He'd been clinically depressed for two decades, on "powerful" medication (and apparently also Skoal) that made it possible for him to write — this may be vulgar but I have been too thoroughly inculcated in our compulsive culture of psychopharmacological comparison shopping not to wonder why they never tell you which — but the meds had powerful side effects, so he went off them in the summer of 2007, to apparently disastrous consequences. He tried electric shock therapy and other unspecified meds; nothing worked. He couldn't write or eat, and dropped to 140 pounds. He took a medical leave from teaching. A student is quoted saying his great genius was unrelated to his great depression. That student is wrong.

When David was 5, his mother recalls, he decided that he had two careers to look forward to. He would be a professional football player, for one. In the off-season, while the other players were recuperating or doing whatever it is that pro football players do when they're not running or passing or slamming their bodies into each other, he would be a neurosurgeon. His mother has no idea how, at 5, her son might have heard about neurosurgeons or what they were or did, but he had. The first day of his medical career, he promised his mom, he would take out all of her frayed nerves and fix them. "Somehow he knew about neurosurgeons," she says, "and he knew that my nerves needed fixing."

I'm developing a purely anecdotal theory about Republican drunkenness: that it's related to ideology. The less ideological arrive back at the headquarters earlier in the evening, between midnight and 1 a.m. These are, in chronological order, the Romney and the Giuliani supporters. Both are East Coast, urban college grad, corporate types. They like to drink and reminisce about the Harvard-Yale game, but they also like to wake up early, shave and not smell like booze at committee meetings. The Giuliani people are secular and more openly lecherous. So they tend to drink a bit harder and stay out closer to 1 a.m. The Ron Paul people party past 1 a.m., but not much. And they shave but they don't showboat.

The ones who stay out the latest and come back the drunkest, I notice, are the Huckabee folks, the party's rural conservatives. They believe in Jesus, in the hard-bitten way of the true alcoholic. If they ever sober up, it'll be by the grace of the Lord; and if they intend to stay on the sauce and continue living, then they'll really need His loving kindness. If you intend to be drinking heavily until closing time — 4 a.m. in the Twin Cities during the RNC — you had better walk home with Jesus. I can't place true McCainites on the alcohol-ideology matrix. I think they were all asleep by 9:30 p.m.

Now, sure, this passage is so cliche-rife and unsubstantiated Curtis Sittenfeld might have written it over an oolong latte at Teany, but the fact remains that it was one of the few produced by last week's Convention coverage that really bothers to draw distinctions among the Republican convention goers at all. The guy didn't need to go through paramilitary training or whatever to make these observations, but generally that's the type of stunt it takes for freelancers to get assignments writing anything interesting anymore, and getting dumb jobs is a good way to remind journalists how disconnected the other journalists they normally drink with are from the drinking public.

The thing is, there are all sorts of rules and forms and time constraints in immersion journalism, and the writers willing to sacrifice the time and the "objectivity" to immerse themselves in that sort of persona are usually young, naive and apt to find boring, cliched observations actually interesting. But until more news organizations take a cue from Tyra and start sending their more experienced commentators out into the field in capacities where they are not recognized as representatives of the media elite, "Confessions of an RNC Security Guard" may be the best we got.

Related: From 2004 Hot Girls, Frisky Delegates: Diary of a strip club waitress [Village Voice]
Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person

I guess I've suspected the worst for a long time. Certainly the signs were there from a fairly young age: He invariably chose "Power Rangers" over joining me in marathon viewings of the work of Stephen Sondheim. He preferred to thickly carpet his bedroom floor with castoff clothing rather than use the color-coded, padded hangers I put in his closet. Worst of all, he evinced a disturbing interest in Grace's bare, bony chest rather than concentrating on absorbing Will's snappy — yet ultimately supportive — patter. If he didn't pay attention, who would I have to call me "girlfriend" in my old age? How would I keep tabs on Britney, Carrie Underwood and that creepy kid from "High School Musical" without my very own Rex Reed 2.0?

A friend of mine once said that she wants gay kids because they're going to be born anyway and she feels that she'd be a good mother to them, which was absolutely true. And that I can understand. But saying you want a little play thing, even though it's for a "humor" piece? It's just so obtuse.

So how about it? Do any of you actively wish for gay kids? Do any of you have any? Are they 24-30 and single?

See how it feels to write down, "I want to direct." Or write down, "I want to act." See how that feels. Make pictures of what you want to do. Make collages to stimulate the primary process thinking that is the creative mode.

Collages are fun.

Meditate for five minutes and notice how quickly the time goes. Narrow down. Narrow down and make a plan. Think about a year. Think about how so many corny things are true. Think about how you are not 22. Ready yourself for sacrifice.

I know I'm not 22. But Cary, do you know whereof you speak?

I am a child of Florida's warm, wet indolence, the intoxicating rot and the rough, beefy unculturedness. I am a child of that. I know how it is to hate Florida and feel better than Florida and want to live in places like California.

Final words of wisdom?

So be with the ones who know you well. Be with the ones who see your bullshit. Work it out where you're from. Work it out, whatever it is; work it out where you're from.

You have this thing you have to do. It has something to do with film. You don't know precisely what, yet. But figure it out and then if you have to go to L.A. to do it go to L.A. But figure it out first.

Thanks!

[Salon]

I picture that hotel room full of Marines and your friend, drunk, abandoned by her friend and hungry for something, seeking something, vaguely aware that once she starts drinking she often can't stop or control what she does next, vaguely aware that whatever has been happening to her lately is happening again, and every time it happens it seems to get a little more out of control. When I picture that hotel room and what went on there — maybe with just one Marine but maybe more than one, given that her shame may be overwhelming and her memory incomplete — when I picture her desperation and her hunger for whatever it is she was seeking at the end of the night, and then I hear the phrase "consensual, unprotected sex," I marvel at the gulf between the language and the event. Perhaps this language indicates the gulf between your world and hers as well, and between the full horror of what happened and our willingness to imagine the full horror of what happened.

Uh.

The more I imagine what went on in that room, the more I wonder if you and your good friends have come to terms with, or admitted to consciousness, the full terror of the event. No one probably knows for sure what really happened in that hotel room. Has anyone uttered the word "trauma" in relation to these events?

Uhh..

One out-of-control incident leads to shame and humiliation and fuck it all, who the fuck cares now, might as well get out of control again because my friends did not rescue me the first time, so fuck them too, they must not care about me, and since they don't care about me I must be pretty worthless, and if I'm worthless you're worthless too, you shit, we're all worthless, so what if I give my fucking boyfriend an STD, he should have been there to protect me from those Marines and protect me from myself, too. So fuck him. Fuck you. Fuck it all.

This is the way we end up dead.

Thanks!

"Finally, once everyone went on dates and kissed good night and went on dates again without any broken hearts or unexpected pregnancies, we needed to mix things up a little. So Mark would dump Leia for Bespin Leia (the fancy 'Empire Strikes Back' Leia who Lando said truly belonged with them 'among the clouds' of Bespin City), and Bespin Leia would cheat on Mark with Harrison, or Luke would start stalking Carrie ('Empire Strikes Back' Leia in 'Hoth' garb)."

Okay, just a damned minute. If you realize that Leia came in both "Hoth" and "Bespin" outfits, why do you insist on dismissing Han and Luke in their Bespin outfits as "Hunkier 'Empire Strikes Back' version[s]"? But I digress...

"But even with so much drama and intrigue in the air, the second we started to mix and match the couples, we'd quickly begin to lose interest in the game. Who cared if Bespin Leia dated Mark then Luke then Harrison then Luke again, really? After a while, the relationships felt arbitrary, and sometimes Leia would elope with Chewbacca just to piss everyone off." [Salon]

Now that tears it. She has the heros of the Battle of Yavin running around like stinking Barbie dolls and tops it off with flagrant anti-Wookieeism. From now on, girls may play with Bratz dolls, Hula-hoops, and each other's hair.

Senator Clinton surrounds herself exclusively with sniveling girly-men (besides, we presume, her Alpha Dog husband?) because "Hillary is reconstituting the toxic hierarchy of her childhood household, with her on top instead of her drill-sergeant father," you see. This is incisive analysis! Maureen Dowd, eat your heart out!

The main reason Hillary Clinton is a terrible person, Paglia ventures, is because of her "sourly cynical, male-bashing megalomania," which is not to be mistaken for Camille Paglia's sourly cynical, woman-bashing megalomania.

(On page two, Paglia refers to Michelle Obama as "stylish, feisty, bare-knuckles", for what it's worth.)

Funniest part of this whole enterprise is that otherwise rabidly pro-Clinton Salon still needs Paglia to draw attention to herself. We'd still rather read her than Cary Tennis! [Salon]

After digging through the refrigerator for sodas, one of the girls pointed to a shiny copy of Us in the rack with Lauren Conrad's silly face staring vaguely at nothing and said, "I really want to buy that but I don't have enough money." Case closed, suckas!

Dear Living the American Dream ...

The kind of American dream you are living is the kind you wake up from in cold sweats.

There is another American dream.

It is a dream of wholesale revamping of cities, towns, transit and housing. In this dream, you get up in the morning and shower with solar-heated water and walk down a pleasantly crowded pedestrian way to catch some breakfast at a sunny outdoor cafe and then walk to a well-designed mass transit hub where you catch a fast, comfortable and efficient train to work. Or you work at home, using video hookups when necessary for meetings, transferring digital files at high speed, and when you start to feel isolated and restless you step out of your house to mingle on the street or jog or cycle on a nature path. And maybe you pick some wild watercress on the way and when you get back you make a salad for your wife, who is conducting a seminar on Chaucer in the living room.

In 2004, Fox' coverage of the New Hampshire primary—a purely Democratic affair, as no one dared challenge the president for his nomination—beat CNN's by 200,000 viewers. In the last New Hampshire primary, heavily contested by both parties, CNN prevailed over Fox by nearly 250,000 viewers. That's one anecdotal story (and Fox's coverage of the GOP South Carolina primary slightly beat CNN's), but maybe it's part of a trend? Boehlert has a damning list of reasons for Roger Ailes to be worried!

Some of them are astute (Fox staked a lot on Rudy Giuliani's campaign, the Dem candidates are largely boycotting the network, the Fox Business Network is a hilarious failure), and some of them are not (Ron Paul? Seriously?).

But is any of this seriously any reason at all to celebrate anything? The resurgence of CNN? On the backs of Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck? With Larry King still unexpectedly appearing to comfort the elderly and terrify children each and every night?

Or hey, maybe MSNBC—with Russert and Matthews, the blowhardiest of all pundits, at their disposal—will finally find its voice. Regardless of how it all turns out, we'll continue receiving precisely the quality of political coverage that we deserve.

Republicans make Fox News sick [Salon]

This strawman of "regular, everyday people" of the awesome Heather's is ludicrous—we only write about public figures. (Fun fact: In the fameball internet reality show age, more people than ever work to make themselves public figures!) Who's an everyday person? A chest-baring T.V. talking head and her millionaire boyfriend, who was the subject of a long New Yorker profile? A Pulitzer-prize winning author and his Ted Turner-loving wife? A man who set up a website that obsessively chronicles his every appearance as an extra in a Hollywood film? Bridezillas who crave wedding coverage in the New York Times? Anyone who puts more than five pictures of himself on Facebook? Anyone who's auditioned for a reality show? Anyone with a blog?

As for David Brooks, there are at least three errors in those four sentences, two of them of omission or lack of qualification. It's definitely not my place to get into the Byzantries [NOT A WORD! But you know what I mean, no? Paging Grant Barrett!] of our pay system. Let's just say this place pays better for young word-folks than the publication for which he phones in columns and leave it at that.

"We're trying to be a news organization — we're fair," [Salon CEO Joan Walsh] said, leaving the inference clear that Huffington Post is more slanted toward opinions. Walsh also insists that Salon plays its politics down the middle, although anyone who reads it — of either political stripe — would beg to differ.

"We're perceived as liberals because the country has moved to the right," Walsh told me when we met a few weeks ago in New York.

In a subsequent phone conversation, she elaborated: "Some of our liberal readers wish we weren't so fair and balanced."

Salon's Joan Walsh Shrugs Off Huffington Post [Marketwatch]

The flight crew said we could stand in the aisles, which several people did. A 60-ish man across the aisle from me stood up, but he violated an unwritten rule of airplane-aisle etiquette: Always face fore or aft when standing and, if possible, stand alongside a seat back so you don't crowd the personal space of a still-seated person. No, this guy stood with his butt inches from my face. Within moments, I smelled something awful. Could it be?

Oh yes, it could.

I had my iPod headphones on, so I hadn't heard anything. I pulled them off, and within seconds heard a faint fart coming from the backside that was all but in my face. Then came the smell again. And then he farted again! I couldn't believe it. I turned my air nozzle on full and pointed it at his butt, but it did little good. He farted probably five times in the course of a minute and showed no inclination to apologize or even make his way to the lavatory.

Cary's response, boiled down to the relevant sentence, by the way: "Are we not sitting idly by every day as powerful people fart in our faces with impunity? "

Are we? Err, not? Are we not?

We encourage you to send stories to Cary along the lines of "I was stuck on a crowded downtown 6 train when an a cappella group took a shit on me." Make sure to toss in a question about what you should have done; it increases the likelihood of the thing getting printed for Cary's self-reflections.

A man farted in my face on the plane and I said nothing! [Salon]

According to the site's most recent annual report, filed at the end of June, Salon is planning an initiative called "OpenSalon," which will be "a new service for its users allowing them to post user profiles; contribute blogs and other content; and collecting all their contributions to Salon, including Letters to the Editor, in one place." We're envisioning something like Facebook plus that failed Assignment Zero site, plus the LA Times' recent attempt to get people to contribute for free. So basically, Salon is looking for a way to monetize its most self-absorbed readers' contributions to the site. (Wait, isn't that why they hired Brazil-loving liberal scold Glenn Greenwald?)

Except, Salon already has a virtual community—or at least, they did. And they were never able to monetize or popularize it. So what makes them think they'll be able to do it now?

In April of 1999, Salon bought a property called The Well, one of the original online communities (started in 1985). By the time Salon bought it, it had been built into a healthy amalgam of e-mail services, personal web pages, message boards, and the like. In 1995, it had 10,000 members, and endless online-wonk cred. But what happened? It has become almost an afterthought on Salon's website, and according to its SEC filing, The Well currently only has 2,700 paying members.

Salon generally doesn't have a great track record when it comes to meshing with online trends—some of that is no fault of their own, except for bad tea leaf reading. The magazine got caught up in the IPO fever of the late 1990s and went public near the height of the hysteria, in June 1999. But even then, investors were cool to Salon's IPO, and the stock's price never really went anywhere. Then, in one of the most colossally misguided decisions the magazine would make, it decided to launch Salon Premium in April 2001—just as the stock market was going into freefall. But even at its height (the 2004 elections), Salon Premium had fewer than 90,000 subscribers. Today, the magazine acknowledges that it needs to emphasize getting ads over getting Salon Premium memberships; obviously, if more people visit the site, or at least the right sort of people, they can charge more for ads. (Update: A good point has been made to us—that Salon wouldn't have weathered that crash without the infusion of cash from subscribers, which they recruited with ardor. That does make sense as well.)

After years of turmoil, Salon might be getting its act together. The magazine is actually starting to turn a profit, and its stock today was trading at $1.35—up from a low of $.05 in the dark, dark days of 2003. But is social networking the right choice for their financial future?

Manager, Social Networking Site at Salon.com [Gawker Jobs]
Salon Annual Report [SEC]

The review in question was for the critically savaged Adam Sandler vehicle I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, which Zacharek suspects "is less a comedy than a sincere if sometimes heavy-handed brief for the necessity of legalizing gay marriage." Some of her readers didn't like that because it was too PC! But then one of them also said Zacharek is a homophobe, and cited an article by a man named Robert Fuller that explained why! Confusing! That's when an anonymous commenter threw his (or maybe her) hat into the ring. Someone who sure did seem to know a whole lot about film criticism!

Robert Fuller's article, so touted, is one of the largest piles of horseshit I've ever read. Brokeback Mountain is the ultimate closeted movie. It was boring and trite when it was called Out of Africa (now if it had been Out of the Closet in Africa ...). It's dead, prestige filmmaking in which any emotion is smoothed down in the name of taste and production values. People who repress their sexuality live with turbulence boiling under the surface. A movie has to make us feel that even if the characters keep their turbulence under wraps. BM was nothing but dull, dead surfaces with the kind of stoic manliness that ruined Gary Cooper's career.

Funny how everyone assumes Chuck and Larry is offensive — though the gay film critic Nathan Lee in the Village Voice called it a more radical film than Brokeback. People marrying for convenience is a staple of comedy. If gay marriage can be treated the same way straight marriage has been, isn't that a sign that the very idea of it is becoming more accepted?

And contrary to the previous correspondent who can't read, if this had been a dishonest review, it would have pretended it was a good movie because Zacharek agrees with gay mamrriage. Instead, she said a movie whose message she agreed with was bad. That's called separating aesthetics from message, knowing one doesn't justify the other. It's what critics do.

Letters: "I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry" [Salon]

We happen to think that today's starlets are just acting out their dramas in the only way our everything, now, moremoremore internet culture will allow them to, and that the troubles Lady Di got herself into were just the '80s equivalents of today's scandals. Yesterday's ano is today's vagflash, you know?

But whatever. Tina goes on to muse about Kate Middleton, who she thinks has been shunted aside by the palace but not by the Prince—"Don't bet on the poised and private Miss Middleton being counted out as the future Her Maj." But Tina also wonders why she'd want the job—"Being Princess of Wales even post-Diana is almost a fate worse than death." Oh my god, craziness. Welcome to gossip-blogging, Tina! One of us! One of us!

Diana's Birthday [Salon]

BALK BTW: Choire, if I tell you you have pretty eyes does that make me a gay?
Choire Tennis: mmm no?
BALK BTW: Cary Tennis may feel differently, I can't tell.
BALK BTW: http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2007/06/26/gaydar/?source=whitelist
Choire Tennis: god he's a dumb fucking whore.
BALK BTW: I mean, sometimes when we're in the office and I gaze over at Josh, his curly amber waves shining in the light from the window, I want to tell him he has gorgeous hair, but I worry that it might be taken the wrong way.
Choire Tennis: why wouldn't you.
Choire Tennis: worry, i mean.
BALK BTW: I guess in our heteronormative society there's some kind of taboo against it.
Choire Tennis: umm the gay talks about "INTERFACIAL" relationships between ugly-pretty gays? Does he know what words mean?
BALK BTW: Have you gotten to the dialogue yet?
Choire Tennis: i'm upset.
BALK BTW: I don't know how to feel. That hat conveys so much authority.

Oh, who cares what society says? Josh, you have lovely locks. They glow. I'm staring at them right now. But it's cool, I'm not into dudes. Okay? Great.

Do you have to be gay to tell another guy his eyes are pretty? [Salon]

Inside the restaurant, Tom Wolfe had his photo taken with Julia Allison. (That bears repeating: Tom Wolfe had his photo taken with Julia Allison.) Kurt Andersen made a little chit-chat before begging off to the Larry King appreciation party in the next room. (They had better snacks, by far. Also CNN partygoers received a Coach-imitation leather tote with a CNN tag, and a DVD of King's reputedly best work. You could sneak in through the kitchen.) The two parties side-by-side may have been a slight disaster on the part of Steven Rubenstein and his PR folks, but it came off fine, actually. (It was a question of wattage; did we see Hillary Clinton presswoman Jennifer Hanley outside, meaning that Hillary Clinton was inside the CNN party?)

Uniformed waiters were aggressive with the hors d'oeuvres, most of which featured caviar in some form, but the knot of yarmulked men gathered by the bar ignored them. (The duck, the shrimp, the crabcakes!) Also not eating, or drinking, was Jared's rehabilitated felon father, Charles Kushner, who mostly spoke in low tones to men at the end of the bar. Ever-gracious Jared entertained a seemingly endless stream of well-wishers and posed for photographs. The real estate broker-developer Michael Shvo said he'd call him about having lunch. Jared recently purchased the most expensive office building in America.

So how were things at the paper? "We're having a lot of fun," Jared said. Was he dating Ivanka Trump? "We're just friends. But thanks for asking." So that partnership was all business too.

Ms. Trump was in a very nice short black dress, looking tall and blonde; she talked for what seemed like eons with Jared's assistant Kimberly. Steven Rubenstein, who represents the Observer and the Kushner family, made sure everyone was having a good time and that the photographers were getting all the right people; he talked with did not talk with New York Times reporter Allen Salkin, who wrote such nice things about Jared in the Sunday Styles section.

Cindy Adams talked to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, notebook in hand, hair at attention. Salon editor Joan Walsh, in a pantsuit, stayed close to Salon writer and former NYO staffer Rebecca Traister. Harry Evans was there with his wife, former lots-of-places editor Tina Brown, who spent a lot of time deep in very close conversation with W/WWD boy Jacob Bernstein.

"I love this tabloid!" Mr. Evans said, Britishly. "I seized it with great joy before a long bus ride, and I loved every word!" He is somewhat reminiscent of a brilliant leprechaun. "Joe Conason on politics! John Heilpern! The Obama piece! I thought it was terrific! The tabloid format is far better." Mr. Evans said that the bus had taken him to Southampton.

Ms. Brown has recently finished her book about Princess Diana. "It's like a plum pudding—there are great nuggets everywhere!" she said. "It's as much about celebrity culture as it is about Diana herself." And how did Ms. Brown feel about the Stephen Frears film The Queen? "I loved The Queen," Ms. Brown said. "It was very accurate! Except for the portrayal of Robin Janvrin, the Queen's private secretary. He looks like Kenneth Branagh in real life."

Ms. Brown said that the book had taken her a year and a half; for it, she conducted 250 interviews. "I feel like a giant whale has been lifted from my head."

Maer Roshan, who worked for Ms. Brown at her short-lived magazine Talk, was there with a bundle of his Radar-ites, including his lieutenant Chris Tennant, who was holding court with several ladies in a booth. He was wearing jeans that appeared to have been painted on. That tall woman with the jet-black hair, talking with the older man? So tall! Atoosa Rubenstein! Lots of flashbulbs.

Observer reporters seemed vaguely uncomfortable at such an extravagant gathering ("It's the Observer with money," more than one was overheard whispering), and they swiped multiple Bellinis as they came around on silver trays. Transom reporter Spencer Morgan however did not look uncomfortable.

Jessica Joffe wore eyeglasses. Slate editor Jacob Weisberg and Domino editor Deborah Needleman arrived with New York's Ariel Levy. Jacob is going on a three-month book leave soon. Andrew Balazs, Columbia J-school graduate, was there solo. Lloyd Grove was not in attendance, but Ben Widdicombe, Hud Morgan, and Daily News gossip boy Patrick Huguenin were.

We were promised there'd be no speeches but there was a microphone and so Jared took it and said that 20 years ago, when the New York Observer was founded, he was starting a venture called... kindergarten. His voice still has a little hint of his Livingston, New Jersey upbringing. The new website, he said, was to launch on Monday, but as a preview, they had a page up on the screen. (The Four Seasons, it turns out, does not have Internet access.) Jared said he was very fortunate to work with Peter Kaplan, the editor of the newspaper, a sentiment that was greeted with cheers from the crowd. "We get to go to the 21st century with a new newspaper," said Kaplan. He then referred to the paper's former owner and publisher, Arthur Carter, as "my buddy and weekly tormenter."

Of the paper, he said: "The paper is younger, thinner, and better looking, like Jared."

We talked to Peter Kaplan in person. "For anyone under 30, the New York Times is a queen-sized sheet!" he said. "Going smaller was the best thing we could have done. We're still smart. We still have an edge." He said something about possibly becoming the smartest tabloid in America. "It was time to make a change. I love it. It's great!"

Jacob Bernstein left in Peggy Siegal's car. The New Yorker's Nick Paumgarten may have left with William Berlind for stiffer drinks. Patrick McMullan's photographers would prove unable to identify Alex Kuczynski. Ivanka Trump left alone, and on foot, heading east on 52nd Street. —Doree

I've been writing to you since you first started your column. Remember the baby spanker? that was me. The porn lover? Me too. Yesterday's hipster wannabe? Also me. Today's empty column about racquetball? Not at all me. But I love you. I really do. Without your advice I wouldn't be the 32-year-old I am today, that is to say, the slightly chubby skirt-and-sneaker wearing junior account executive at a PR firm whose membership to NYSC goes unused since I spend all my time trying to get ahead at work but all the while knowing I am not nearly attractive enough for those bastards at corporate; also, my slushy "S" speech impediment. Without you, I wouldn't be living in my Fort Greene apartment, sharing it with a girl I found on Craigslist who is 8 years younger. I wouldn't smell like cats.

But, old Tennis, it is was with an increasing anxiety that I read your response to my latest letter, "I'm obsessed with being a hipster." After reading and re-reading your response, I could only conclude you have totally fucking lost it. For instance: "We live in the electronic wind. We live in twitters and tweaks and snippets. We live in dream sequences and stream of consciousness. We live in downloads and compression. We live at 120 miles an hour. We live in Sensoria, Ill."

Cary, that doesn't mean anything and makes no sense. It might not even be "advice" as our culture understands it. Later on in your response you mention Sean Penn, the Cowboy Junkies and the Pylons. This also doesn't make sense.

My question is this: What has happened in that noggin of yours? Are you drinking again? Is there a boa constrictor wrapped around your neck, squeezing the air from your brain? Did you stay up late trying to kill that life-size cut-out of Randy Cohen again? Mostly, are you all right?

Sincerely,

"Maer Roshan"

Dear "Maer Roshan,"

Thank you so much for your letter. First of all to address your concerns, I was at a Cracker concert a few years ago and Robert Oppenheimer was onstage doing a killer rendition of Low. Nancy Sinatra hates me. So what I'm saying is this: It's ancient, it's natural. Fluffy cotton. Pig smack. Yurp. —josh

Earlier: We Need Advice From Cary Tennis

Earlier: Why Nobody Wants To Work At Salon

"Salon has been relying on cash infusions from related parties to fund operations. The related parties are primarily John Warnock, a Director of Salon, and William Hambrecht. William Hambrecht [who is worth $500 million] is the father of Salon's President and Chief Executive Officer" Elizabeth Hambrecht. Good hire! Warnock and Hambrecht also own a ton of Salon stock.

"Salon has historically lacked significant revenues and has a history of losses." Well, sure. Also, some fancy accounting firm did an audit that reports "substantial doubt about Salon's ability to continue as a going concern, citing issues such as the history of losses and absence of current profitability."

Also, everyone hates that darn Site Pass, except some geniuses over there who think it's going to save them: "As a result of analyzing the traffic patterns to Salon's Website, Salon believes that its Site Pass advertising model, which Salon credits as instrumental in increasing advertising revenues, and driving memberships to Salon Premium, inhibits growth in traffic to its Website." So: fewer visitors, but better bang per buck per visitor. (How Times Select!) Things looked up a bit in the last quarter, with advertising revenues at a "record" $2.8 million and a profit (!) of—drumroll, please—$200,000.

But possibly the best part of last year's Annual Report is: "Salon is under budgetary constraints to control expenditures. These constraints affect editorial staffing levels and the purchase of content from freelance writers." And: "Due to Salon's history of losses, Salon may experience difficulty in hiring and retaining highly skilled employees with appropriate qualifications. Salon may be unable to retain its current key employees or attract, integrate or retain other qualified employees in the future. If Salon does not succeed in attracting new personnel or retaining and motivating its current personnel, its business could be harmed."

We'll be looking forward to the 2006 report, which should be out by early summer. Anyway, it's no wonder they had to hire Joy Press to do two jobs instead of one. And maybe they're paying Glenn Greenwald in reais? —Doree

Salon 10-K [SEC]
Salon Third Quarter Results [SEC]

According to Glenn, there is a war on overseas! This is no time for "The Gawker cool guy" [Ed Note: Hasten Doree's gender transformation] to be shallow and petty about how The Politico is destroying everything the First Amendment holds dear. Cynicism is the end of us!

Has he been to New York City lately? If he had, he would know just how seriously we in Manhattan take the permanent war of on terror. Hedge-funders are donating significant portions of their bonuses for the war effort, he should know! And also Graydon Carter's Waverly Inn has a little canister by the front door where Bono and Marc Jacobs may slip in their change for our boys overseas.

Conde Nast magazines are putting models in fatigues this season! Lower East Side victory gardens everywhere!

He's right though that things are so very serious down in D.C. among the press folk. Just ask all the serious newspaper men yucking it up with George Bush and dancing with Dick Cheney. Mission accomplished! Fuck yeah!

Also according to Glenn, Wonkette invented the internet. Okay, welcome!

Anyway, how dare The Politico talk to Matt Drudge? Glenn has found proof in Matt's "developing!" whatnots about forthcoming Politico stories of "active communication between Politico and Drudge." Umm, yes. They IM or email links and teasers to Matt. Tons of newspapers do it. AP writers do it. It's easy! Salon should try it sometime—maybe Salon CEO Joan Walsh would stop harassing her staff about traffic.

And as for Politico's couple of bed-shitting stories, what happened when Ben Smith faceplanted on the Edwards-is-out story? He wrote an apology. Twice. And as for their "pernicious" dissemination of talking points against Obama—well, the campaign has made rookie mistakes. (He could ask some of the donors they tried to recruit early from Edwards and Team Clinton and then immediately scared off.)

Errors happen. Like, in Salon:

The March 6 story "The Private War of Women Soldiers" originally included the following statement from National Guard soldier Demond Mullins: "Rapes were happening every night ... Married men were doing it, everyone." Mullins says that he misspoke and was also misunderstood by the reporter. The statement has been deleted.

The Feb. 15 column "Libby's Cynical Defense" mistakenly stated that NBC's Tim Russert testified that Libby had given him information about Valerie Plame. In fact, he testified that he and Libby had not discussed Plame at all. The column has been corrected. [Correction made 2/15/07]

The Politico: Gossip Rag Masquerading As News Organization? [Salon]

I was raised in a house where you only got spanked when you really crossed the line. As such, I grew up thinking of physical violence as a last resort kind of thing. I'm quick to anger, sure, but I never act out on it. Which is why I'm so alarmed by my recent urges. There's this guy on the Internet—let's call him Larry Hennis. Every time I read this guy, I want to smack the shit out of him. Like, really inflict some pain. I don't know what it is: the ridiculous advice he dispenses, his "I'm not a professional and clearly do not even know how to cook my own dinner, but I'll still tell you how to live your life" demeanor, or the stupid ad I've got to sit through before the latest long-winded bloviation. I swear, I just want to knock that fucking hat and the smug expression that accompanies it off of his stupid slab of a face. Oh! My question is: Where can I find him?

Signed,
I Will Hunt You Down And Hurt You

Dear Hunt,
You'd be surprised how many letters I get like this. Whoever this Larry is, he's sure made a lot of enemies. I'd hate to be under his fedora. Still, violence never solved anything. I suggest you relax, read some Alice Miller, and direct your attention to the woman who writes Slate's Dear Prudence column. Now there's one bitch who deserves to get cut.

He spanks in anger [Salon]

Earlier: There's A New Media Reporter In Town, Kids!
And: The Ultimate Hipster Parents Tell All
Update: Salon informs us that "Joy's not replacing Hillary Frey, who was our Books editor. She's culture editor, in charge of the Life and Books sections." So, you know, world of difference and all that.