"Why can't anybody shed just one tear for things that don't happen," Lou Reed plaintively wondered on Growing Up In Public. They aren't exactly tears, but Keach Hagey sheds 576 words (slight uptick from last week!) about the non-filling in for Don Imus that former Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle didn't not do. It's mainly a recap of Barnicle's career studded with outrage over the fact that CBS almost used him to replace the disgraced DJ but in the end did not. Howell Raines is also mentioned. It's deep on history but short on anything you really need to know. Our only hope is that it somehow indicates that the Imus story is so played out that people are reaching for the dregs and soon we'll stop hearing about it. (Okay, maybe not.)

Rating: Keach, help us out! Choire says we can end this harassing feature as soon as you write three decent columns in a row. We were so sure we were almost there! Please, we don't like this any more than you do! How about next week you look at the career of Sam Sifton? The rise from the then-relevant-if-still-annoying New York Press to Talk to the big chair in culture at the Times? How'd it happen? Or like something about Maer Roshan. Or Arianna. Yes! Silicon Alley! Do that! Or something glossy! New policies in cover-testing at Conde Nast! You know, the kind of stuff fags enjoy. Please, just let us put this thing out of our misery. Thanks! —balk

Another Imus in the Mourning? [VV]
Previously: Grading Keach Hagey: We... Like!

Remember the stunning revelation a few weeks back that Judi Giuliani had been married once before she had been married once before? Both the Post and the News had it as a scoop. How curious, we thought. Who got the story first?

Keach digs deep and does some reporting, and learns that, well, the News did, having put in weeks of research for the story. But when Giuliani spokesman Michael McKeon realized how much the News had on the prospective First (or third, if you're scoring at home) Lady, engaged in the kind of sneaky, underhanded maneuver that makes political spokesfolk so universally beloved:

McKeon, who says the campaign was in control of this info all along, did some quick thinking. So right after that interview, Judi went ahead and spilled the same beans to the Post. And there went the News' exclusive.

Rating: More like this, please! —balk

Scoopable Litter [VV]
Previously: Grading Keach Hagey: Press, Clipped

Balk no like read Keach Hagey no more. Balk like write about Keach Hagey even less.

Rating: There's not a lot to say about something that's under 500 words, especially if it concerns the Post's ongoing hemorrhage of Murdoch money. Drop us a line when you're back at full-length column status. Points on the Gimbels reference though: Clearly, you know your New York history.

[Ed. Note: Keach, get over here and apologize for breaking Balk! Now he's not happy when there's too many words, and not happy when there's too few. 500ml of alcohol, stat! Since he has been rendered useless, let's just add this: The point that the subscription price of the Post has plummeted so is an excellent one. A small point for Keach! And yes: the Post will happily do anything to put the Daily News out of business. We feel pretty much the same way about Cute Overload. We will crush them like a baby kitten's skull! God, am I still typing? Or did I black out a while ago? Damn. Balk was right all along.] —balk

Five Cents a Right-Wing Dance [VV]
Previously: Grading Keach Hagey: How Has It Only Been Four Weeks?

God, we don't even know what to do with this. It's a piece about that recent Columbia Journalism School panel (former Voice editor and Columbia Commie David Blum still lives!) that featured NYT M.E. Jill Abramson and The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner and... URK, WHA? WHERE ARE WE? No, stay awake, you can do this.

Let's see: Keach starts the piece by noting how the lights began to fail during Abramson's presentation, which provides a natural metaphor for the Times' declining fortune in the—HEY NOW. Sorry. This is hard. It's like a solo piano recital by Philip Glass but without the deft fingering! Heh. Fingering. What? Okay, summary! Some people said things. Some people were quiet. Keach uses the line "You could have heard a mouse click," to signify the awkward silence (because the Internet is destroying print, see).

Keach makes two references to the film Dark Victory, which is just sad. Or maybe she's a gay fella! Though we must note that humorist David Rakoff once said, "You can suck a mile of cock; it does not make you Oscar Wilde." Similarly, a couple Bette Davis mentions don't put you anywhere near Michael Musto. Except, we guess, in the front of the book.

RATING: We're gonna take a pass on this one. Yes, it was incredibly boring, but this was apparently the fuck-all boringest panel in the history of fuck-all boring paneldom and, as our work today indicates, it's damn near impossible to spin tiny gold leprechaun sweaters out of two tiny piles of goat shit. We'll give it another shot next week, but we are rapidly running out of Ritalin. This didn't help. —balk

Cheers, Mate! The BBC Is the Future of Your Paper. Maybe. [VV]
Previously: Grading Keach Hagey: Her Third Column!

This week's column, we are happy to report, shows definite improvement. The first two paragraphs actually remind us of something we'd glance over with only mild disinterest in the Observer. Keach attends a Giuliani fundraiser at the Sheraton. How does she set the scene?

Poor David Brooks. By all rights, the moment should have been his. It was last Wednesday night, the first big hometown fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani, and the Sheraton New York ballroom was resplendent in faux-folksy glory. A thousand Republicans had come to toast (and fund) the candidate whom the New York Times columnist has compared to Teddy Roosevelt, lauded as a "courage politician," and crowned with his very own "ism."

Women in pearls tipped back longnecks of Bud and men in crisp suits munched Cracker Jack and hot dogs, the ballpark fare serving as props for the baseball-themed, $2,300-a-head event. The urban elite was trying its best to look all-American. If they were not quite pulling it off, they were at least epitomizing the pragmatic, purple-tinted brand of Republicanism that Brooks fantasizes about in his columns.

Again, we loved the establishing arc here. The rest of the piece, and the topic selection as a whole? The mehest bit of mehishness we've seen so far. Which still makes it Keach's best column to date. But the question remains: Who's the real Keach? The dry, shocked, shocked lefty-type who symbolizes the calcification of the Voice over the last ten years, or the bourbon-drinking socialist in the tight skirt? Because, honestly, we'd be more than happy to read a column by the second one.
RATING: Drink more. Bore less.

The Times' Nicholas Kristof—A Rudy Giuliani White House Adviser? [VV]
Previously: Grading Keach Hagey: Her Second Column!
Grading Keach Hagey: Her First Column!

This week, Keach checks in with Mark Green, New York's most boring politician. Green (with a little help from his moneybags brother) recently bought Air America, which provides New York's most boring radio. For one thing, this deal was approved in mid-February; the deal went through on March 6th.

So the fact that you're tardily reading about this in New York's most boring newspaper is either an incredibly meta commentary or a sign that maybe this column isn't quite ready for front-of-the-book acreage.

Anyway, what's the column about? Who the fuck cares? The implicit agreement we all made when we decided not to vote for Mark Green for attorney general was that we would never have to hear from him again. Why would we want to break that covenant? Keach, didn't you get the memo? The folks out in Phoenix aren't playing to the hippie crowd anymore. Next week, tell us about Vice. Why is Gavin McInnes such a douchebag, that sort of thing. You know, if you're around.

We know this is harsh. We want to feel the love. But we can't love you if you won't allow us.
RATING: No more fucking Mark Green. Ever.

Air America's Green Revolution [VV]
Earlier: Tomorrow's 'Village Voice' May, May Not, Surprise
Grading Keach Hagey: Her First Column!

The column's main item is a lengthy examination of the Times's coverage of the health issues associated with first responders at Ground Zero.

Here's a quick summary: Zzzzzz.

Seriously, this is some boring-ass shit. Boo hoo hoo, the Times didn't take the health risks seriously enough! The piece is pretty much classic Voice. It is whiny, self-righteous , and earnest in the same way as those antiwar protesters in Union Square that you want to strike in the head with a chunk of pavement. Even Syd Schanberg put more color into his endless and irritating (yet carefully researched!) fifteen-part series on the massive failings of the Bush administration.
RATING: YEAAAARGH.

The second item concerns the ouster of the Voice's own Keach-promoting David Blum. Essentially the post she wrote after the defenestration but with some added PR for new editor Tony Ortega as window-dressing, it has the advantage over the previous item of being shorter, and thus less incredibly fucking boring. Still, this is a tricky position for any reporter to be in. Ask James Rainey at the LA Times, who's been covering their parent company, Tribune. Yikes. Anyway, also, Keach gets a couple of quotes from Village Voice Media head Michael Lacey, who may be a megalomaniacal dictator hell-bent on forcing every one of his papers into the same cookie-cutter image, but one who knows how to liven up an article with a decent soundbite or two. Plus—he wouldn't talk to anyone else! So we guess it's an exclusive?
RATING: We feel your pain. For now.

Rough inning, sure, but it's just the first go. We'll check back next week. Hopefully Keach will take the time to read some of the Cotts columns, which were constantly enlivened by the fact that Cynthia was kinda crazy. You could do worse, kiddo. Hell, we all could!

The Haze Over 43rd Street [VV]

Keach Hagey—feminist electro-something rock band chick and brand-new Village Voice media columnist—has a website that seems to be identically-constructed to that of New York Press contributing writer Neille Ilel. Also? Neille's name is all over Keach's source code.

Compare and contrast. There's even a page where the links at the bottom lead unintentionally from one to the other. (Of course, we won't rule out an unlikely case of sisterly sharing, later regretted.)

Unrelated! What exactly is up with names these days? "Keach" at least is a family last name repurposed. But seriously, these days it's like a game of Boggle blew up in someone's uterus.

Keach Hagey—now elevated from Village Voice intern— has, it turns out, a lady name. She also has a lady band! And they're really pretty.

The feminist post-punk-post-whatever band, called Fur Cups with Teeth, has been described as " a cross between Le Tigre, Bikini Kill, and Ladytron." They are all up in TEH MYSPACE, with internet friends such as Ultragrrrl and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The two other gals are a handbag designer and another writer, who also works at a museum. Does it get any more downtown? Anyone?

She started as an "investigative reporting intern" at the Village Voice back in October. In the past, she wrote bar reviews for New York and listings for the New York Press. She is all Stanford '00.

Like all Village Voice Press Clips columnists before her—does anyone remember Sydney Schanberg's 29-part series on Life Under Bush? No? Us neither!—she believes, or at least once did, that the Bush administration is threatening to turn the U.S. "into a state akin to economic feudalism."

And while we're nerdishly excited for the return of Press Clips—what this town really needs is more media reporters!— our biggest concern was: Whatever will become of Fur Cups for Teeth?

"Nothing's gonna happen to the band," said Keach, reached at the Voice this afternoon. "We're going to keep rocking!"