The question presents itself: What the shit do you think you're talking about, lady?

Her two big examples are the John Varvatos store at CBGBs, and the Whole Foods on the Bowery (which is the articles kicker). Great. She mentioned two places within three blocks from one another. Yeah, it sucks that CBGBs is dead, but that place sucked when it was dying and hey, at least Varvatos kept some of the original walls. It could be another Chase Bank, but, whatever.

Here's her thesis:

The problem for those who would like to see a return in New York to its edgy past is that Manhattan, as more than one New York-based blogger has claimed, is still "a gated community for the rich". The cultural critic Julian Brash has complained that under Bloomberg the citizens of New York have been turned into consumers - it is a place where everything is about what can be bought and what can be sold.

Okay, fine. Manhattan's really expensive, blah blah blah. Bankers run everything, blah blah blah. Everything in New York can be bought. And? This city was built by hyper-capitalists, it's why there's so much goddamn money here. Old hat. Certain things about New York absolutely suck and will always keep sucking worse and worse. And let's get one thing straight: people have been saying things about New York sucking for as long as New York's been around. If you read Monocle magazine, which this essay is basically ripped out of, this is like, every issue. This has long been the party line of travel press types—especially ones from abroad—for at least three years. I mean, if you really want to go back, I believe Rolling Stone called New York the Hot Dead Zone in their inaugural Hot List issue. In 1998. Saying New York is no longer edgy hasn't been edgy in forever.

The sequel to this piece is when she inevitably says that Berlin is starting to get really, really hip these days too. Pretty much anybody who went through Ellis Island and didn't stay probably had some sentiment along the lines of "this place sucks." According to the Daily News, one of our presidents basically told us to stick this city up our collective asses (look where he is, now: dead).

But—and I'm sure others have their reasons—I live here because, quite frankly (A) there's still nowhere else in America like it, and like many other people here, I have some sick/awesome compulsion that makes this grind of living here that much more attractive to me than anywhere else and (B) it's still got better stuff than everywhere else in America. Yeah, fuckin' stuff. Awesome stuff.

Now.

Can we quickly go over the reasons London—a nice city, sure—sucks compared to New York? Great:

• Your food sucks. It all tastes like ass until American chefs take two months to do better what you've spent hundreds of years sucking at.
  
  
• The service in your restaurants sucks, because you have to instruct people how to tip by putting a mandatory charge on their tab, like many other countries that do this. Which is the wrong way of doing this, which is why every server you will every have in London will probably be an asshole.
  
  
• Your theater sucks. War Horse—no, really, War Horse—is the best thing you have up right now. Anything good you have on the West End came from us. And don't bring up fucking Billy Elliot.
  
  
• Your nightlife is just stupid. Pubs close at 11, our bars don't close until four. Who goes to bed at 11? Are you serious? So you guys open up clubs that close at 2AM that have two kinds of people in them: the kind who get unceremoniously drunk and piss on everything, or the places Prince Harry goes. And who wants to go there? Also, you only play American music. You think Kings of Leon are the Second Coming of Christ. The Kings of Leon play our bar mitzvahs, goddamnit. By the way: most of those rappers you guys play on repeat (and not even the good ones...50 Cent?!) still live in New York. Our clubs and nightlife might have their issues, but they blow yours out of the water. You guys wouldn't know what to do with The Beatrice Inn if it crawled up your nose in a $100 bill.
  
  
• Nobody knows where anything is in London. Seriously. It's like the worst parts of the West Village for an entire city. Everything is higgly-piggly or whatever dumb word you have for it. We live on a grid. A grid. You guys have the dumbest civic planning this side of kids eating Legos.
  
  
• OH. Don't get me wrong. Our subways suck, for sure. But at least they're supposed to work after midnight, and don't cost half our income to ride. Also, an Oystercard? That just sounds stupid. Who's running your design schemes, Lewis Carroll? Stupid. Oh, and, you wanna talk about EDGY? How about our D-Trains getting stabby again, edgy? Exactly.
  
  
• You guys have never had a nice day of weather in the history of the universe. Seriously. The only person Madonna has to compete with for causing a scene is the fucking sun. It's yellow, it's in the sky, sometimes, it...nevermind. Have you even been here in September? It's like Central Park is trying to get in your pants and get you off, the weather's so goddamned nice.
  
  
• Oh, and the pound is stupid-expensive. Like everything else in your city.
  
  
• Your tabloid newspapers make the New York Post look like The Paris Review.
  
  
• And Whole Foods on the Bowery, sure, Whole Foods sucks. But it's in a pretty great location, and, fuck that, you know what sucks worse? Sainsbury's. Sainsbury's suuuuuuuucks. Which goes back to your food sucking.
  
  
• Do you have Brooklyn? Do you even know what a Brooklyn is? No, not David Beckham's son. You're stupid, shut up. [Quiet Moment: The article didn't mention Brooklyn once, but didn't refer to Manhattan exclusively. Go figure.]
  
  
• London's celebrities are all on Big Brother and fucking suck. They're mouthbreathing idiots. They make Tinsley Mortimer look like Jackie Kennedy.
  
  
• You guys have soccer—yeah, I called it soccer, goddamnit—teams. Multiple ones. Great. We have two baseball teams (including the 2009 World Series Champions), football teams (Including the 2008 Super Bowl Champions), hockey teams (I'm sure they Won Something Great recently), and a basketball team. All of them except for the Knicks could smash every London soccer player. Nothing else, just "smash" them.
  
  
• There is one—and only one—good song about Foggy London Town. There are as many songs about New York as there are New Yorkers, and most of them are awesome.

Anything else? Oh, yeah, did Samuel Motherfucking Jackson just buy an apartment next to your boss? No? Exactly.

Shut up. New York is awesome.

So: we got teased yesterday and this morning with two great pieces on Glenn Beck talking in his strange, voodoo-esque language on whatever way he plans to molest and exploit the minds of whoever will lend him an open ear to aim his ideological piss into. The first was the aforementioned Politico note, which quoted Beck teasing his big ideas on his show. But this was fun! Remember that scary 9/12 Project that was presumed to have gone away because only crazy people listened to crazy people and hey, there can't be that many crazy people who are that organized. We call those cults, and there are lots of them, sure. But they don't represent any kind of frightening majority. Because crazy people need crazy leaders with power and a platform and there aren't really any of those out there as completely insane as the 9/12ers are, right?

Christine Drawdy, a Florida event promoter involved in the tea party and 9/12 movements who is listed as the travel coordinator for the 2010 march, said the permit for the march is in the name of The 9.12 Project's administrator, Yvonne Donnelly. Though Drawdy stressed that Beck "is not the leader of" the 912 movement, she added "all he has to do is say something, and they'll jump."

And by 'jump,' she means, kill people.

Brian Stetler at the New York Times also talked to Beck before today. Stetler's a sizable dude, not someone I imagine can be easily intimidated, nice as he is. Really, he could probably bounce a guy Glenn Beck's size easily.

That said, I imagine he'll be sleeping in the fetal position tonight:

"We'll be looking for ways to get people involved in politics," [Beck] said. "I hear people saying, ‘O.K., now what?' They're calling their representative, but it's time to get more proactive."

Right. So. What was Beck's big plan? He unveiled it today, starting with his website, which is the image you see at the top of this post. One more thing before we get there, though. This video, taken at a Borders yesterday, of Beck teasing out The Plan.

"We're gonna be asking of you some big things." Funny, I've been told the same thing by my bosses, but the first thought that went through my head never involved any kind of civil war and/or revolution.

But hey, Beck: he's just passionate! No way could this entire rollout involve the guy cashing in.

No way could all of this buzz, this entire thing, all of this talk about "community organizing"—taking The Dirty Word of President Barack Obama's past and platform, and putting it to their own new, awesome, terrible uses—no way could Beck be leading his flock into spending some cash.

Funny, then, that they found out that The Plan was for them to spend more money on Glenn Beck, The Brand. Observe his two key points from the manifesto written on his website:

- I have begun meeting with some of the best minds in the country that believe in limited government, maximum freedom and the values of our Founders. I am developing a 100 year plan. I know that the bipartisan corruption in Washington that has brought us to this brink and it will not be defeated easily. It will require unconventional thinking and a radical plan to restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting, using only the battlefield of ideas.

- All of the above will culminate in The Plan, a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding.

Kinda sounds like a cross between Avon and the Left Behind series, right? Except with scarier salespeople who have drier hands.

Yeah, Glenn Beck's got a plan: for the next 100 years, he's gonna keep writing books and making TV shows, and his fans are going to keep buying into both of them. It's kind of genius. His entire multimedia empire is predicated on one, long, 100-year plot arc: that the main character will make viewers'/listeners'/readers' lives better so long as they're with him every step of the way. The man will make references to revolution, to change, to bringing everything back to a fundamental state. The beautiful irony he has to see and embrace—in order for this to have worked as long as it has—is that the only real movement he'll be making is into better cars and larger houses. The kinds that are far away from the rabid zombies who salivate at every vague allusion to blood and violence Mama Bird spits out like discarded pieces of chewing gum for them to suck every last grain of sweet flavor out of. The kind, if provoked, and unleashed, are as much as a threat to anybody as they are to him. A "random act of violence" is never really that random, is it? Especially when the word "radical" gets thrown around over, and over, and over.

More than anything, this guy is a threat to the proliferation of rational thought. Beck knows that there're people in the world who listen to this kind of nonsense without processing it any way but through their emotions, because they're tired, hungry, scared, or angry, and maybe, sometimes, rightfully so. Then again, so are most of us! But when you have an asshole like Beck running the con, one thing leads to another, and shit like this happens. Believe me, nothing would bring me more joy than to watch Glenn Beck get the Downfall-meme treatment after his empire of exploitative bullshit comes crumbling down under the weight of the inevitable rise of the truth: that this man is a crook, a fraud, a shyster, and a very skilled, sophisticated con artist. But who wants it to get that far?

Glenn Beck does have one up on Hitler in terms of likability: a decent Kermit impersonation. I'm pretty sure nobody with such an affection for Muppets can possibly be capable of anything too terrible.

Then again, evil, as we're all aware, is a scary, subversive force, and comes in all forms, at all times, with little to no discretion. Beware.

[Top image via Glenn Beck's website. Bottom image via Bert Is Evil.]

The new $11 billion operating budget is actually just an ominous warning that in a year—or maybe a few months—the Transit Authority will once again cite the need to hike fares in order to strong arm Albany in finding a newer, more regressive way of funding operating costs.

They have basically promised it already:

In addition to the 2010 budget, the MTA released a four-year fiscal plan. It envisions 7.5% fare and toll hikes in 2011 and 2013 as the agency tries to establish a pattern of regular inflation-based increases.

There is really not so much inflation right now, in America, is there? (But who knows what the future holds!)

But, yes, it is insane that our mass transit is operated by a rotating cast of idiot millionaires with free E-Zpasses for life (and beyond!) beholden to absolutely no one, at all, operating with two sets of books, and yet we have to actually sympathize with them because the people who profit from the way an efficient mass transit system allows for the mobility of cheap labor don't think they should be forced to pony up any money to keep transit affordable. Fares are simply taxes—incredibly regressive taxes, just like the sales taxes that New York City residents suffer to fund our own transit while suburban New Yorkers bitch about the prospect of being charged to clog our streets with their cars, and Jersey dicks bemoan the tolls they have to pay to enter the city where they make all of their money while contributing nothing back.

Meanwhile, though, the MTA lies, about everything, all the time. They are saving just enough of the money from the emergency bailout earlier this year to allow them to not threaten to raise fares again for one (1) year (while fighting transit workers' promised wage increase in court). And thanks to that bailout, we only had to endure a slight fare increase with no service cuts! Except that not a single goddamn line is running on schedule anymore, ever, and that's been the case all year and it only gets worse every week.

Track and signal work must be up 1000% across the board, because there's hardly a line that isn't out of commission on the conveniently poorer or less utilizied portions of the routes these days. The F just gives up at Jay St now. The service advisories, when they are actually correctly posted, which is rarely, grow longer every weekend. If you live outside Manhattan, you better catch a train home before 11 pm, because otherwise who the fuck knows when a train will show up and where it will actually take you. Lord only knows what the hell the G train was doing last weekend, and why. Everyone, anecdotally, has noticed this. But no one has just straight-up said that these are the across the board service cuts that they promised they wouldn't need to institute once we saved them from disaster a few months ago.

It is time, now, immediately, to do a few things:

• To end the insane federal transit funding system that a) overfunds highways and b) dispenses capital project money for urban mass transit systems but forbids any federal spending on operating costs for cities of more than 200,000 people. The Reagan administration slashed mass transit funding, of course, but it was Mr. Bill Clinton who eliminated operating assistance altogether. Do you want to know about how much highway funding has increased over the same period of time? No, you don't. Real estate taxes and fares are not the proper way to fund the nation's largest subway system, especially when we will earmark federal cash for the Robert Byrd Memorial Frontage Road to the Erma Ora Byrd Conference and Learning Center and Community Swimming Pool.
• To destroy the MTA. The public authorities reform bill that just passed the Assembly is a wonderful start! But the entire board needs to be dissolved and replaced with, you know, actual subway riders, elitist technocrat transit wonks, and people with experience in government management and accounting. Civil servants, in other words.
• Everyone in Albany should be tarred and feathered. This is an important part of our prescription for any local problem.
• Also fuck Bloomberg.

Anyway! No fare increases until January 1, 2011! And some day—maybe in like 2015, when you ride the robot-operated Second Avenue line to your favorite soup kitchen—there may be those little signs that tell you when the next train is coming! This "install little signs" project is only a zillion dollars over budget (so far!).

I mean, I guess we shouldn't be shocked? It's generally been accepted and engendered as common knowledge that the health care industry—where people go to, you know, try to keep living—is among the most bottom-line profit centers in America. That bottom line, of course, being somewhere between your heartbeat and your wallet. I still find this one a little hard to get over, though: it's probably been going on for years, and it's no doubt common practice where it's exercised, but still. When people are as unabashedly, apologetically having their agendas literally written by multinational corporations, you have to wonder what it's gonna take for someone to throw the first Molotov Cocktail, figurative or otherwise.

The New York Times found emails proving that a subsidiary of Swiss pharmaceutical pusher Roche had their distributed talking points for both Democrats and Republicans printed in the Congressional Record under the names of 42 representatives. It was almost an even split: 22 Republicans, 20 Democrats.

This shit's just incredible. Watch this jackass blame it on his staff instead of making himself accountable:

In an interview, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, said: "I regret that the language was the same. I did not know it was." He said he got his statement from his staff and "did not know where they got the information from."

Asshole. Now, you're probably wondering, well, come on, how blatant was this? They had to at least, I don't know, slip them pieces of paper, hard copies. I mean, this is the kind of thing that's only talked about at lobbyists firms, when they're wasted and jumping around with glee at making their money influential in politics! Right. Right?

In an e-mail message to fellow lobbyists on Nov. 5, two days before the House vote, Todd M. Weiss, senior managing director of Sonnenschein, said, "We are trying to secure as many House R's and D's to offer this/these statements for the record as humanly possible." He told the lobbyists to "conduct aggressive outreach to your contacts on the Hill to see if their bosses would offer the attached statements (or an edited version) for the record."

You're reading this correctly.

[Interlude: Can we get a #FuckYeahNYT? This is the fourth estate at their finest.]

So. Exactly how upset should we be about this? Because this isn't groundbreaking, this is just more proof that the scenario here is circumstantial. Lobbyists are running the rhetoric of Washington D.C., shamelessly, the more money they have behind them, the better they're doing.

Our elected officials are a bunch of clowns. Smart words written by smarter, better paid people are given to them. The words come out of their mouths. They get something in return. The chance to sound smart? Money? Who knows. Can we stop it? Can we make Washington a cleaner place where lawmakers aren't spoon-feeding the future of our country the poisonous horseshit that is a medical company's bottom line? And mind you: this is just one lobby. And one instance.

Is there any kind of indignation or recognition that this might be even—maybe, kinda, sorta—disingenuous and sociopathic behavior on behalf of our elected officials? Can Washington even recognize its own processes for what they are?

Asked about the Congressional statements, a lobbyist close to Genentech said: "This happens all the time. There was nothing nefarious about it."

Right. So. You done with that bottle?

In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists' [NYT]

What are the chances that any particular envelope full of unknown white powder is, in fact, full of deadly weaponized anthrax? Quite small! Exceedingly small. Vanishingly small. The original 2001 anthrax attacks were so spectacular precisely because it is so fucking hard to pull off something like that. Much easier to send bombs, really! Said bioweapons expert Richard Spertzel, "In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I'm one of them." Also: "And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good."

Here's what that means, in practical terms: The envelope full of white powder that you just opened in your Congressional office or governmental office or media outlet office or UN office is full of flour or baking soda or maybe even cocaine, but it is almost surely not full of anthrax. So stop evacuating place and shutting everything down. For chrissake. Some nut in Texas knew he could force the UN one-world foreigners to run in fear with less flour than it takes to make a cookie, and that's exactly what he did, and now it's worldwide news. Contrast that with what these places could have done when they got that envelope: Nothing. Set it aside, let the cops come test it, and keep working in the meantime. There's at least a 99% chance that you'll be fine.

We've said this before. Anthrax! It's a ridiculous thing. Just forget it. Do you smell that? No? That's because we had our operatives fill the room you're in with sarin, a colorless, odorless nerve agent 500 times more toxic than cyanide. You better evacuate now, because it kills in less than one minute.

Kidding! But sending you an envelope full of white powder would have been only marginally more difficult than that. So, seriously. Until further notice, just put it in the trash can. At least make the crazies come get you in person.

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

(A) A bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich.
(B) Eggs Benedict.
(C) A Christmas ham.
(D) A bagel, a blintz, lox, matzo brei, kreplach, shmear, whitefish, sable, a "nosh" of anything, or nothing, because you're getting bar/bat-mitzvah'd next weekend and your parents told you to watch your figure.

Question 2:

You think Larry David is

(A) Not funny.
(B) Who?
(C) Hysterical.
(D) Bad for the Jews.

Question 3:

Your parents are divorced, and they both want you to come home for the high holidays. You:

(A) Go home to wherever you still have a good weed hookup.
(B) Go wherever more singles will be.
(C) Split holidays; Ma gets Yom Kippur, Dad gets Rosh Hashana.
(D) Can we not talk about my mother for once, please?

Question 4:

You want to marry a Gentile man or Gentile woman. How's this gonna work?

(A) Our kids will be progressive, they'll get more presents, it'll be fine. Give your college roommate Aariz a ring, we'll ordain him as a Universal Life minister, turn this thing into a rockin' multicultural experience.
(B) Well, we've lied to Mom for this long. What's another 20 years?
(C) Honestly, who cares? We love each other and we haven't been subject to a New York Magazine profile yet, so this can't be that complicated.
(D) He/she'll convert! We've got a great Rabbi and he's so welcoming and this is gonna be easy; we'll just do it in the closest temple, and be done with it. My spouse has fully embraced my spirituality and culture believes what Jews believe so, you know, draw baby a Mikvah and let's get goin' here!
(E) You're converting in an Orthodox temple, with an Orthodox rabbi, under strictly Orthodox rules. Throw out those Manolos, by the way.

Question 5:

Your parents are:

(A) Awesome.
(B) Annoying.
(C) One's Jewish, one ain't.
(D) They're both Jewish, Mom converted in a conservative Judasim temple a long time ago, but now attends Orthodox services with Dad.
(E) They were both born, raised, and remain Orthodox. I have a sneaking suspicion that one of them converted, but if they did, it was definitely an Orthodox synagogue. Nothing less. If they ever found me with a Shalom Auslander book, they would kick the everloving shit out of me.

If you answered A, B, or C to any of the questions, give yourself -5, -3, and -1 points.

If you answered D to any of the questions, give yourself 0.01 points.

And if you answered E to any of the questions, give yourself 100 points.

0 to -25 Points: Goyim.

1 to 99 Points: Meh.

100+ Points: Mazel Tov! According to certain authorities, You're a Jew! This is the only circumstance under which the government-funded Jews' Free School in North London will admit your child. Congrats:

The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews' Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London's Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts....Because M's mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew - nor was her son. It turned down his application.

Mind you, this is the New York Times most emailed articled today for a reason. There are wide, wide gaps in some Jewish communities where, despite regularly attending services, embracing Jewish customs into one's family's lives, and practicing on a daily basis, you are still not considered Jewish. This isn't just in the Orthodox community. A good example came up in last night's comments about this very issue:

I'm a half-breed (Shiksa mother) and I vividly remember being told that I was not Jewish by a girl at summer camp. I cried for days and couldn't understand how I was Jewish enough for a Bat Mitzvah and Hebrew school but not Jewish enough for this little girl in my bunk.

In the great literature of our time, Harry Potter, people without two magical parents are considered by evil angry purebred magical people to be "Mudbloods." This is kind of like that. Am I suggesting the Orthodox community in question in the New York Times today are anything like J.K. Rowling's Death Eaters? Not at all.

But it's interesting to think that the Anti-Defamation League—a Jewish organization whose sole purpose is to "stop the defamation of the Jewish people, to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike," but has been criticized for its often elitist, extremist Zionist positioning—has yet to speak out on this one! Shocking. So: how antisemitic are some of these people Jews?

Orthodox Jews, of course, sympathize with the school, saying that observance is no test of Jewishness, and that all that matters is whether one's mother is Jewish. So little does observance matter, in fact, that "having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn't make you less Jewish," Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, said recently.

Damn. Looks like I'll have to re-arrange the next questionnaire.

Jew-on-Jew antisemitism is an actual problem. This thing's gonna strike a very loud chord with many, many people, in many, many places. The case in question has since been overturned on the basis that the school has taken it upon itself to administer an ethnic test and a verdict is expected in the coming months.

2. Eat some pork buns.

3. Eat some steak.

4. Eat some Gray's Papaya.

5. Eat some wings.

6. Eat some tacos. Pork tacos.

7. Eat some bacon (but don't be obnoxious about it).

8. Eat a bacon cheeseburger.

9. Eat some turkey. Some jive turkey.

10. Just be a vegetarian, and understand that most meat-eaters do respect your views, but that they're not as complicated and complex as you'd like to think they are, and that most people are actually, yes, quite aware of the arguments you'd like to "respectfully" make, what they're doing, the various reasons why it's uncool, and that we should eat more vegetables, and that we don't need to be guilted about it, and if we did, we'd read Michael Pollan's book instead, or at the very worst, Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker review of Jonathan Safran Foer's book, which is both (A) quite great and (B) will save you $15 or $20 and save us from hearing you opine on what you read by the guy that wrote Everything is Illuminated talking down to all of us about eating our vegetables.

11. STFU.

Penned by one Mr. Ben Sisario—whose writing is typically quite wonderful—the song is broken down as such:

...roughly 50 percent rote Jay-Z chest-beating ("I'm the new Sinatra"), 30 percent tourist-friendly travelogue ("Statue of Liberty, long live the World Trade") and the rest a glorious Alicia Keys hook.

Which is true! Jay-Z goes from the Bronx to Tribeca and back; most people who live in the West Village like Jay-Z think they get nosebleeds above 14th Street and apply for visas every time they cross the East River. For all intents and purposes, Jay-Z has probably visited more locales in New York than Sinatra ever did, even goddamn Williamsburg. Sinatra was from Hoboken, Hov is from Marcy. And Jay-Z can even get the hardest reservation in New York, a tabled at famed mobster hangout Rao's (as evidenced by his D.O.A. video), something only someone like Sinatra could pull off back in the day. And Sisario makes a great point, noting that when you're Jay-Z, who do you beef with? Where do you go from here?

But there's a more basic explanation for this new rivalry: If you are the king of rap, and you've already topped all the charts, trounced all other M.C.'s, and even run a major record company, what's the next challenge? Where do you go? Answer: You start beefs with pantheon heroes, thus muscling your way into their realm. And it seems to be working pretty well: "The Blueprint 3" has sold 1.2 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and after eight weeks it is still in the Top 10.

Let's be honest: Jay-Z's stature, at this point, is a little absurd. He could've had a fighting chance against Bloomberg if he were on the ballot; he surely would've gotten a more ringing endorsement from this website than Billy Talen, for one thing. But he needs to catch paper, and he needs the mayor in his pocket to do that, and the only rapper trying to start fights with him is Beanie Siegel, who, exactly. So who does Jay-Z beef with? Sinatra. Obviously. But is Jay-Z's anthem as utilitarian as Sinatra's?

"New York, New York" is built around a handful of memorable phrases ("I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps") that resonate with a universality perfect for a baseball stadium. Ms. Keys supplies that ingredient in "Empire State of Mind," singing somewhat trite slogans ("These streets will make you feel brand new") in a huge, rousing voice. Yet like all Jay-Z songs, "Empire" is, in the end, solely about Jay-Z. And while his personality may fill Yankee Stadium more persuasively than any other pop star, would 50,000 fans ever have the timing, or the memory, to recite "Say what-up to Ty-Ty, still sippin' Mai Tais/Sittin' courtside, Knicks and Nets give me high-five"?

For better or worse, I'm willing to bet that there's a significant difference in the number of people who can rattle off four out of five members of the Rat Pick as opposed to the number of people who can tell you what a Ty-Ty is, though both groups of people definitely have no idea why they should care about Joey Bishop.

Then again, rap is crossing over into audiences who'd never listened to it before—primarily, more adults, who were once the kids that grew up on it—and was "New York, New York" ever a song of the people, or was it always a song of rich privilege? Sure, there's a peasant's, hustler's tone to it, and sure, as Sisario makes clear, Sinatra came from the 'hood, too.

Real talk (oh yes): more people have heard "New York, New York." But what Sisario only hints at is that Sinatra's song will only be heard on one kind of radio station. Jay-Z's will be heard on at least three.

Derek Jeter, a person, walks out to Jay-Z's song. The Yankees—the rich, evil organization with an administration even Yankees fans detest—play "New York, New York" when games end. Rap like Jay-Z's is becoming more accessible to more people, while kids and adults alike aren't exactly going to be (and have never been) bumping Sinatra. Some people will call this a shame. Others will call it progress. I call it a win-win situation.

[Photo via Getty Images]

Vampires are the worst. They're not evil-evil, anymore. They've been rendered powerless by True Blood and Twilight and now, The CW's The Vampire Diaries from fucked-up, baseless monsters who are honoring a timeless tradition of being terrifyingly rapey psychopaths who do nothing but sleep and kill, into very, very, very pretty people who are super-horny about their weird fetishes and yeah, I guess they want your blood, but what they really want is your girlfriend, homie. If you put fangs on everyone in The O.C. and set it a little further east, all it would take now is one "Welcome to the Transylvania, Bitch" to set off a cultural touchstone, now. It's cheap, stupid bullshit. Vampires—male and female alike—have been castrated of their fear-factor. Christopher Walken performing "Poker Face" is scarier than Twilight, the most famous vampire franchise of our time. Hell, Twilight fans are scarier than the vampires in Twilight. Just ask Robert Pattinson.

In this month's GQ, Tom Carson penned a essay sharing my distaste for what now passes for scary, compelling, and sexy, titled (naturally) "There's A Sucker Born Every Minute." While he enjoys True Blood for what it is, Carson closes by arguing that even zombies, undead as they are, are a smarter buy than vampires:

No wonder the bloodsuckers' main competition in pop circles is a renewed craze for zombies, the ultimate fantasy of mindless egalitarianism turned comic nightmare. Funny enough, they were always American: Defined a scant forty years ago by George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, they could be the only genuinely original contribution to monster lore we've ever made. As a given-we may be dumb, but we've got working brains-zombies feed on their superiors. But I can't think of a vampire tale in which that's been true, which is the sickest reason we can sneakily imagine ourselves being one. Not exactly a pretty picture of our secret lives in 2009, is it? Go vampire or go zombie, America: It's your choice. Just don't say this great country doesn't offer you one.

Remember when teenage girls loved the Backstreet Boys in a narrative where Lou Pearlman was the villain? Anything that can remotely make those seem like The Days absolutely blows. Vampires are not the new gays. Vampires belong nowhere near the word "tampons." Vampires should not be a clever narrative eye-wink joke to those who adopt them as "bloodsuckers." Vampires are the most boring, dumbed-down, unsexy, overplayed, ridiculous narrative device out there. This used to be the stuff of good literature! Holler back, Vampire Archives scholar Otto Penzler:

All (teenage girl Twilight fans) are in love with the vampire. Why is that? Because he's cool. He has got good manners. He's good looking. He's thoughtful of his girlfriend. Whereas most teenage boys are lame. They're at the mall with their baseball caps on backwards and they act like idiots. Girls are looking for someone a little more sophisticated and a little cooler.

Right, well, that guy doesn't exist in 8th grade. And soon, when Twilight fans grow up, they'll realize that vampires' sense of "romance" was just the long-con to get in their pants; male, female, doesn't matter. But forget the perceptions, forget the implications on teenagers, forget the literary device. Forget all that stuff. There are just better stories out there. Bottom line. We've got better scaries in Rabbi Boteach and Glenn Beck and 3/4ths of Murray Hill past 2AM on a Thursday night than any vampire can ever give us.

Give me a break. Vampires are fuckin' stupid. I hope they die. Forever.

Portfolio was basically the starter pistol for Conde Nast's fall: a publication that would've been great with an online-only presence that instead screwed the pooch by disregarding their awesome online staff and instead trying to make a Tina Brown-modeled finance magazine with swagger. Examples of their miserable print presence? A Dov Charney cover story that was two years late. Lipman had the helm! But back to that in a moment.

Her theory—that Feminism isn't where it should be at this point—may very well might be right!

There're some great examples of places where sexism still exists, particularly in Hollywood and in some of the very, very misogynistic pop culture this country's turning out daily (forgetting what some of pop culture's women—Kate Gosselin being Public Enemy #1—have done onto themselves). I'd love to talk about gender politics—and yes, bring up the fact that there are no women on our masthead, too—but that's not nearly as interesting as simply assuming Lipman's idea to hold water, and referencing all other inquiries regarding this theory to another website, the first hour of Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, and then moving forward to drop jaws at Lipman's insanely massive, overwhelming ego put forth in an essay that could've been something far more substantial.

Where to start? How about right here:

So why have we stalled out?

Part of the reason can be traced to the aftermath of 9/11.

Everyone's life was reshaped by 9/11. Like many New Yorkers, I experienced that day in an intensely personal way: I was in the World Trade Center with a colleague when the first plane hit. And we were just outside the second tower, making our way through burning debris, hunks of airplane seats and far worse when the second plane came in directly over our heads.

I'll spare you the manner in which she tied that together, suffice to say it's got her quoting Graydon Carter about irony being dead, and then backtracking to say irony's still alive (which, as you'll later see, is very, very ironic), and that after 9/11, the conversation regarding women suffered greatly. Without providing any examples except for a Google search of an interviewer that turned up pictures of boobs. You can Google anyone's name and come up with pictures of boobs. Welcome to the internet, maybe this kind of know-how explains why Portfolio's web strategy sucked so badly. There's also this charmer:

As a freshman, I had an interview for a magazine internship in New York City. As I sat down, making sure to demurely close up my slit-front skirt over my knees, the interviewer barked, "If you want the job, you'll leave that open."

Scandalous! But is the blunt force of this *racy* anecdote really worth putting in the middle of an Op-Ed about how far women haven't come when you're trying to prove some, but not all progress past that? Surely, it belongs somewhere, but in this context, it just seems self-serving, as if Lipman's trying to say, Ladies, I've been there, and I got past it. Isn't the point that they've all been there, but more importantly, that they're still there? It's kind of absurd. Lipman also cites the way her career was described in an article as "leggy," which is (A) funny, (B) could be true in four different contexts outside of what she thinks of her actual legs and (C) is presented without any context whatsoever! We don't even know which article she's talking about, so how can we decide what the hell that means? Good thing The NYTpicker came in to regulate on this thing. Observe the smackalicious smackdown:

Here's what Steve Fishman actually wrote in New York Magazine last April:

S. I. Newhouse Jr., chairman of Condé Nast, falls in love with his editors. His romance with Joanne Lipman began over lunch at his U.N. Plaza apartment, with its beige carpets-no red wine allowed-and paintings by Warhol, de Kooning, Cézanne. Lipman, 47 years old, who'd spent her entire career at The Wall Street Journal, is a serious journalist with a serious mien, and long legs, which she likes to show off with short-skirted power suits. Lipman is "attractive," in Newhouse's vernacular-"He uses the word like others use the word spiritual," says a former editor. The two brainstormed at a small dining-room table. Newhouse, in his standard worn New Yorker sweatshirt, told her he had an idea for a business magazine. Newhouse didn't say much more; he rarely does. He asks questions. But Lipman excitedly filled in the details.

Anyone who thinks that sentence — or even that paragraph — sums up Lipman's career as "leggy" just can't read.

Touche! Lipman's essay is, among other things, disingenuous towards the discrimination she's "faced" in that regard alone. And unfortunately, she's writing for people who can read, but who often don't have the time to discern the smell of bullshit from the sound of the truth, especially because this is a newspaper, and they're supposed to be able to trust what's there (ha).

The Batman-like NYTpicker also notes that a few sentences later, Lipman preaches to the ladies:

"Don't be afraid to be a girl."

Ladies and grown-ass women, how much do you enjoy it when you're referred to as a "girl?" I know it's a little different than being a Jew making Jew-jokes, but still, I'm not sure it's something I could get away with. Why the double-standard, Jo?

Back to the failure of Portfolio. Remember this gem from Page Six?

EYEBROWS were raised last week when Portfolio editor Joanne Lipman - not known for her modesty - not only insisted on attending the World Economic Forum in Davos but demanded to fly to Switzerland first class. "It's just jaw-dropping," an insider said. "Not only is her magazine not profitable, but she just laid off almost the entire Web site and fired many others on the print side." Portfolio has cost Condé Nast more than $150 million, so far. But a company rep claims the trip was necessary: "All of our editors are continuing to cover and attend the events that are important and relevant to their magazines." But those who found Davos not relevant enough to make the trip included Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Chevron CEO David O'Reilly, Goldman Sachs head Lloyd Blankenfein, Sony chief Howard Stringer and Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit.

Can we spell out the joke, here? The one way Lipman's completely wrong about men and women meeting in the middle is the example she set: that they both possess the capability to be equally as disgustingly vapid when it comes to the captain punching holes in their sinking ship. Both men and women, hand in hand, can disregard integrity for grossly incompetent, morale-shuttering selfishness!

It's like The MoDow School of Essayists is working on their class of 2009, and Lipman's first presentation is shoot-for-summa stuff. Even as someone who thinks everything Maureen Dowd writes smells like Julia Childs' Cote du Horeshit recipe, I can appreciate this. Except, Lipman's essay actually reads like a subversive "Portfoilio failed not because I was at the top, but because a woman was at the top in a still very male-dominated world" tome. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, or the first step in the Kubler-Ross model. It's something well-insulated by angry gender bloodpolitik projection, or so Lipman would like to think. We're not the cavemen you'd like to paint us as, Joanne, and the women reading your bullshit aren't the Tarzan'd Janes you're telling them they are, either. If the system's gonna change, it's gonna have to start by dispatching with self-serving setbacks like you.

The most basic definition of insider trading is: information that isn't available to the public shareholders of a company is given to sketchy assholes who already have more money than you, first. That way, said assholes can buy or sell stock based on whether or not a company's about to blow up or be royally screwed. Once the information becomes publicly available, the stock price is either too high for you to buy or your stock's already been screwed because they sold their gigantic loads of the company off before you could. And you would've bought and/or sold your stock because you know that when a company produces a bunch of planes that explode nine seconds after takeoff, you should probably sell your stock.

So: insider trading is bad, right? Bad for morals, bad for the economy, bad for people who get manipulated by other people by shady backdoor deals, right? Wrong, motherfuckers! Bwah. Ha. Ha. says the Wall Street Journal's suspiciously named Donald J. Boudreaux. How is this possible? Let's learn. Dr. Evil Donald J. Boudreaux suggests that because it's hard to tell what's a sketchy secret and what isn't, it (A) wastes the time of federal authorities, (B) it keeps asset prices "honest" by telling the truth about what their real value is and (C) it helps the market adjust rather quickly. Watch how he phrases this:

Time to stop telling horror stories. Federal agents are wasting their time slapping handcuffs on hedge fund traders like Raj Rajaratnam, the financier charged last week with trading on nonpublic information involving IBM, Google and other big companies. The reassuring truth: Insider trading is impossible to police and helpful to markets and investors. Parsing the difference between legal and illegal insider trading is futile-and a disservice to all investors. Far from being so injurious to the economy that its practice must be criminalized, insiders buying and selling stocks based on their knowledge play a critical role in keeping asset prices honest-in keeping prices from lying to the public about corporate realities.

Well, considering the small fact that federal authorities completely fucked the dog on Bernie Madoff, I'd say that anything that even remotely resembles something that might cost people who don't have the money of megalomaniacal bajillionaires a few bucks is probably worth the time of federal authorities. Also, a stock's "real value" is based on information attained through sketchy means? No, I'd say that's an asset's "shadow value." Its real value is based on the people whose fortunes are turned by it that can't afford (or, inversely, shouldn't be allowed) to have it do so. Information that insider trading works off of should be made public, not hunted out and used for profit; the big point Frederick von Dumbass is missing is that letting illegal information be freed up for legal use once obtained by white collar criminals makes said propriety information even more proprietary.

But I don't have a column at the Wall Street Fucking Journal, so, you know, I wouldn't know my ass from my face when it comes to money, which is to speak nothing of Mark Penn's Microtrends (For You To Buy Into, That My Clients Would Like You To Buy Into) column.

Boudreaux's column goes on to cite examples from the gas "crisis" of 20 years ago that allowed Big Unleaded to screw our parents in the tank, and the potential of Big Pharm to inflict damage on the public's health and wallets. Which is fair, but also, why we have regulatory agencies that exist to vette out this kind of thing. The second we let people with access to insider trading use it—people on Wall Street, guys who sit in front of their computer every day for hours at a time scanning forums for the slightest piece of corporate gossip—is the second we put the markets even further out of control of the majority of people who are layman's stockholders. This would be like letting the biggest Star Wars fanboys write the plot of the next three movies (and look what happened when we bought into George Lucas writing the screenplays for the last three).

Even more curious is how the Wall Street Journal allowed themselves to run this kind of complete nonsense without anything remotely resembling a counterpoint; they're big press. People who don't know Wall Street read the Wall Street Journal. This is dangerously stupid rhetoric. It's funny when Clusterstock does it, because they're mostly read by psychopathic, gossipy market obsessives, and because they often to have the counterpoint up five or ten minutes later. This is a little different. This is just patently ridiculous.

Companies these days love to sell you their crap by assuring you that simply by purchasing their crap you are not just purchasing crap—you are actually doing good. In fact, if you don't purchase their crap, you likely suffer from a severe moral defect. Furthermore, your mundane purchasing choices are now decisions of great moral import. And they define who you are, as a person. Do you buy your mutt Pedigree® brand dog food, to support pet adoption? Or Milk Bone® brand dog snacks, to give canine companions to people in wheelchairs? If you're a good person, buy both! How can you spurn either cause by failing to buy the associated consumer product? Both of them are so fucking good.

Failing to purchase Milk Bones is tantamount to walking (jerk) right up to this wheelchair-bound man and killing his dog. Failing to buy Dawn dish soap is no different from hunting down a snow white baby seal, dousing him in crude oil, and shooting anyone who tries to clean off his soft, beautiful fur.

These companies are not fucking around any more, America. They have brought out the baby seals. That means no marketing tactic is too mawkish; no advertising icon is too cliched; no leap of logic is too grand. We must warn you, the consumer: This slope is as slippery as the grease-soaked coat of an otter in Valdez. Want to help some good cause? Buy the fucking store brand. Save money. Give that money to charity. You give these companies one nickel and we'll all be seeing baby seal logos on every fucking thing until we just throw up.

[Also, America? Stop buying those "Herbal Remedies." They're fake. God. ]

If you don't know Grayson, don't be embarrassed: he's a Freshman Representative from Florida, the land that time forgot. But that won't impede his national appeal among the left set: Grayson's been gaining ground as the Democratic party's newest sharp-tongued trash talker.

Grayson charmed last month when, on the floor, he said Republican health care plan rewards timely death, "Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly." Then, after the GOP got their panties in a twist and called for an apology, Grayson stuck it to them good: "I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America."

The very next day, seizing the moment, Grayson told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that Republicans who oppose health care reform are "foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals." And that sensational hard line was out in full force yesterday when Grayson took to the floor to blast the GOP's obstructionist posturing:

[The American people] understand that if Barack Obama was somehow able to cure hunger in the world, the Republicans would blame him for overpopulation... In fact, they understand that if Barack Obama has a BLT sandwich tomorrow for lunch they would try and ban bacon. But that's not what America wants.

It's all very cute, yes, but as entertaining and, perhaps, true as Grayson's remarks, they may also backfire. In an article on how liberals call Grayson a "hero," CNN notes that neither Nancy Pelosi nor the White House would comment on Grayson's comments, nor the GOP's repeated calls for apology.

If he continues in this vein, Grayson may become too outrageous and too high on his inflammatory rhetoric and end up burning bridges in his own party. Regardless, if the Republican's equally vocal Joe Wilson's any indication, all this wonderful sensationalism will be a boon for fundraising. And that's what's most important here, isn't it?

It's so upsetting watching two men knock Green, who's just precious, to the ground, where he was probably covered with dirt and germs and general ickiness. Oh, and they took his bag, which we're sure irked him more than the aforementioned ickiness.

You are simply not a real foodie yuppie New York City news outlet right at this moment in the gustatory zeitgest if you are not writing articles about fried chicken. Did you think that fried chicken was just chicken, fried, a food that poor people eat? Think again! It is chicken, fried—a food that rich people eat, now!

New York magazine had a whole motherfucking six-part "guide to the great fried-chicken craze of 2009" last week. You thought the best fried chicken was at Popeye's in a combo meal? Nope, it's at Locanda Verde in the $41 prix fixe. Duh.

The New York Times has a whole Dining section feature on fried chicken today. You thought that the best fried chicken in NYC has probably always been at storefronts in Harlem and some little shack in backstreet fucking Flatbush? Wrong, it's in the East Village, Tribeca, and Carroll Gardens. In case you didn't know, white, non-Southern people have now mastered fried chicken, and it's better than ever. Thanks, New York Times.

Oh Momofuku's fried chicken was maybe created by an Asian guy, but it still costs $100. So it gets a pass.

Thanks to yuppie foodies and their media partners here in New York City , fried chicken is now something good to eat. For the first time ever!

First, we can't really imagine Green throwing a Christian Bale-sized tantrum. Second, though we love all things Green, he's not the best dramatic actor and, sadly, this comes off as a bad bit. Initially we thought perhaps this was to publicize something, but Green's above that, right? Maybe he's just taking the piss to see what happens.

Whatever the reason for this video, it seems phony to us, but why don't you offer your own take. We're easily influenced.

Moore had a press conference this morning about his upcoming movie I Hate Capitalism. He went off on a rant about the newspaper industry that is both surprisingly insightful, and unsurprisingly rooted in a Chomskyite capitalist critique! His remarks were transcribed in full by the National Post, so all are [sic]. His main points:

1. In Europe, papers get more revenue from circulation than from ads, so they have an incentive to put out a quality news product. Here, newspapers are ad-supported, and they've cut their content down to shit. Then he quotes David Simon, as is the law in such an argument.

2. "We live in a nation of 40 million functional illiterates: that's 40 million adults who cannot read and write above a fourth grade or fifth grade level. We have another probably 40 million adults who can read and write above a fourth grade level but don't have the comprehension beyond that very much. So if you have literally that many tens of millions of adults who either can't read and write above a fourth and fifth grade level or can't comprehend what they do read, you've created a nation of people who are not going to be reading the newspapers." No matter how hard they try, newspapers will never be able to become as dumb as Americans. It's a fact!

3. Republicans hate the Department of Education and thereby contribute to this widespread American illiteracy; nevertheless, Moore says, "In the 17 elections between 1940 and 2004, the majority of American newspapers endorsed the Republican candidate for President 14 of the 17 elections." Vote Republican and die, newspapers.

Also, you know, the XBox is just too fun. Read his whole speech at The Ampersand.

The New York Times counts four different legislators trying to attack the epidemic of 'Viva Viagra!' ads from different angles: they violate decency standards, they promote dangerous overuse of risky drugs, they're a poor use of the tax code. Which is fucking true, come on:

Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, has introduced a bill called the Say No to Drug Ads Act. It would amend the federal tax code to prevent pharmaceutical companies from deducting the cost of direct-to-consumer drug advertisements as a business expense.

We, the consumers, should be allowed to deduct as a "business expense" the Tivos we use to fast-forward past Cialis ads during sporting events, the double-paned windows we install to prevent our neighbors from hearing genital wart elixir ads blaring from our living rooms, and the pitchforks we buy, to deal with any pharmaceutical marketing executives we might come across.

And speaking of pharmaceutical marketing executives! One of them offers the defense that hey, TV ads aren't such a big deal; after all, "drug companies spent much more on direct marketing to physicians."

Like we said: pitchforks. Throw us this bone, Congress. We know you're not going to give us a good national health care plan. At least let us watch a fucking football game in peace.
[NYT]

What the hell do we have to show for manned space exploration besides neat pictures and a brief feeling of patriotic goodwill in the middle of Vietnam? Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong are demanding that Obama send men to Mars, ASAP, because... why? Because they had a blast on the moon and wouldn't want future generations to miss out on space-golf?

Because George W. Bush got a little overexcited one day, NASA is currently planning to build a colony, on Mars. They are building new Space Shuttles, as the old ones are rickety death traps. These new shuttles, and the plan to take them back to the moon by 2020, will cost $100 billion. After spending that $100 billion we will, as mentioned, just be going back to the damn moon, where we have been. By 2025 there might be a moon base! The bit where we go to Mars doesn't happen until some time after 2025—which, coincidentally, is also when there won't be racism anymore, according to Sandra Day O'Connor. The roaring 2020s will kick ass!

Mars, and the moon, are not actually going anywhere any time soon. And it would maybe be nice to have an extra $100 billion lying around in the budget for the next ten years to throw at, who knows, insuring a couple million Americans, maybe? Or if we are determined to spend that $100 billion on getting Americans boldly from one place to another place, how about spending that $100 billion on high-speed trains and urban mass transit, to help us cut down on all that oil we burn, and maybe forestall the day when we destroy our atmosphere and actually do have to flee the planet in a hurry?

It was pretty fucking awesome that we actually sent men to the moon, to walk around, collect rocks, and go back home, 40 years ago. But now would be a good time to dedicate ourselves to putting jobs of some kind back in Michigan. By the end of the decade, we will put affordable fresh produce in depressed black neighborhoods!

So, President Obama, we call on you to ignore those brave space explorers of yesteryear! Demand NASA shift its priorities to developing useful science! We won the space race, and now look at us: we are broke and sick. Let us not worry about space until we've taken care of our shit back here, unless a meteor the size of Texas is bearing down on us.