Cityfile reports that the suit was settled for no money, and the site was taken down, and all that remains is for Drew Kerr to get his cheap ass insurance company to pay his legal bills in this very important case of the fundamental right to douchetaggery. "All's well that ends well," Kerr told us this morning.

As you can see, it is officially legal to call Ronn Torossian a "douche." It is also accurate, when you contrast Ronn's $20 million LOLsuit with Ronn's own tendency to have his firm buy up web domain names of competitors (and bloggers) and impersonate people in online comments in flagrant examples of sock puppetry and scrub the Ronn Torossian Wikipedia page on what must be a near-daily basis.

"Much a-douche about nothing."

[A commenter went to the trouble of scanning this item below, which "may be the single greatest item ever run by the New York Law Journal." Thank you, sir.]

Times media writer Edward Wyatt penned a soft, round filing that was about the word "douche." It appeared on today's front page.

This word is one with which this website (and media network) has a wide breadth of experience with. In November, 2006, former Gawker scribe Emily Gould wrote:

Don't get us wrong. It's not that (50%) of our delicate ladyish sensibilities are offended or anything; far from it. It's just that, as vagina-havers, we want to branch out a little bit in the realm of vagina-related insults. Also, we couldn't help but notice that the trope is now so bitten and tired, it pretty much begs to be called "Already Over" (if Already Over wasn't Already Over, obvs). Plus, Dolce has co-opted it for his own use. What a fucking asswizard!

Before we go any further, can we just say that "azzwizard" is kind of magical?

Anyway. People, as we are, can't be without first-stone casters. Observe:

I really, really hope there aren't actually 17,400 results for the word "douche" on Gawker websites that can't be cross-referenced with Joe Dolce.

But for a moment, back to Wyatt's piece. He didn't write about how the word evolved from a technical term of feminine hygiene to a schoolyard pejorative, to a favorite of bloggers and mediocre satire writers alike, to a Times media piece. No: that'd be too meta, and too interesting, and too far into the purview of their excellent After Deadline column.

In a newspaper where the word "fuck" is too vulgar as to only be printed once in its entire history—despite the word "fuck" and its entrenchment in our daily lives, in politics, popular culture, literature, and I'm sure its handy usage around Times' bullpens—they penned a piece based on the statistical usage and adoption into sitcom television, where every decent slang word goes to die.

It's filled with numbers about usage, and quotes from TV writers about how they employ it, like this one:

"As a writer, you're always reaching for a more potent way to call somebody a jerk," Dan Harmon, the creator of "Community," said about the word "douche." "This is a word that has evolved in the last couple of years - a thing that sounds like a thing you can't say."

It doesn't get much more interesting than that, except for a line about how the show that once presented the American Public with Dennis Franz's tuchus decided to give it an evolved go:

Users of the recently popular word "douche" defend its use, noting that it was invoked, usually with the suffix "bag," in the 1990s by the character Andy Sipowicz on "NYPD Blue," an ABC series that frequently pushed the boundaries of network acceptability.

Naturally, since this story dropped, the Gawker Weekend inbox has been brimming with glee and excitement.

There are a few angles to take on it. Mediaite's Joe Coscarelli reflects much of the sentiment I've already heard out there in his lede:

I bet you never thought you'd see the day when you could pick up a copy of the New York Times and see the word "douche" on page one. And we're not talking hygiene!

And NYTpicker, that anonymous scourge of the New York Times' newsroom, takes out his or her butcher knife and gets to work on how typically bullshit the numbers used to create this story are, making a special point to note that the Times calls the word "offensive to many people" but doesn't say who those people are:

But seeing TV reporter Edward Wyatt and the NYT base its front-page reporting on numbers the paper actually requested from the Parents Television Council — a notoriously conservative TV watchdog group that has brought 99 percent of all indecency complaints before the FCC (we learned that from an excellent 2004 NYT story) — makes us a little sick. The PTC has been around since 1995, founded by conservative commentator L. Brent Bozell, and is responsible for complaints to the FCC about the Janet Jackson nipple slip and cursing on "NYPD Blue."

NYTpicker's right, and Joe Coscarelli's right. It's patently ridiculous that the Times uses generalized opinions to substantiate their numbers, to help give their story a case. There's also something inevitably entertaining about watching a newspaper as prude as the Times give the word "douche" some kind of once-over, even if the story behind it is fairly flimsy.

But honestly, this all just kind of brings me down.

Believe me, the last thing I want to do is rain on the parade of fun that is the New York Times using the word "douche," as someone who can only die happy once Clark Hoyt calls one of the Styles writers a "fuckface" in his Public Editor column. But let's talk about this like adults, kind of, for a moment. As someone with a strange affection for vulgar language, I only see this as an intense letdown.

To do this story two years ago would've been one thing, as the numbers slowly rise into becoming a trend, before it hits fever pitch. But for this story to run now, without Styles writer Allen Salkin's byline—and Salkin would've done way better with this—is absurd. Besides the fact that it's boring and plucked from a bullshit ether, the potential they laid waste to with this one is absurd. Mainly: to address the issue of creating new terms that don't exhaust themselves more and more on each usage. For example:

Where did the word "douche" come from in it's literal, non-slang implication?
Who were the first people to make the word "douche" a pejorative?
Who appended the word "bag" to the word "douche"?
Who uses this word every day?
How long has it been around?
Who (besides Gould/Shafrir/Balk/Sicha-era Gawker) has called this word over?
And what media outlets use it on a regular basis? But mostly:
Who's offended by the word?

There's nothing interesting about the word "mediocre" unless it's placed in an interesting context. On the inverse, the word "fuck" is almost always interesting, if only because it begs the question of necessity. The idea behind using a word like "douche" or "fuck" is to emphasize or exclaim something, it's to aid a common goal of writing or speaking, the reason people like me love language: to communicate an idea to someone you otherwise couldn't.

But what does the word "douche" communicate, exactly, besides the kind of person who would use it?

Maybe someone who's just unsavory in some regard, or someone who's typically unaware of their uncouth behavior. Or someone who does something your way of going about things disagrees with. There're way too many words like it. Maybe people just enjoy the way it rolls off the tongue, or maybe people actually enjoy employing the connotation of a Feminine hygiene product (which is the point all you nu-Feminists should take to say the exact same thing Gould said three years ago).

But really, the word douche is just like the story the Times did on it, and the generalized sources—the "some people" who "may be offended" by it— they used. It's empty. It means nothing. It's a completely subjective assessment of somebody who does something you don't like. I know people who use the word "douchebag" when referring to other people; I'm willing to bet those same people use the word "douchebag" to refer to the people referring to them. And I'm most disappointed when people I know who use the word could find something more concise, or shocking, or linguistically artful to go with. It's sold at the Wal-Mart of pejoratives. It's cheap, it's made en masse, and there's nothing but bad preservatives in the ingredients. Let's all—The New York Times, Bloggers, TV Writers, Those Who Use The Word "Douchebag," Those Who You Would Call A "Douche," Bar Patrons, Sports Fans, English Professors, Joe Dolce—become better communicators, and find something better than the word "douche" and it's mediocre suffix "bag" to go with.

Or, you know, we could just judge each other a little less.

Since none of these things will probably happen in the foreseeable future, just go with "douchenozzle" until it does. At least it sounds funny.

[Related Reading - Commenter VioletViolet makes a salient point: "I still think the NY Times article on "vajajay" was worse, although at least it wasn't on the front page. When you're asking Gloria Steinem for her opinion on a term that's use was mostly limited to The Soup, you're in trouble."]

In a Q&A for the new issue of Time, Rick Dorzback of River Edge, New Jersey asked the question that's been on everyone's mind:

Have you stopped eating sushi? -Rick Dorzback, River Edge, N.J.

I haven't had a piece of fish of any kind in 11 months. My mercury levels have gone down from just below 60 to 3 now. I feel like a different person.

Yes, thank God for that new low mercury level! Otherwise, how the hell could Jeremy Piven possibly nail down 2am Vegas style with the other members of the Legion of Douche?

Maybe you were thinking like we were—That last night would a night for bottles popping all over town as Goldman's finest masters of the universe once again grabbed the city by the ballsack to celebrate yet another successful sodomizing of the American economy.

Nope. They're laying low, wisely we might add, something our pals at Cityfile learned when they contacted Goldman communications chief Lucas van Praag (Yep, that's really his name!) to find out where the party would be at, to which van Praag said the following:

Neither Lloyd Blankfein nor anyone else at Goldman Sachs has plans to celebrate our second quarter results.

Whoa! Well isn't that just a bucket of ice water poured down the ole britches?! Nevertheless, we have faith that the Goldmanites won't be able to contain their bonus-happy enthusiasm much longer and that they'll be back out on the town dropping what most people make in a month on bottles of fancy champagne before you know it. And when they do, we'd be very happy if you told us about it!

FInally, Matt Taibbi's much talked about Goldman article for Rolling Stone is finally up on the magazine's website. Go read it. Everyone should.

Lloyd Blankfein Plans to Make it a Bloackbuster Night [Cityfile]
The Great American Bubble Machine [Matt Taibbi/Rolling Stone]
pic via

Lacy conducted an interview with Musk that appeared last Friday. But instead of probing Tesla's uncertain future, she invited Musk to talk about the past. The column that sparked his outrage, published last November, asked whether taxpayers should subsidize a company which makes $109,000 electric sports cars for the wealthy. Musk claimed that the Times had retracted the story. In fact, the newspaper had corrected a minor bit about Tesla's application — still not granted yet — for $350 million in government loans. Randall Stross, a San Jose State University professor and Times contributor, initially wrote that the loans would go to the production of Tesla's expensive Roadster, as opposed to funding its vaporous plans for a $57,400 sedan, the Model S.

The New York Observer has the he-said, she-said between Times Sunday Business editor Tim O'Brien and Lacy, a former BusinessWeek reporter who freelances for TechCrunch, Yahoo, and other publications. Here's O'Brien:

I think Sarah Lacy was too busy giggling to do Journalism 101 and call Randy or me for comment to make sure what Elon was saying was accurate. Because it was not only inaccurate, it was flat-out wrong. We wrote a clarification of the headline. We didn't retract the story at all; we stood firmly by the story, and I still stand by Randy's column. You can't help but watch that interview and marvel at the squishy familiarity between Lacy and Musk. And I wonder whether or not some journalistic blinders had popped off.... It was so ridiculous that it was entertaining. It was so misguided and inaccurate and I was stunned at the poor quality of the journalism.

Lacy's response:

I think it's embarrassing that The Times would try to throw me under the bus because they did shoddy reporting that they wound up correcting. If they want to throw me under the bus to make up for their own column that they massively rewrote, you know, go for it.

Actually, that was an error, too. As the Observer notes, the Times removed one sentence from the story and rewrote another.

In her defense, Lacy implied that the Times was sexist for criticizing her. But then she goes on to defend herself on the grounds that she's a girl:

I think everyone has their own style in journalism. Look, I'm a girl from the South! Sometimes I laugh. Someone can pejoratively call it giggling. But if you look at the body of my work, I ask lots of hard questions, and break a lot of hard news.

Another error. If you look at the body of Lacy's work, you'll see a pattern of oblique references to unspecified insider knowledge trotted out after someone else breaks a story. Lacy knows far more than she reports, she always implies — and yet this knowledge never seems to make its way out to the public in a way that benefits the reader.

Lacy is right that the Times is making a lame critique of her journalism. Here's what the Times should have said.

First of all, it ought never have corrected the story. Because the truth of the matter is that if Tesla persuades the government to give it loans, it will in fact spend at least some of that money on ongoing production of the Roadster. It plans to open several expensive new showrooms in the U.S. and Europe. Until late 2011 at the earliest, those showrooms will have nothing but the Roadster to sell. If the Roadster is profitable now, it is barely so. Tesla's overhead will almost certainly have to be funded through the loan proceeds.

A tipster, who's given us inside info on Tesla before, has sketched the back-of-the-envelope numbers for what it will cost to get the Model S sedan into production and thinks, even with the loans, Tesla's more than $500 million short of what it needs. The Model S "prototype" Musk showed off last month was a "show car": a one-off model of what a car will look like, but far from a finished design that can be sent into production. The tipster thinks the earliest Tesla can go from concept to delivery is 2013 — not 2011, as Musk promises, which means another two years of peddling high-end sports cars for the wealthy, as some "douchebag" dared to point out.

Here's the tip:

The untrained observer and the Government may be persuaded by typical industry show car building tricks, but insiders and auto experts know that the Model S that was revealed was a reworked Mercedes CLS. To top it off the components and parts on the vehicle are not even those ever considered in the design.

The fact is Tesla had an agreement with an OEM [original equipment manufacturer] to use their off the shelf parts in the model S. Unfortunately that agreement expires in 2010, a good three years before Tesla can get the Model S engineered (assuming they get federal money). No other OEM has been willing to give Tesla the rights to buy parts or component CAD to design to, hence Tesla would need some additional $300M to develop all of the necessary hardware (suspension, air bags and sensors, modules etc.)

Cost:

D&R the Model S $250M
Build the Factory $300M
Components to put in the car $300M
Retail outlets $50M

Asking Musk about that would have made for a fascinating interview, though Musk probably would have lobbed his insults at Lacy rather than Stross. When we asked Musk about whether he was going to personally guarantee the deposits his company's collecting on those Model S sedans, this is what he said:

I'm not going to answer your questions until you start caring more about creating a truthful picture of Tesla. I know you think you are doing good by offsetting what you see as positive spin with negative spin, but that doesn't count as being honest.

That's the moral universe of Elon Musk: Only positive spin counts as "truthful." Lacy seems very comfortable in that world.

Jay Louis, the creator of hotchickswithdouchebags.com, turned his blog documenting the couplings of attractive ladies with unattractive men into a book in 2007. He was sued, first by three of the hot chicks in question, and then by one of the douchebags.

Toskos, a New Jersey Superior Court judge, ruled that the women's photographs were "used for humorous social commentary" and that the book was "replete with obvious attempts at satirical humor." In his decision, he wrote that he had "carefully scrutinized" the work in question. We bet. The sad part of Toskos's decision: It comes too late to redeem the tired insult of "douchebag."

A line-up of seven models was in the DJ booth nodding to anemic dance music. One of them, Sabrina Roberts, a six-foot Afro-Chinese stunner wearing a tiny creme-brulee-colored dress-told me she wasn't giving up on finance dudes. "One, they're more interesting; and two, can you imagine if everyone was in fashion?" I asked her if she had ever thought of dating so-called normal people. She twirled around, took a sip from her champagne flute and asked happily, "How do normal people pay for champagne?"

Then the director yelled "CUT!" and everyone threw up. [NYPress. Pic via]

You may recall that the first FMF event this past summer—in the golden age of Wall Street—produced a harrowing first-hand account, as well as the case of the mysterious fake hedge fund dater Prescott Hahn, fashion girl con man extraordinaire. Who will be the stars of this new event, coming in headier days for the finance world? Hundreds of people are on the list for the event (See them all here). Many are, hopefully, fake! If they have any damn sense. But that doesn't mean that true love connections will not be made. The douche bankers are well represented:

I-bankers will have their chance to connect with celebrity fashion journalists from Vouge magazine:

Sadly, not all could make the cut:

But for those who do, the reward is great:

Needless to say, gold diggers and I-banking assholes: please send us a full report.

Esteemed Editors,

as a massive fan of your site and longtime reader, i would like to
propose the recommendation of retiring the word douche this year. i
have been on board for a while now since the days of AJ and his
bottles and Veyner and his videos, and it definitely made for an
ubiquitously applicable term in our fine city.

However, I feel the word needs to be retired on two accounts:

1) it's been completely played out. the number of times i hear it now
applied to any circumstance other than what i believe to have been its
true intention is getting annoying. furthermore, i feel the douche's
themselves have co-opted the word and use it against hipsters and the
like. people who aren't particularly witty, or even funny, began throwing
around the word douche (in my opinion denigrating the original beauty
of what it represented). i think it'd be a great idea to take control of your
creation and have a very formal retirement for the word

2) i think the timing could be perfect right now with the recession.
the word was fantastic during the height of absurdity and arrogance of
the banker craze. i'm not sure as i'm not really involved in that
scene, but i cant imagine the whole bottle service / crazy spending is
going on right now. i feel the day of the original douche is probably
past and it'd be the perfect time to find the most annoying/absurd
personas of the times ahead (which will definitely be distinct).

anyways...just my two cents. i love the site and word and think it'd
be an amazing maneuver to not only have a formal retirement, but
control the "shitty new yorker narrative" for the next few years, once
again.

good luck,
PhDouche

The New York Post jumps into the Douche Pulitzer lead with the headline to this story: FLAK IS DOUCHE TAGGED:

"Alpha-male publicist Ronn Torossian doesn't like being the poster boy for feminine hygiene.

So when a business rival allegedly launched a bogus Web site for Torossian linking viewers to an image of Summer's Eve douches, the p.r. titan wasn't laughing. In fact, he's suing for $20 million."

That "business rival" he's suing is Drew Kerr, the former Radar flack recently seen repping maybe-murderous publisher Felix Dennis (Kerr calls the suit "completely unmeritorious"). This story has so many elements of the absurd that I must list them, in list form:

• Ronn loves to sue people, which tends to backfire on him. He does not learn lessons.
• This site, RonTorrossian.com, has been up for months and months and months without a peep from Ronn.
• You know who really likes to use internet hoax shenanigans? Ronn [sic] Torossian and his incompetent compatriots! For example, Ronn himself bought up a bunch of domain names of rival PR firms, on purpose, back in 2006. You would think that would trigger some internal hypocrisy-meter in a person filing a lawsuit against someone else for the same thing, but no.
• Ronn also bought up HamiltonNolan.com. I did not sue him.
• Also his firm, 5WPR, was found to be editing Ronn's Wikipedia page, as well as impersonating people in online comments.
• Ronn's suit says that this website with a picture of a douche ad has caused $20 million in damage "to his business brand." I am now laughing derisively.

Oh Ronn! Oh buddy. You have much bigger problems than this. [NYP]

The other guy, Andrew Sandler, is not entirely unlike ad-man Deutsch, in that he inherited his business from his father. Apparently he grew suspicious of wife Lisa, hired a private eye and ended up with a picture of the two kissing.

All this is now known because an anonymous source fed the info to Six, and neither Sandler (pictured) or his lawyer are bothering to deny anything, saying only "we're trying to work this out amicably." Good luck with that, especially with two kids involved.

Narcissist though he may be, Deutsch is unmarried, raising the question of why this whole mess was leaked. It seems most likely that Sandler wanted to embarrass Deutsch (though he declined to comment to Six, officially) and hurt his luster in the ad world and his chances of hosting a TV show again. It's hard to imagine how anyone else (like Deutsch) would know when the PI was hired, for example.

But Deutsch doesn't seem like the type to show much embarrassment over anything. When we wrote about him in May, two commenters mentioned his prowess in the sack. It's entirely possible he was proud of his conquest. Hopefully the bad publicity will instill some reticence about being in the spotlight. Shame is probably too much to ask for.

[The Smoking Gun]

Robbins' letter, in part:

"I would like to publicly apologize for being such a dim-witted dilettante on Election Day. I was under the naïve assumption that I could vote where I voted in the last two elections. Your thoughtful letter pointed out that if I had voted in the recent primary election in September I would have discovered that I was no longer registered in the polling place I have voted in since 2004. Considering your position at the Board of Elections and your deep respect for the democratic process I must assume that my local 14th St. poll worker, Betty J. Williamson's assertion that my name was on the active voter rolls for the primary in September of this year was erroneous and that she must be as confused and wrongheaded as I am." [HuffPo]

Read the rest of the letter if you must, but it pretty much goes like this: Blah blah blah blah blah "family's safety might be compromised" blah blah blah blah "you are a petty vindictive corrupt scumbag."

Case dismissed. [The Smoking Gun]

You saved me.

I recently bartended the after party of the New York Surf Film Festival. While almost all party-goers were laid-back and cool, there was one guest that was a sweaty mess, and not a hot one. It started with my making the required small talk. When asked if he was part of the film festival he replied, "No, I make Oscar winners." Ahhh, touché sir. Taking the bait, I said, "Would I know any of your films?" to which he responded, "Juno, Crash." I said, "Oh, the David Cronenburg "Crash"? I loved that," knowing full well that he meant the overly-wrought, forced mess that came out a few year ago. He stared blankly. I thought, "This guy is full of shit." Not that there aren't self-important film producers out there, but really, opening to a bartender with that?

He drank vodka straight all night like it was water and sweat like he was on fire. Any guess who I'm talking about yet?

More hints. After learning that I was a performer, he gave me a professionally printed card claiming him a Managing Partner of Red Wagon Films and said, "We can get you SAG, you're very pretty." Six vodkas later, he asked for my e-mail address so that he could take me to the premiere of "Changeling" this Wednesday. I gave it to him, thinking that if there was a chance that he was for real, I could network and play dumb on his expectations.

He sends me details on where to meet as well as five projects "in development" to review. The ridiculous caliber of casting sent me straight to IMDB and—shock—none were there!! I Googled his film company (no site) and his name...and you enlightened me!

Priyantha Silva is still going strong!

Thankfully I'm 1) cynical enough to know when something sounds too good to be true; 2) smart enough to do a background check on a stranger before meeting them; and 3) have way too much pride to ever consider banging someone for a role. Thankfully you are on top of it and made it easy. I'm sure that there's many a desperate actress, hoping for a break in NYC, because this guy is fairly good. Hopefully they'll have the sense to Google him before they give out an HJ or some P in the V. Word.

I sent him the link and he said that it was lies spread by an ex-girlfriend. Gawker, you're such a slut!

Tell us about it. Oh, do you wanna see the projects he's got "in development"? Stay tuned...

First, examine the photograph's composition. The large, half-melted white candle in the foreground is clearly a phallic symbol. The martini glass containing a pink liquid beside represents fertility and is frankly vaginal.

Janka is leaning forward—an aggressive posture—with his elbows on his knees. That studied casualness indicates ambivalence, as does the dismissive way in which he's touching his face. He's interested, but not that interested. It is important, however, for him to maintain a dominant posture for the other cougars in the room. He is not making eye contact, however. Until he does, nobody will be getting laid.