Category: Blog Post

By now you have heard about the flap over at The New York Press, where editor Jeff Koyen walked the plank for a tasteless feature called “The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope.” The general consensus seems to be that his main transgression was publishing a spectacularly unfunny piece by a writer who is a jackass. We have said it many times before, but no one seems to notice: If you do not care about your subject, it is impossible to be funny about it. This has confused some readers. They have written to ask whether this means one cannot poke fun or be mean in any way, and that is not what we mean. For example, here is a very good example of a pope joke that works, and it does not reflect very well on the pope himself. But if you desconstruct the joke, it is clear what the jokester cares about: social justice and progressivism, which in certain cases is emphatically not what the pope nor the Church are interested in.

The “official” story is that the publisher and owner of the Press were most exercised by Koyen’s “insubordination” in a technical matter. Koyen apparently wished to parody the New York Post at the same time that he made fun of the octogenarian pontiff, and lawyers at the Press apparently trembled at the prospect of landing in court with Rupert Murdoch’s henchmen. It is certainly true that putting yourself in the Australian Sauron’s cross-hairs is normally suicidal. On the other hand, parody is a time-honored protectorate of the fair use doctrine, and Murdoch would look pretty bad putting the Press out of business on an overreach like that. For their part, the publisher and owner don’t seem to care that certain public officials are calling on New Yorkers to break the law by gathering and throwing away any copies of the Press they might find. (This is against the law, and amounts to an abrogation of freedom of the press. It also reminds us of mobs in burlap with pitchforks and torches.) All in all, we have to say probably every last person at the Press, top to bottom, including the publishers and the lawyers, ought to either be fired or publically shamed, and that appears to be what’s happening. What an unadulterated debacle—rather like a runaway car full of egomaniacs who will not stop and ask for directions.

The main problem with the New York Press is not incidental, it is systemic. The Press has no friends in any quarter. We find that it has a hard time caring about any subject, and seems interested mostly in hearing its own voice. As a brilliant friend once said, after we ourselves made a brief appearance as the subject of a Press article, “You don’t necessarily want to read about yourself in the New York Press.” Despite frequent intonations of the holy name of H.L. Mencken, this has never been an asset to anyone, least of all the Press.

We are fans of Russ Smith’s, but this hand-biting legacy is probably down to him, and has been nothing but trouble in the hands of lesser writers and editors. He certainly was able to make a viable business of pure contrarianism, but we worry about his successors. If they are serious about plying new waters with the paper, they really ought to change editorial direction dramatically and make some powerful friends—or else hire Russ Smith’s equal. Koyen’s somewhat juvenile efforts to make the Press “more dangerous” were precisely what the paper did not need—by the sheepish admission of its owners.

In the end, we can all agree that we want the same thing. Simple-minded editors and writers (and publishers and lawyers) need to understand that editorial credibility is absolutely critical. Confusing contrarianism with credibility is an easy thing to do, but it is a deal-breaker. When you are trying to be funny, and trying to care about your subject, but failing at both, your credibility is damaged just as badly as if you wrote nothing but fawning sycophancy on behalf of your advertisers.

We happened to be sharing a table with Star Tribune critic Chris Riemenshneider over the weekend—although we prefer to stay incognito, the better to avoid a punch on the nose for previous infractions and faux pas. Where were we? In the choked air of the Fine Line Music Cafe, after receiving a pair of press tickets for the sold-out show. (God Almighty, please pass that smoking bill. We have smoke-induced glaucoma, and the entire office needs an abatement team after wearing that shirt in doors.) So here is the justification for receiving those freebies: A review of the reviewers.

We recieved our tickets at about the same time that we read Mr. Dylan Hicks’ review of the band, which is the Kings of Leon, a Tennessee quartet whom we happen to like quite a lot. We like Dylan, too—so much so that we still fondly remember things he wrote for us and we are pleased with his recent elevation as an editor—but we rigorously disagree with his crabby prejudice against this band.

We won’t go into a lot of the details, because there aren’t many things that are as boring as rock critics arguing about bands. But we did want to hold these fellows feet to the fire just a little bit.

Dylan, we have to say, kind of stepped in it with last week’s issue of his weekly newspaper. Not only did he trot out that hoary old complaint about this town basically being too white. (It is. This is not news anymore. Besides, the Current plays all kinds of music by black artists—just not a lot of gangsta rap. And they’re not all dead, either! Well, you’ll be able to read all about it this week, no doubt, in the newspaper’s letters from readers.) It’s OK that he failed to see the point of the Kings of Leon (which is their twisted sense of humor and their Dixie-Redneck-in-King-Arthur’s-Court shtick), and it’s even OK that he committed the worst critical sin that can be committed (not at least inferring what the critic DOES care about, which is the only way to innoculate a mean review, with some human sympathy). As it is, a reader might think the critic doesn’t want to admit what it is, precisely, that’s bugging him. You don’t want to give readers a reason to say, “He’s just jealous.” (Overheard from a nearby table.) That’s a bad sign.

Dylan based his critique mostly on the lyrical content of the band’s music, and the quality of the singer’s voice. It is dangerous business relying on even the most audible, legible musicians from their own published lyrics sheets when it is the basis for your critique. But to translate an intentional southern mush-mouth like Caleb Followill is a special risk indeed. The more obvious thing to do is to describe the sound and the overall mood, rather than what the singer is actually saying. But this is a much more difficult job.

You can have the words right and get the critique wrong. Where Dylan hears an angry, cynical, morally bankrupt band, we hear a mirthful, funny, clever, pop-savvy band. (You could make a case that it’s a put-on, without that being necessarily a bad thing—why do you think they call it “show-business”?)

No one likes to be misunderstood, especially when the misunderstanding gets printed one hundred thousand times. Perhaps this is why the Kings back-identified one song in the following way: “That last song was called ‘Dylan Hicks Can Suck My Cock.’” This, by the way, was an unfortunate, juvenile violation of the longstanding rock ‘n’ roll rule never to let anyone know you read your own criticism. But it got a big laugh, and probably made Dylan feel good too.

As for our man from the Star Tribune, we noticed that he tea-totalled during the show, and we find this admirable and slightly depressing, as he scribbled in one of those little reporters’ notebooks that fit into a spacious back pocket. We have no doubt that his views of the show will be considerably more sober than our own, and that’s as it should be. However, through an unfortunate phrasing, he implied that the Kings played material mostly from their first album, whereas we know that the Kings left out only one song from their entire, uh, oeuvre—the beautiful but difficult “Day Old Blues.”

Chris also managed to asperse the band by noting that they have received mixed reviews in other cities during this tour. But we’re not interested in other critics in other cities, and we don’t feel like the band should apologize for playing a tight show here. We know critics rely on other critics, but we wish they wouldn’t admit it. The fact that the Kings have been touring relentlessly since their first record—and that they recently had to forego a tour in Japan due to a bad case of CRSS guitar-elbow—and that they have been selected to warm up U2 on the monstrous Vertigo tour—all these facts kinda mitigate against this idea that the band can’t play live. Now as to the implication that they are taking illicit suppositories, as Reimenschneider seems to say, we can neither confirm nor deny that.

Hey, this is fun—reviewing the reviewers. We really ought to get out more.

Time Out Chicago has finally launched, to lukewarm response from at least one critic. It’s hard to imagine anyone in Chicago getting exercised about a new magazine or newspaper. The city has been so awash with new pubs in the past five years, readers are probably asking themselves what more there is to say about their fair city. As we’ve noted previously, a city that is this overwhelmed with paper stands a fair to middling chance of burning to the ground—don’t laugh, it’s happened before.

We don’t keep a close tab on Chicago anymore, particularly since today there are plenty of outposts here in the Twin Cities that know what Chipico relish is and where to get it and what to put it on. But we are certainly on the record as thinking that the Red editions are both insultingly bad, the venerable paid dailies are visibily confused about what happens next, and the Reader seems to be running away with it. A whole raft of second stringers could bear some scrutiny—from The Onion (can a dissipating humor sheet really be the first national freebie?) to New City to Chicago Social. We intentionally set Chicago magazine aside, because we think it’s good enough to qualify as a publication of national interest—although it is always struggling to emerge from the long shadow cast by Texas Monthly.

So do the Time Out folks have their sights set on any other Great American Cities? Unlikely they’ll look twice at the Twin Cities, for the same old reason—we fall outside the top ten advertising markets, so national advertisers are nearly impossible to reel in here (even though most of them have their advertisements created here). Then again, a chain franchise like Time Out can presumably leverage national ads across all of their titles—but today that is merely New York and Chicago, and given the typical ten-year gap between developing new titles, we so no reason to fear the glacial advance of Time Out, Inc. (Also, we note that this model has hardly been a gold mine for others who are attempting it in a sorta half-assed way. We know precisely what the blockage is, but we ain’t talkin’. That’s called consulting, and we take a fee for that, heh heh.)

More to the point, it is certainly worth pointing out that Time Out hardly has anything to add to any of its chosen American marketplaces—the scene here is lousy with paid and free publications (advantage to the latter), and even worse, the English-speaking world is utterly beset by capsule reviews, arts and entertainment recommendations, and all this interchangeable blurbism. In other wrods, there are so many mousetraps available today, it is only the arrogant and the stupid who insist on bringing new ones to market. (Yes, we know there are four fingers pointing back at us, thank you very much. But we’re not new anymore—we’re three years old!)