while it might have been right once to believe "don't trust anybody over 30," today the rule is "don't trust anybody under 30." You people are pathetic in your moron stupdity - you're even dumber than we were.
First of all, I think it's a little specious to lump Gawker in with Perez and company. The big difference with Gawker and Gawker-adjacent sites is that they don't take this stuff seriously. Part of the annoyance of other gossip hounds is not merely the fact that, say, "Britney without panties" is reported on at all. It's that it's reported on with the breathless ardor and urgency of a nuclear war declaration (up to and inlcuding ACTUAL media.) Gawker treats these stories (and even themselves) with the ridicule and absurd whimsey they deserve. Even the much-maligned "Gawker Stalker" is used ironically. (Indeed, part of the point of the "Jimmy Kimmel incident" is that the system isn't even all that reliable anyway.) The whole point is that unlike the Perez/In Touch Weekly/TMZ brigade Gawker media DOESN'T worship celebrity. In fact their calvacade of sites is
Also, someone dared to drag poor John Lennon into this mix, ignoring that Lennon was famous as an ARTIST. The Britney/Lindsay/Paris squad are "celebrities." They're famous PRECISELY because they engage in eccentric behavior.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
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