Cintra Wilson's column has been a topic of much discussion! Basically, the entire thing went like this:

...Herein lies the genius of J. C. Penney: It has made a point of providing clothing for people of all sizes (a strategy, company officials have said, to snatch business from nearby Macy's). To this end, it has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen. They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on. It's like a headless wax museum devoted entirely to the cast of "Roseanne."

There's so much more out there, but really, if you have yet to read it, you should, as it's one of the funniest things the Times has run in a while, and only a small minority of the reasons it's so funny are intentional.

Wilson's kinda kooky! She has been described as:

The new Amanda Congdon, as played by Cloris Leachman in Young Frankenstein.

which still kind of rings true from a strictly editorial standpoint. Cintra apologized a few times. She called herself a Buddhist and felt bad for doing harm (take that, Elizabeth Gilbert), and had to shut down her email from all the bad stuff her column hath wrought.

There was much hand wringing and crazy talk about Wilson's piece! She was right! She was wrong! Comments got so downright nasty on the Times site that they shut them down. Finally, Hoyt — quickly becoming my favorite writer at the Times after firing shots at the Weddings & Celebrations section, Alessandra Stanley, and crazy texting/driving pictures — two weeks after it all went down, keeps the flames well tended to. Observe:

• You do NOT talk shit on Bill Keller's momma, son: "Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, was unhappy, too. The column, he said, 'would make a fine exhibit for someone making the case that The Times has an arrogant streak.' Keller said his mother was a Penney's shopper for much of her life, and she would have found the review 'snotty.' He told me that he wished it had not been published." Oogh. Burn.
  
  
• Basically, our editors failed again: "Wilson's editors should have saved her, themselves and the paper from the reaction they got from readers, who concluded that the humor was at their expense, not for their benefit." Wonder how many people this thing went through before it got to print, no?
  
  
• You also made corporate monolith JC Penney haz a sad: "Darcie Brossart, vice president for communications at J. C. Penney, said, 'We found the review very offensive to our customers.'" Nothing on whether or not they're going to continue to advertise with the Times.
  
  
• Her editor, Trip Gabriel, called her out for being inflammatory for the sake of being inflammatory. Like the liberal, funny, Manhattan elitist version of Glenn Beck! "'She's a sharp-tongued writer whose columns are only to a secondary degree service journalism,' Gabriel said. He said she is more of a social critic whose 'style is to quite exaggerate things. She goes over the top.'"
  
  
• The best part. Watch as yet another Styles writer displays complete and utter ignorance of both (A) the Times' readership and (B) the way in which she puts her cards out on the table as a Times writer. This is, as some stupid celebrities would say, major: Wilson told me she usually writes about "obscure stores that don't exist outside of Manhattan," and she thinks of her audience as "1,300 women in Connecticut and urban gay guys in Manhattan." She said it was "kind of provincial of me" not to realize how big The Times was and how her audience would expand when she reviewed a store like Penney's. She said she also thought she hit a raw nerve with people already disposed to think of The Times as disconnected and unsympathetic. "It was dumb on my part not to see this coming," she said. Well, yes.
  
  
• Finally, the kicker, as given to us by Times editor Bill Keller: "Keller said, 'I'd like to think this will be, as they say, a teachable moment.'"

First, can we retire the term "teachable moment," please? It's a dumb euphemism for "foreseeable fuckup," and also, it just peaked. Second, Clark Hoyt: my Times mancrush. Third: maybe the New York Times wouldn't be worried about being owned soon by a Mexican Dude named Slim if they looked at instances like this — and most of the Styles section, as well as T Magazine — and crunched some numbers on how this kind of thing marginalizes newspaper readers around the country who were maybe on the fence with the Times, who were just thrown off of it. Just an idea.

Finally, of all the conversation Wilson's article generated, much of it missed the greater point, which are the reasons JC Penney's actually deserves to be shat on:

1. If New Yorkers wanted to shop at JC Penney's, we'd probably live somewhere other than New York.

2. What's next, Friday's in Union Square?

3. Also, yes the clothing there is cheap and accessible, but so is the clothing at, I don't know, the Gap. The clothing at JC Penney's is meh.

The advice? Sit over there, at the bar, far away from the main dining room, where, you know, anyone can sit. Writes Page Six:

In the fashion bible's much-anticipated September issue, food critic Jeffrey Steingarten suggests readers eat at the bars of some of New York's most exclusive restaurants. "Eating at a restaurant bar will get you into places that would otherwise ridicule your attempt to secure a reservation," Steingarten says of Minetta Tavern, Per Se and the Standard Grill. Also: "You don't need to dress up" to sit at the bar, and "bartenders are more well-mannered" and "faster than waiters."

Achtung! You there, with the size four waist! You can graze at the same restaurants we do. Granted, you will sit far from us, in real estate generally reserved for where we elbow you for drinks before we actually eat, but still! Then again, this could just be an abuse of power by Steingarten in order to clear up resto real estate for his friends, but probably not.

The knowledge that Steingarten's on the PPX list of every restaurant in town that would "ridicule your attempt to secure a reservation" is the service industry's equivalent of "the sky is blue," as is the idea of eating at a bar being easier to secure than a table at a restaurant, even to those in, yes, "flyover country." But you have to praise the good intentions of Vogue: at least they're not straight up just making fun of fat people, unlike, say, the New York Times. Strange, but true.

Critical Shopper Cintra Wilson reveals a scene of hysterical tourists and WASPS demanding to buy them. But there's nothing left in their size! Or anybody's size!

"There is simply nothing," [sales clerk] Bubble lamented with an oversize shrug. "Your size is the most popular one. I wish I could sell you some shoes. All we have is 5, 6 and 40... We don't know anything! We have no computer. We don't know if they have anything on Horatio," Bubble said, referring to the downtown Louboutin boutique, "or at Bergdorf, or in Los Angeles."

"We want since two days!" the man bellowed, the brass buttons on his nautical blazer melting in fright.

His wife let out a visceral moan and gnashed her perfect teeth; her eyes rolled upward in despair as she clutched in rueful hands the wrong size. For a moment she resembled the anguished Mary of Michelangelo's Pietà — only evil.

Art Deco is the dominant gene in Mr. Melbostad's inspirations, which fuses the utilitarian ur-sport of 1920s Chanel with a lean toward severe New York sophistication. A Poiret tendency toward Japonisme is evident, as is a smattering of glam-rock anarchism. But, like the best yacht-faring flappers, Phi never indulges to the point of going overboard: it is hot artistic nasty with a clean martini taste, which retains masterful poise even while dancing on the table. In less controlled hands, it might plunge into louche Weimar territory, but Mr. Melbostad sidesteps the vulgar and obvious.

So, uh, no. Maybe they should call the store PhD.

A (Very Poised) Dance on the Table [NYT]

WARNING: The clip you about to watch is EXTREMELY disturbing. Novelist, Salon contributor and occasional Gawker commenter Cintra Wilson just made her video debut, reading her Dregulator, uh, column to a stunned and anxious nation. It's hard to take, but hard to look away. Cintra's like the new Amanda Congdon, as played by Cloris Leachman in Young Frankenstein. Cintra, honey, they have pills for this stuff now.

The Dregulator [Cintra Wilson]