← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 17651 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2005-04-05
2005-04-05 05:59 | User Profile
A now-annual tradition, renewed.
[QUOTE]Vol 18 - Issue 13 - March 31-Apr 6, 2005
[FONT=Century Gothic][SIZE=2]50 MOST LOATHSOME NEW YORKERS
The $250 million Yankee is so difficult to like, so impossible to root for, that he might be the only athlete in all of sports who would actually look better if it came out that he was a steroid user. If it turned out that A-Rod was a juicer, the ensuing decline-and-fall drama might add some humanity to his hideous, fake-ass Mr. Perfect public persona. Rodriguez represents the supreme embodiment of one of the great international villain archetypes: the toothy, handsome, strapping jock who beats up the nerds before the first school bell rings, stopping just in time to give an apple to the old-la dy homeroom teacher who adores him. He is a classic front runner who's all charm and smiles when he's signing the big contract and hitting home runs in May—but when the chips are down and his team is losing, he passes the buck, points to his stats or picks on small-time nobodies like Bronson Arroyo. Coming as he did into a Yankee tradition rich with gritty gamers like Derek Jeter and Hideki Matsui, and brash free-agent braggarts with a flair for the big stage like Reggie Jackson, A-Rod is the human equivalent of Disneyland Times Square—the child-safe corporate import spackled over the soul of a great city.
[B]49. Daniel Doctoroff Deputy Mayor[/B]
When this Albert Brooks look-alike former investment banker first got his name in the papers by proposing that New York City host the 2012 Olympics, we giggled nervously, assuming the preposterous notion would soon be forgotten. This uppity Doctoroff fellow was clearly just trying to prove that he did, in fact, exist. When his idea became an ominous possibility, Doctoroff ascended from the ranks of the anonymous pathetic to the truly loathsome. Everything about the proposal was insane: the West Side Parking Lot, the security nightmare we'll have to pay for, the stadium subsidy heist, the traffic nightmares that'll begin years before the games show up. Most loathsome of all was Doctoroff's repeated use of 9/11 imagery to guilt trip the IOC. Never mind that nobody went to the Athens games last summer because of the terror threat, here he was trying to lure the Games using terrorist attacks as bait. Doctoroff's bid was never more than a reckless, dishonest, desperate (and, thankfully, failing) attempt to stamp his double Ds in the history books. See you in Paris, Danny.
[B]48. Judith Regan Publisher, ReganBooks [/B]
As HarperCollins executive editor David Hirshey once asked: "Does anybody think there would be a Paris Hilton autobiography if it weren't for Judith?" The roster of current ReganBooks authors reads like an itemized list of what's wrong with America: Scott Peterson mistress Amber Frey, steroid mutant Jose Canseco and chlamydia factory Jenna Jameson. The core component of ReganBooks' success is sex, with Judith Regan herself appearing as a tarted-up cover model for several of her own books. But centerfold aspirations are just the iceberg tip of Regan's mania. Because of her caustic personal habits, the turnover rate of ReganBooks employees breaks the sound barrier. Her constant insults of underlings and willfully cruel office political decisions caused one former employee to describe her as "a destroyer of souls." She not only found Bernie Kerik attractive enough to screw, she also paid him more than $75,000 in royalties for 11 sentences he wrote that opened a book advertised as a charity for 9/11 families. She's almost enough to make us reconsider the ethics of public book burnings.
[B]47. Lincoln Karim Bird Lover[/B]
Hey, jerk-off, this ain't the Redwoods. As soon as Pale Male's nest was removed from the swank co-op at 927 5th Ave., the whining started and the tears began to flow from a bunch of self-satisfied, bird-watching dorks who step over the homeless every morning on their way to grab the perfect perch. The most vocal of these bird lovers was Lincoln Karim, a video engineer at AP Television News, who may or may not still live with his mother. His rage at having the birds removed was so deep that he took it out on children. (Paula Zahn's children, true, but children nevertheless.) He intercepted them on their way to and from school, screaming for the return of his precious birds. In the end, the co-op caved and the hawks were allowed back—proving once again the power of the mantra adopted by so many in this town: If you whine and complain enough in an abusive manner, you will eventually get what you want. No matter how creepy your demand.
[B]46. Lorne Michaels Producer, SNL [/B]
Okay. Let's cut the bullshit—Saturday Night Live was never funny. Watching the coked-up antics of Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Joe Piscopo while completely sober proves it once and for all. Yes, Michaels has discovered and helped launch some clever and talented performers over the years, but he's just as often destroyed them. Even the current cast has some brilliant writers and performers—when we've seen them live at UCB and away from SNL—but the second Michaels gives them his anti-Midas touch and forces them to aim for the lowest common denominator, the shit's outta business. We've seen Amy Poehler and Tina Fey be comic geniuses in person, but under the visionary incompetence of one of the dumbest men in tv history, you just want to punch them both in the face. But please save your fists for the man responsible for dumbing down three different generations of society and turning satire into a dirty word. Even the Bushes watch their caricatures and giggle. Under Michaels' watch, "Weekend Update," arguably the nation's most visible engine of political satire, has muddled through 9/11, the Iraq war and two contentious presidential elections. Among its most frequent targets? Daytime television talk show The View. We implore you, Lorne, do the world a favor and resign. Then find your true calling in life: coke dealer.
[B]45. Max Boot Writer, Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard[/B]
Though a resident of leafy suburban Larchmont, NY, where manly intellectuals like him go to become child molesters, Max Boot arrives to the WSJ offices decked in leather bomber, riding crop and knee-high shit-kickers. We know this from his WSJ commentaries, including his now-infamous piece complaining that not enough American lives were lost in the invasion of Afghanistan. "President Bush promised that this would not be another bloodless, push-button war, but that is precisely what it has been," intoned the wonk whose idea of a battle is finding Saturday parking in downtown Greenwich. "Our bombing campaign…does not show that we have the determination to stick a bayonet in the guts of our enemy..." Writing more recently in the New York Times, the lunatic enthused on the American occupation of the Philippines that ended in the deaths of 200,000 Filipinos: "It was a long, hard, bloody slog." Curiously, we're told this also describes sex with Boot's wife.
[B]44. Fabian Basabe Male Socialite[/B]
The face of the next generation of morons with money. The 26-year-old male socialite is best known for being pictured in Page Six with other rich layabouts. Basabe gained notoriety last year for dirty dancing with first daughter Barbara Bush at a Manhattan nightclub, and in the ensuing media frenzy proved that being an unaccomplished caboose on daddy's money-train hasn't dented his grossly outsized self-importance. "I don't know how the press has this freedom to do these inappropriate things," he told reporters covering his Bush frolic. We chose Basabe not for the obvious reasons—anyone so widely hailed as an "It-boy" automatically deserves to be slapped in the face with a wet herring—but because he epitomizes an entire American caste: the smug hereditary plutocracy. Unless stopped, Basabe will be president someday.
[B]43. Mara Reinstein & Joey Bartolomeo Writers, US Weekly[/B]
It would be one thing if the people charged with writing the insta-book knock-off publishing projects about the collapse of the Brad and Jennifer marriage were Sydney Carton types, aging boozers with rotted hearts heroically turning one last disgusting buck with a foot already in the grave. But the authors of this year's Brad and Jen: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Golden Couple ($7, Wenner) are a pair of brainless little girls of a type to make one pray for the speedy return of Stalin to power. The two US Weekly "senior writers" wrote their Brad-and-Jen book in a single week and in interviews afterward expressed surprise at how long a book is compared to an article. "Bob Wallace, the head of Wenner Books, said it had to be 40,000 words, which I didn't really understand," said Reinstein. "All I knew was that an Us Weekly cover story is, like, 1,300 words, so I knew it would be a lot." Bartolomeo said Wallace gave helpful advice: "The advice we got was, 'Hit the return key more often,'" she said. "My paragraphs were too long. That was what turned my magazine writing into book writing."
[B]42. Lindsay Lohan Actress[/B]
This auburn-haired celebutante trainwreck poisons America's gossip pages daily. Late-night sloppy barhops are followed by mysterious illnesses and insane diva tantrums. She refuses to rehearse and shuts down sets because she can't remember her lines. The most discordant detail in this grim Muppet show is that most of this happened while she was filming a movie called Herbie: Fully Loaded. What's her encore gonna be? Getting caught having crack smoke blown up her ass on the set of Lassie Y2K5? There's nothing wrong with enthusiastic boozing and drugging. But news items about the Long Island party monster come off like anti-hedonism public service announcements. She has access to the best chemicals, most exotic locales and wildest people, but lives like the world's most famous ugly sorority girl. The comparison to Tara Reid is short-sighted; Lohan has reached late-70s Liz Taylor levels of pathetic.
[B]41. Norman Podhoretz Editor Emeritus, Commentary[/B]
It's been a good millennium so far for the city's most loathsome elderly intellectual. The Bush White House awarded ol' Poddy the Presidential Medal of Honor last year for his decades of tireless support for arms racing, unprovoked aggression and death squads. His wife Midge Decter, meanwhile, was awarded a National Humanities Medal for her decades of faithful imitation of a menopausal Mathew Arnold. His leaden-witted son John finally escaped the shadow of fellow mini-con William Kristol and took over that sophisticated journal of ideas known as the New York Post op-ed page. Just half a bloodline away, son-in-law Elliot Abrams wormed his way back into the foreign policy establishment like Iran-Contra never happened. So you'd think Stormin' Norman would be happy. Hell, last year the Free Press even published a 500-page Norman Podhoretz Reader. But Norman ain't happy. Norman's never happy. His latest piece in Commentary is one long cry of pain and hurt that his own designation for the Clash of Civilizations—"World War IV"—hasn't yet become an international relations meme on par with Walter Lippman's "Cold War" or the central, permanent organizing principle for Western Civilization, aka the American imperium, with him and Midge at the stormy helm. Someone needs to just die already.
[B]40. Frank Bruni Food Critic, New York Times [/B]
Eat this, Frank. The former political reporter has been doling out stars like the Lucky Charms leprechaun. Bruni should be making fearful hostesses drench their panties, but instead he's a literary laughingstock more wont to dole out gilded reviews for pretty wallpaper than a chef's sweet knife skill. Such is Bruni's gonzo-style review regime, one in which he finds it "calamitous" to have olive juice dribble down his hand while fidgeting with a martini and creams his pants over a "pastry cart brimming with lollipops." Bruni's more intent on catering to Platinum American Express Card–wielding uptowners than informing passionate foodies. His "trend" pieces on the proliferation of mega-Asian emporiums and super-sized menus are as painfully obvious as his story ideas are ill-conceived. (Hey! let's visit a landmark famed for porterhouse and berate its lunch hamburger!) Restaurant industry veterans are perplexed that such an influential post has been granted to someone sans a formal culinary background. Bemoaned one chef: "If I had a nickel for every time I've rolled my eyes at that guy's column, I'd probably be able to afford a meal at Per Se." Which Bruni gave four stars, by the way.
[B]39. Karen Schwartz Writer, New York Sun [/B]
It is difficult to imagine why anyone would read Karen Schwartz's weekly horrorshow in New York's boutique retro-mini-broadsheet, the New York Sun, which shivers alone on the far right. A more fitting column for the Sun would be excerpts from the blog of an evil kibbutzer; or a free-market serial killer; or even a crazed U.N. janitor who knows where all the bodies are buried in Turtle Bay. Instead the Sun offers up the very model of insipid, navel-gazing, post-Yuppie garbage the likes of which this town hasn't seen since Jay McInerney's stint as Odeon publicist. Schwartz gives us a dry-heave-inducing "character" named Eve—part freelance writer, part mother-to-be, part denim-jacket-wearing baked potato. Plot developments of late: Eve has an artsy friend who lives in Williamsburg, she's pregnant, they're moving out of their Cobble Hill apartment they found on Craigslist. Eve thinks it's kooky in Brooklyn because it's not the Upper East Side; out there, you deal with the unwashed "landlord" on a one-to-one basis. Schwartz is her own cultural wasteland, proof that too many people live in New York City when they would secretly rather be back in the suburbs.
[B]38. Nick Denton Publisher, Gawker Media[/B]
Though far from a pioneer, Franken-headed Gawker Media emperor Nick Denton takes partial blame for the dubious distinction of introducing the word "blog" to grandmothers in Dubuque. Denton single-handedly sandbagged and snarked his way to a post-crash brand of media-mogul-dom through his ubiquitous cultural blogs—Gawker.com, Fleshbot.com, Wonkette.com—while letting his lowly writer drones peck away all day for Birkenau pay rates. Though the situation has improved, original Gawker girl Elizabeth Spiers famously made $1000 a month building Denton's flagship. Denton has been secretive about the income he made off of his blogger slaves; writers and editors looking for stories about his alleged riches are, he says, "obsessed, and disoriented: nostalgic, cynical and now, with the revival of independent web media, daring to dream again." But based on his beef with designer Noel Jackson—Denton allegedly took code from the kid, used it on his Gizmodo and Gawker sites, then failed to pay for it—we're sure Denton's smart and calculating enough to come out of this blogger mini-boom with full pockets—and zero friends.
[B]37. Mr. Kim Video Store Owner[/B]
After two years of dodging the loathsome bullet, the quasi-mythical Mr. Kim takes one between the eyes. The man with the Korean name got his start by opening the first non-adult video store to prominently display tapes with heavy bondage scenes alongside cult films like A Clockwork Orange and new releases. He has since become the Bond villain of high-end rental joints. Clerks at his Avenue A store, now closed, were internationally famous for treating customers like unwitting participants in their own personal S&M show, complete with studied inattention and lofty, put upon attitudes. The videos themselves were often bootlegged copies that were scratchy or unwatchable, but that didn't stop Kim from renting them again and again. Of course, his surly shop attendants were being paid shit. Nick Bohn, a musician and drag performer, worked at Kim's Video on St. Marks Place for two years before allegedly being choked violently by a homophobic "security guard." Mr. Kim refused to fire the alleged perpetrator. The acres of specialty CDs and DVDs disguise a modern-day sweat shop whose often rude aspiring-musician employees might be better off working at a Staten Island food court. Then again, that's pretty much what St. Marks has become anyway.
[B]36. Thomas Krens Guggenheim Director[/B]
Hired because he claimed to know how to make money, the Art World's reigning Asshole decided to make the Guggenheim a chain operation, like Pier 1 or Pottery Barn. At his first franchise in Soho, visitors were forced to walk through the expansive gift shop before reaching the exhibits. Most people believed the Guggenheim Soho was nothing but an expensive gift shop, and so never bought tickets. After it went belly up, the conniving Krens opened branches in Venice, Vegas, Bilbao, Salzburg and Berlin. To pay for this, Krens raised ticket prices and replaced security guards with rent-a-cops. Then he started selling ad space inside the Guggenheim. Give Krens enough money—like Ron Perelman—and he'll name Frank Lloyd Wright's glorious rotunda after you. Then came the Armani and BMW solo shows. Since the early 90s, Krens had broken the cardinal rule of running a world-class art museum—he started selling off the artwork. Finally, last winter, Peter Lewis, longtime museum trustee, resigned in opposition to Krens' antics. That's bad news for Krens, as Lewis was the biggest contributor of all.
[B]35. Eliot Spitzer Attorney General [/B]
Yeah, yeah—we've heard all about Super Spitzer and his winning battles against Big Bad Wall Street. How could we have avoided them, with every periodical in town on their knees working for his gubernatorial campaign, gurgling up endless column inches of pro-Spitzer spin? We're as happy as anyone that Spitzer is taking on giants of corruption and winning, but let's peek under the tights. Spitzer is less a ballsy bulldog than a run-of-the-mill politicking pussy. Instead of levying the appropriate punishment against Wall Street criminals who defraud their shareholders—that is, sending the CEOs who helm these corrupt companies to an Oz-like prison where they'd learn the joys of Crisco—Spitzer's white-knight act amounts to settling with the "corporate evildoers" for a mere pittance on their billion-dollar balance sheets. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board admits he's harmless, wanting only "a trophy dismissal, a big fine and favorable headlines." And though he rode into office in 1999 vowing to smash public-sector corruption, he's since learned the expedient lesson that it's unwise to ruffle the feathers of the political machine that lays the golden egg of incumbency and higher office—hence his studious failure to go after judicial corruption in the Brooklyn Democratic party.
[B]34. Olsen Twins NYU Students[/B]
Fraternal? Identical? Adorable? How about really ****ing scrawny and annoying. The only thing we know for sure about the Olsen twins is that they suck—albeit legally, now that they've reached the age of consent. Though straight-to-DVD dreck is their bread and butter, don't expect them to cash out by flashing their itty-bitty titties on film anytime soon. They're still a couple more drug addictions and anorexic relapses away from being forced to munch sisterly snatch, thereby fulfilling the one-handed fantasies of 74 percent of male America and falling. So what makes these saccharine siblings so repugnant? Swaddled in designer rags, they're insults to the city's hobos. And contrary to the New York Times style section, they aren't starting any trends here. Our urine-scented street people have spent years cultivating their raffish look, complete with rope belts and oversized layers of torn rags—style the Olsens are biting weakly like the pampered Chihuahuas they are. Ladies, we really want to welcome you to New York. By all means, feel free to snort our cocaine. Eat our Tasti D Lite. Screw Lolita-crazed men of dubious ethnic origin and much facial hair. Just drop the rebellious act, dress according to your bank account and for Christ's sake, eat your veggies.
[B]33. Jeff Singer Comedy Producer[/B]
Singer works with Comedy Central but is best known for running Eating It, a once-brilliant show that under his command has become a forum for watered-down industry horseshit. (For those of you who missed it, the show was birthed by alternative comics like Marc Maron and Louis C.K., co-creator of Pootie Tang). Once upon a time, Eating It was an incredible anomaly: Writers for SNL, Letterman and Conan O'Brien got together each week to do a free show of material that was too provocative or creative to make it onto television. It was some of the most brilliant, subversive comedy ever; rules were broken in more ways than you could count. Once, the Upright Citizens Brigade passed out joints, beer and chips to the entire audience, then cleaned up the mess. Comics weren't even allowed to do their regular material. Then Singer took over and the show became typical, trite and cheesy, featuring some of the most unfunny comics around, such as the writers of Jest magazine. With the recent loss of Luna Lounge, the show's venue for the last decade, we recommend a new home for Singer's unwatchable brand of stereotypical sycophantasia: Hoboken.
[B]32. Pedro Martinez Pitcher, New York Mets[/B]
The Yankees may be his daddy, but the Mets are most definitely his bitch. The mercurial, ferret-looking, 33-year-old crybaby duped the Mets to the tune of $53 million into thinking he's an eight-inning pitcher still capable of producing anything but mediocre numbers and gel stains on his pillow. Pedro can still throw hard, but it's obvious his days of dominance are behind him. According to the Daily News, New Mets GM Omar Minaya wanted to bring a high-profile Dominican player to the franchise in the hopes that future prospects would mimic the fading star and join the Mets. But one Dominican has already declared he will stay far away form the Mets. Twenty-eight-inch-tall Nelson de la Rosa, the miniature former actor who befriended and joined Martinez in the clubhouse after several key Red Sox victories last season has already distanced himself after Pedro reportedly called de La Rosa a "palm-sized pipsqueak." The tiny Dominican, heartbroken, vowed never to follow Martinez's career again. Let the mighty Mets midget curse begin.
[B]31. Cristyne Lategano Nicholas President & CEO, NYC & Co.[/B]
The Kerik-grade Friend of Rudy may not be a household name yet, but it's not for lack of trying. Best known as Giuliani's mistress (that would be the one before Judi Nathan) while she worked as Rudy's Goebbels in City Hall, this little ladder-climbing she-monster alienated so many people that Rudy had to find her another gig. So he forced her upon the city's private tourism agency, "NYC & Co."—a position she was so unqualified for that even the pro-Rudy Crain's Business Weekly ran an editorial denouncing the appointment. She's one of the public faces behind the corporate selling off of much of the city, as well as the slimebag who put all those giant plastic banners you see on all the street lamps—free ads masquerading as "beautification." Now, to our nightly horror, she's even starring in the agency's ads herself, eating "NYC" brand cereal and trying hard to look a little less blank than what's in the bowl.
[B]30. Guy Velella Felon[/B]
This former Republican state senator, Bronx political leader and Rudy pal would have made Boss Tweed proud. After pleading guilty to fourth-degree conspiracy charges for accepting at least $137,000 in contractor kickbacks while in office, Velella was forced to resign in disgrace last year and sentenced to a year at Rikers. In true sleazebag form, he managed to get out after serving just three months of his sentence by wielding his political influence with the Local Conditional Release Commission. Of the 7000 inmates who applied for early release, a mere five were granted their request by the panel—among them Velella and his two codefendants. Only after public outcry and a direct order from the mayor was the commission forced to send the whining Velella, who has prostate cancer, back to the can last November. Adding insult to injury, despite his status as a felon, Velella will likely continue to receive a state pension worth $80,000 a year.
[B]29. Bill O'Reilly Host, The O'Reilly Factor [/B]
Ah, yes, after two near misses, the sun-blotched king of swing finally makes the list. O'Reilly is the classic lace-curtain Irish boor: thin-skinned, wistful, bloated and delusional, and a whining Miss Nancy to boot. His personality would be a desperately pitiable object if he weren't also the kind of behind-the-scenes suck-up demagogue who will one day be Commissariat of Information and Media Punishment in George Bush's Emergency Third Term. This is a man whose only answer to challenge is girly tantrums, a man who screams down Al Franken when Franken busts him for lying about winning a Peabody Award, who cuts his guests' mics when they disagree with him. He calls his fellow Americans "traitors," "unpatriotic" and "dangerous" when they simply refuse to agree with the president. When O'Reilly suggests that for Valentine's Day we buy each other copies of his lousily written, poorly researched, mendacious tracts, we see a man looking for the love his drunken abusive daddy never provided to the one and only daughter in the family.
[B]28. Lawrence A. Kudlow Economist, Pundit[/B]
The one-time top Bear Stearns/ING economist and copropagandist on CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer wrote cheerily of the economic benefits of invading Iraq: "The shock therapy of decisive war will elevate the stock market by a couple-thousand points," promised the vampire, who by day doubles as CEO of his eponymous midtown consulting firm while also writing a column for National Review. "We will know that our businesses will stay open, that our families will be safe, and that our future will be unlimited." So—our businesses stayed open…because…we…invaded Iraq. The real record since the war—pace Kudlow the Market Impaler—has been millions of jobs lost and a slumping economy. Not to mention the moral nightmare of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and what will likely be a decades-long occupation costing billions of dollars that would be better spent on a space program for sending people like Kudlow to another planet on which to play his mass-homicidal version of Monopoly.
[B]27. Charles Barron City Council, District 42 [/B]
You may know City Councilman Barron for his provocations down at City Hall, talking about slave reparations and other inflammatory ideas befitting his past as a Black Panther. The media has spared little expense painting him as the next Al Sharpton (when they acknowledge him at all), but when we interviewed him, we found him to be one of the smartest, most articulate, most honest politicians we've ever met. (And unlike Al, you'll never find Barron in cahoots with GOP operatives.) So why did he make it onto this list? Because he's a quitter who dropped out of the mayor's race in deference to the much softer C. Virginia Fields, claiming that two black candidates would split support. (And because he couldn't raise the loads of cash the corporate-friendly Gifford Ferrer McBloomberg can. We wonder why?) But we suspect the real reason Barron choked and let NYC down was the state law that bars him from running for reelection in his Brooklyn district (where he won an incredible 90 percent of the vote) if he also runs for mayor. Thanks for nothing, Chuck. We were counting on you to make this one interesting.
[B]26. Rocco DiSpirito Chef [/B]
A few short years ago, Italian-by-way-of-Queens chef Rocco DiSpirito was the toast of Gotham. Young and handsome, classically trained, the mofo could whip up a wicked pasta fagioli. Then Rocco jumped at the chance to be the next Anna Nicole Smith, and viewers watched the behind-the-scenes story of how he and Jeffrey Chodorow opened Rocco's on 22nd St. Suddenly he was more interested in schmoozing Bay Ridge butterfaces and screaming at his sous chef than actually cooking. As a shrinking legion of fans looked on, Rocco and Chodorow's relationship sunk quicker than a chocolate soufflé too soon out of the oven, and before long the guy was legally barred from the restaurant that bore his name. The Restaurant was canceled, the restaurant was padlocked and Rocco was without a job. Now he's hawking Mama's meatballs and a cooking-in-a-vacuum contraption on QVC, and flirting with endomorphic Midwestern housewives on his AM radio program: another sniveling ex-hipster with a motor scooter, an overbearing mother and no real job to speak of. It doesn't pain us to say he deserves it.
[B]25. Steven Pearlman Plastic Surgeon[/B]
Predatory Park Ave. cosmetic surgeon Steven Pearlman likes to give his business a lift by throwing plastic-surgery parties for teenagers at nightclubs, where he helps 13-year-old girls drinking mock cocktails discover how ugly they are. Sounding like a Dutch techie on a Thai sex vacation, Pearlman once told the New York Observer, "I can generally start on girls at 15." Planting the seed for future generations of facelift addicts like Upper East Side socialite and world-famous ghoul Jocelyn Wildenstein, Dr. Pearlman, who is president of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, confirms that in the deranged world of Upper Manhattan there's no self-esteem like no self-esteem.
[B]24. Katie Couric Co-host, The Today Show [/B]
Couric's cloying little-girl shtick on NBC's Today Show is annoying enough, considering that behind the mask of "America's sweetheart" is a hard-nosed executive drawing one of the biggest paychecks in television. Her reportedly $16 million annual salary isn't what makes Couric loathsome, however. It's her disingenuous toeing of the line between serious journalist and corporate media whore. Couric's stratospheric stock has long ridden on her supposed ability to shift effortlessly between fluff and "real reporting"—meaning she can move from a fawning segment flogging the latest big-budget Hollywood pap to a "serious" news story like the Michael Jackson trial, all without batting a mascara-caked eyelash. The blow-up doll was even rumored to be a candidate for Dan Rather's chair at the CBS Evening News, proving once again that an unctuous ability to operate as a chameleon is a prized asset in the morally bankrupt world of big media.
[B]23. Jason Calacanis Chairman, Weblogs Inc.[/B]
During the dotcom boom, Jason Calacanis was one of those floppy-haired internet hucksters who beat the drum so loudly for tech companies that he became one of the era's major figures. The New Yorker even commissioned a fawning profile when he was editor of the now-defunct Silicon Alley Reporter. Now Calacanis is back and shamelessly beating the drum for (guess what?) blogs. Calacanis is chairman of Weblogs Inc., which now hosts more than 70 blogs about, well, who the **** knows? His is a blog company that will make money from advertising while allegedly paying his army of typers a pittance in a "partnership" that promises a payday from future earnings. Hmm, where've we heard that before? Calacanis even stared down Nick Denton in an article for Paper Magazine that doubled as a battle cry for mistreated bloggers everywhere: "Bloggers now have three choices: Work for themselves, work for Nick, or partner with me. In another six months they will have five choices and in another year they will have 10." Maybe. But it'll be tough to find talent out there when all of the naive bloggers holding their breath for their big breaks will have long since reconciled themselves to temping.
[B]22. Paul Stallings Landlord, Developer[/B]
A name you probably don't recognize, but should. Stallings was one of the smart real estate developers who bought lots of buildings on the Lower East Side when it was still a ghetto in the 1980s. Since then, he's been caught illegally renovating numerous buildings—botching the wiring, blocking fire escapes, etc. He's also got a long, seedy history of falsifying legal documents in order to evict tenants who fight back. Just how loathsome is this comic-book-villain slumlord? He had bodybuilder-thug Rufus Graham—aka NYC's notorious "Spiderman" burglar, convicted of many "athletic" crimes—kick in the apartment door of one of his apartments last year after losing an illegal-lockout case in housing court. His latest creation is the Rivington, a tall and out-of-place hotel on Ludlow. To build it, he destroyed parts of the newly paved street, which has been cut up and reworked into a patchwork mess, costing taxpayers more than $500,000.
[B]21. Marty Markowitz Brooklyn Borough President[/B]
Once upon a time, when the Board of Estimate ruled graft and contracts in New York, the five borough presidents had power. Today, it's a no-show job. The bad news with Markowitz is that he shows up, and so do his 116 employees, his multi-million-dollar budget and his four SUVs equipped with police sirens. Not content with doing nothing, Markowitz finds time to advocate for the downtrodden, such as Ikea, Home Depot and developer Bruce Ratner in their noble quest to cannibalize mom-and-pop neighborhoods. The porcine oaf is also known for racing around the city in HOV lanes with police lights flashing, en route to handing out a plaque. Markowitz is up for reelection next year. Instead, he should save taxpayers millions of dollars and fire himself, fire his employees and turn Borough Hall into a methadone clinic. At least then we'd have a better class of people hanging around the place.
[B]20. Sarah Lewitinn (aka Ultragrrrl) Socialite, Blogger [/B]
Would some thin-wristed shoe-gazing bass player please hurry up and **** this girl? Once confined to her ultra-vapid sycophantic hipster blog Ultragrrrl, Sarah Lewitinn has somehow parlayed her love for wimpy bands and kitsch into a career as a record promoter and talking head about—two guesses—wimpy bands and kitsch. Lewitinn's Spin column, "Making Out with Ultragrrrl," chronicled her giving numerous bands ego-handjobs back stage as she drunkenly hung on them, making funny rock-star poses. Spin came to its senses and killed the column, but Ultragrrl never went away—it keeps popping up in stories in the Voice and the Times about prom parties and DJ-spinning circle-jerk events. Take this Times quote about the weekly Misshapes party: "'Last week's was the best one ever,' said Sarah Lewitinn, 24, a writer for Spin who on a recent Saturday evening was wearing a vintage Joy Division T-shirt as a dress over slouchy black suede boots. 'I made out with three boys and one girl.'" We think we'll Ultrahurrrl.
[B]19. Tony Danza Host, The Tony Danza Show[/B]
Why did the American Italian Defense Association sue the producers of The Sopranos, saying it denigrates their Italian American culture, whilst not voicing a peep against this monosyllabic, spaghetti-stained perpetrator of more noxious paisan stereotypes than Martin Scorsese? From his "That's a spicy meat-a-ball" delivery to his Italia-centric guest list (anyone who's ever shown their face on The Sopranos, ever), Tony Danza makes us wish our Italian grandmother was Lithuanian. If his last name were McDanza, he'd be doing his show dressed like Lucky the Charm. Black Tony Danza would gobble watermelon; Jewish Tony Danza would spend the hour popping matzoh balls while counting gold coins. Tonester constantly reminds us that the eye-talians are a people known for their love of good food. So it makes sense that eating figures large each "Extrava-Danza." Recovering boozer/homo-hound Liza Minnelli proudly presented her good pal (they watch 24 together religiously) with a pastry billed as the World's Largest Cannoli. Yet in a city clogged with Italian restaurants, who does Danza pick to sponsor his food segments? The Olive Garden. Was Papa Gino's too busy? For that alone, Danza's kneecaps should be introduced to a 34-oz. Louisville Slugger.
[B]18. Ed Koch Democratic Ex-Mayor [/B]
"How'm I doin'?" To our amazement, pretty good, you batty old queen. Koch's rep as Mr. New York has managed to survive and even thrive in the 17 years since the publication of Wayne Barrett and Jack Newfield's devastating City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York. It's as if the names Meade Esposito, Stanley Friedman and Donald Manes have been scrubbed from history, allowing Koch to pose against an airbrushed legacy and somehow remain an active player even as he publicly descends into the middle stages of senility. The man who still insists on calling himself "Mr. Liberal" has supported local Republicans John Lindsay, Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, Al D'Amato and Mike Bloomberg. When W. recognized him at a Wall St. event in 2003—"Ed!" Bush yelled, waving—Koch rushed over and declared his fealty to the Bush Doctrine on the spot. Soon, he was going public with this support on Hannity & Colmes. And so Koch was the perfect face for the city's "Make Nice" campaign in the run-up to the RNC this summer. Sadly, none of the prop elephants crushed the ex-mayor under a mountain of shit, thus terminating Mr. Liberal's heartbeat, to say nothing of his painful film reviews in The Villager.
[B]17. Bruce Smolka NYPD Assistant Chief[/B]
February 1999: Officers in Smolka's NYPD's Street Crime Unit pump 41 bullets into Amadou Diallo. February 2003: Smolka illegally orders horseback-mounted police to charge a group of peaceful antiwar demonstrators. April 2003: Smolka confronts a group of about 100 demonstrators in front of the Carlyle Group's headquarters with 300 officers outfitted in full riot gear. August 2004: Responsible for securing midtown during the RNC, the smoldering chief could be found standing on "his" perimeter, head clean-shaven, blue eyes piercing, chin jutting, arms folded across his chest like an urban Patton. He personally oversaw the illegal arrest and detention of hundreds during the convention. Then, humiliated by August's 5000-strong Critical Mass ride, he deployed the NYPD's full force in an effort to control the monthly gathering. Until December, that is, when federal judge William Pauley ruled against Smolka's request for an injunction to stop the ride. The only upside of being arrested by this thug is that you have an excellent chance of getting off when your case finally comes before a judge.
[B]16. Edwin Anzalone FDNY[/B]
Yeah, the FDNY guys probably do deserve those raises they've been talking about for years. While we wouldn't mind three-day workweeks, we'll hand it to them: fighting fires is more dangerous than writing. So why the **** is self-proclaimed FDNY spokesman Edwin Anzalone shilling for Bloomberg, Mr. Raise-Miser himself, in tv commercials for the proposed Jets stadium? Better known as Fireman Ed—the guy in the ancient Bruce Harper 42 jersey and green fire helmet who climbs upon his brother's shoulders to remind 80,000 Gang Green fans how to spell Jets (er, that's J-E-T-S)—Anzalone defied the Uniformed Firefighters Association to make the stadium ad. You know the one: With his fellow Bravest lined up behind him like burly Rockettes, Fireman Ed shouts like the drunk guy itching for a fight outside Farrell's, bellowing about the benefits of the Jets playing on this side of the Hudson eight times a year. Hey Fireman Ed—let us spell it out for you: The best firefighters we know are the strong, silent type. Let Bloomberg's and Dolan's scumbag minions quibble over the Far West Side turf. Surely, something's burning somewhere.
[B]15. Carlos D Bassist, Interpol [/B]
As if being the bassist for the bar-band-quality Joy Division retreads Interpol will not be ignominy enough in six months, Carlos D's penis was put on center stage with the briefly lived blog CarlosDHasHerpes. In it, a peeved guy tells the tale of how his otherwise faithful sweetheart succumbed to the lyrics "touch your thighs/I'm the lonely one" and got escorted backstage by an Interpol roadie. Hence, the blogger's unfortunate outbreak. As certain as we are that every hip Robert Smith–inspired guitarist has herpes (there's no cure, remember), we find nothing particularly loathsome about associating rockers with venereal disease. But Carlos D is especially loathsome for three reasons. The fact that he is forever linked to herpes is technically loathsome in itself. Second, he has started a trend in which we could conceivably be outed in the blogosphere for injecting several unknowing victims with chlamydia. Most loathsome of all, we want to **** him and start our own blog, IgaveCarlosDchlamydia. But we took our penicillin and aren't yet ready for the Simplex II.
[B]14. Amanda Burden Chair of the City Planning Commission [/B]
Once the hope of the public-interest planning community, Burden gets loathsome points for dating Charlie Rose, but earns her way onto the list in her own right for heading up a rubber-stamp commission that betrays the true mandate of the city land-use approval process. When she sat on the board of the commission, Burden was considered a thoughtful and innovative urban planner. Since taking the body's helm in 2002, she's become the ultimate City Hall insider, presiding over an authoritarian commission that has approved massive zoning changes throughout the city and paved the way for big developers for decades to come. Like the mayor who appointed her, this Upper East Side daughter of society fashion icon Babe Paley doesn't need to work for a living; she does it to serve the people of New York City. Too bad she doesn't listen to them more.
[B]13. Andrea Peyser New York Post columnist[/B]
The Post's "Columnist of the Year"—aka "Manhattan's Favorite Harpy," "The Post's Madame Defarge," a "designated hater" and a "clueless jackass"—lives in a cartoon world in which a thick black line neatly separates the Good (Israel, firefighters, dead soldiers) from the Bad (liberals, student protesters, most women). She isn't loathsome on account of her pedestrian prose and predictable opinions, however. She's here for the stink of desperation that rises every time she tries to convince herself she's anything more than Cindy Adams on the perpetual rag, a third-rate Steve Dunleavy in old-lady panties. One of these days, Peyser's going to wake up in a cold fat sweat and realize that people aren't intimidated by her, that they don't take her "blue collar hero" crap seriously, and that she's not nearly the celebrity she thinks she is. She will instead recognize that even her readers consider her an old and unfunny joke.
[B]12.Adam Gopnik Writer, The New Yorker[/B]
We will never forget that immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks, Gopnik wrote, in all seriousness, that the smell of the burnt bodies and the dust and the fire "blew uptown on Wednesday night, and is not entirely horrible from a reasonable distance—almost like the smell of smoked mozzarella, a smell of the bubble time." We smelled something different in Gopnik's piece: the stink of a bubble brain fried in the havoc. Gopnik the flaneur fop, accustomed to the richesse of wistful Paris afternoons and high-culture ephemera and the mozzarella of the bubble economy, just couldn't wrap his head around the simple terror and enormity of the event. That Gopnik was actually framing the disaster as such—Downtown vs. Uptown—suggests a moral and social myopia of gargantuan proportions. That The New Yorker didn't fire Gopnik immediately after he filed his "dispatch" says something about this New York cultural institution and the people it serves: the masturbatory navel-gazing, the trivial obsessing over cultural signifiers. In year after year as one of the magazine's chief voices, Gopnik—silly, vain, precious, falsely plumed and preeningly proud—represents this tendency par excellence. J'accuse. Asshole.
[B]11. Gifford Miller Speaker, City Council [/B]
This Great Wasp Hope has lofty aspirations to replace Bloomberg as mayor. Too bad he's a shrill momma's boy who renders city councilmembers comatose with his endless monotonic blather on critical matters such as scooters on city sidewalks. With just three years as speaker under his belt, Miller, 35, has compensated for his lack of political experience and ability to accomplish anything meaningful by quickly learning how to play quid pro quo. He's already corralled an army of lobbyists with business before his office to help him raise campaign funds. There's nothing more irritating than an old-school hack who presents himself as a pious fresh face, even if he is on the right side of the West Side stadium fight. Case in point: Miller, fighting for the common man, managed not to forget his Upper East Side roots last year when urging that his wealthy neighborhood be spared a waste transfer station and instead pushed for one to be reopened in Washington Heights.
[B]10. William B. Harrison Jr. CEO, JP Morgan Chase & Co.[/B]
If you have money in Chase's vaults, you should already hate this guy for doing nothing since his appointment in 2001 to fix his company's usurious, fee-based rape of low-income depositors. Then there is the matter of all those WorldCom bonds. But lately Bill Harrison's loathsomeness has hit a new high: JP Morgan continues to extend huge credit sums to predatory lenders that then use JP's line to furnish cash "payday" loans to the working poor with interest rates that can approach 1000 percent. So-called "payday" lenders find an especially fruitful clientele in youthful soldiers. Thus have payday lenders over the past decade sprung like poison mushrooms in the fecund soil of the "private sector" around military bases nationwide. All thanks to the largesse of Harrison and his ilk, which includes the heads of Wachovia, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, all of whom have snatched a piece of the $6 billion-dollar-a-year payday lending industry—but none so effectively or extensively as JP Morgan under the leadership of William B. Harrison Jr.
[B]9. Anthony Weiner Democratic Congressman, 9th District[/B]
Tony, baby, you told the whole city to dump bundles of our newspaper into the trash; did you really think you wouldn't break the top 10? Weiner (pronounced both "Weener" and "Whiner," depending on your politics) was the first pol to jump screeching onto our pope cover and wring it for all the publicity he could drip into his little plastic ambition bucket. And drip is most definitely the word for the gel-haired walking skeleton that represents the 9th district. Weiner is the kind of eager-to-please nerd who puts stills from his three C-Span appearances behind glass on his office wall. His career highlights include thumbs-up photo ops with Jim Brady and Ehud Barak, and an award from the National Organization to Insure a Sound-Controlled Environment. No doubt a picture of his grandstanding press conference about New York Press will be on his website in time for the next campaign, right next to the one of him delivering a flag to a local firehouse as part of his very important "Flags for Firehouses" program. Could this single, ex-Schumer aid ever deliver on his threat to become mayor? He doesn't have the juice. But if he ever tries, at least one paper in this town will be urging readers to throw the dickhead's campaign lit right into the river.
[B]8. Graydon Carter Editor, Vanity Fair [/B]
Carter, an affable and self-deprecating sort whose writings still retain traces of the charmingly dry humor of his Spy days, is, personality-wise, a clear exception to the monsters populating this list. What makes him loathsome is the perverse ideological calculus of his career arc, which represents a common Hogarthian progression among right-thinking, politically astute New York progressives: Spend your 20s shaking fists, spend your 50s licking boots. In his day job, Carter edits a magazine whose unabashed purpose is to make icons out of idiots; then, in his spare time, he turns around and wonders aloud for 300 earnest pages (that What We've Lost anti-Bush thing you saw sticking like a fridge magnet to the pile of Al Franken books at Barnes & Noble) how it could possibly have happened that America elected a dolt like George W. Bush. This is the business of the educated New York media creature with a society profile: Laugh at middle America for declaring itself a maggot for Jesus, but at the same time commission Annie Leibovitz to shoot Brad Pitt in the pose of Zeus or the angel Gabriel. At least Republicans only drop to their knees for God.
[B]7. Charles "Joe" Hynes Brooklyn D.A.[/B]
The most powerful man in Brooklyn prosecutes political enemies on bullshit charges, talentless cronies balloon his staff, and he bursts almost every budget. His office is the top-heaviest in the city with six-figure "executive assistant" D.A.s who apparently do little more than kick money upstairs to Hynes' campaign coffers. Hynes is the only of the city's five D.A.'s who extorts campaign contributions from staff. He also runs his campaign headquarters out of his offices, which is illegal. For his 1998 run for governor, he took a bag containing $12,000 in cash—also illegal—but his staff prosecutors claimed not to know that taking sacks of cash is a crime. Now Hynes engineers a scapegoat prosecution against his old friend and county boss Clarence Norman Jr. for allegedly misappropriating $5000 from his own coffers. Meanwhile, three of Hynes' children have been on the payrolls of various local politicos, though Hynes promised to bring a "wrecking ball" to the cronyism and patronage in Brooklyn that rots civic life. According to the Daily News, homicide is down 10 percent citywide, but in Brownsville, it's up 156 percent; in Bensonhurst, it's up 400 percent. Brooklyn burns, and Joe Hynes punches the clock and plays with his pud.
[B]6. Glenn Lowry Director, MoMA [/B]
At a time when the average New Yorker can no longer afford to visit MoMA, it's good to know the museum brass won't be going hungry. Lowry, MoMA's director, collects a $600,000 salary—this in a year when the museum reopened after a two-year $858 million expansion and promptly passed the expense along to visitors by hiking its ticket price to $20 (that's a 60 percent increase). Responsible for cementing MoMA's growing reputation as an elitist institution for the well-heeled rather than the non-profit (and tax exempt) public trust it's supposed to be, Lowry's private-sector-like salary doesn't extend to the rank-and-file employees who strike in protest of the low wages just about every time their contracts are up. His pseudo-man-of-the-people gesture of setting aside a paltry four hours of free entry on Friday afternoons (sponsored by mega-retailer Target), fails to absolve Lowry, a greedhead who's hijacked an institution meant to serve "as a custodian of our collective cultural inheritance," as FreeMoMA.org put it. We can think of a couple things we'd like to see hanging from MoMA's walls.
[B]5. Steven Roth CEO Vornado Realty Trust[/B]
Under the captaincy of Roth, multi-billion-dollar real estate developer Vornado Realty Trust was the first in the city to propose a Wal-Mart superstore for one of its Queens sites. To Roth we would like to answer with the simple facts of what the coming of Wal-Mart likely means for the communities that would be "developed." After a decade of predations in Iowa, Wal-Mart led the closure or bankruptcy of 555 grocery stores, 298 hardware stores, 293 building supply stores, 161 variety stores, 158 women's apparel stores, 153 shoe stores, 116 drugstores and 111 men's and boys' apparel stores. Wal-Mart sales clerks nationwide averaged $8.23 an hour in 2001. That's $13,861 a year—$800 below the federal poverty line for a family of three. Wal-Mart employees in Georgia were six times more likely to rely on state-provided health care for their children than were employees of any other large company. In California, Wal-Mart workers are so heavily dependent on public assistance programs that their employment at Wal-Mart costs state taxpayers $86 million annually. An investigation by the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce found, "Wal-Mart's rock bottom wages and benefits cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year in basic housing, medical, childcare, and energy needs that the retailer fails to properly cover for its employees." So thanks, Mr. Roth. Thanks a ****ing lot.
[B]4. Barbara Corcoran Megarealtor[/B]
The Corcoran Group, whose agents get Botox injections and put steamy photos on their business cards, has done more than any other realtor in town to fetishize and gentrify once affordable,polyglot neighborhoods. According to the company's website, Barbara Corcoran's mega-realty had "over $5 billion in closed sales volume in 2003." According to CNN, Corcoran herself is "the most sought after broker" in the city. Of course, Corcoran's success has opened the doors of the city to scores of locust-like imitators swarming the next "hot, hip hood" to drive out blacks, Puerto Ricans, pensioners, old people, struggling families, squatters and anyone else who can't step up in the market-rate plate. "The Corcoran Group is the Wal-Mart of real estate," says one local Brooklyn broker. "Corcoran goes into a cheap neighborhood and brings in a developer to rip apart the organic fabric." The Corcoran website states that Barbara founded the company at a "key moment in New York City real estate history"—the 1970s—"just as the city went from being a market predominantly composed of rentals to one of individual ownership." Sound familiar?
[B]3. Larry "Electroclash" Tee Trend Setter[/B]
A hipster before there were hipsters, a club kid before Michael Alig dismembered one, a man who made Williamsburg cool again. Wait, what was that last one? Larry Tee, remember, created electroclash, causing Wall Street en masse to shave their chests and strap on wigs and garters to go make a hipster alcove hip again. And the repercussions of Tee's retro fad are still felt several years later, with the L train now a weekend party shuttle that looks like an acid flashback to 1982. True, electroclash has been skewered like a pig at a fourth of July barbecue, and we're not here to pick at its charred flesh. We're aiming our crossbow at Tee's skull because it's only a matter of time before HipsterClash or RetroAmsterburg starts percolating. It's all we can do to gnaw our toenails in baited anticipation of Tee's next trendoid scheme. Need more? Tee also unleashed the pestilence known as RuPaul.
[B]2. Maer Roshan Editor, Radar[/B]
When we had hair and idealism, we published a zine poised to alter the magazine paradigm. We were self-styled journalistic saviors, shooting poison-filled barbs at staid culture. To our shock, readers bought it. They clamored to contribute. They bought subscriptions. Then you know what happened? We folded because our bottom line was redder than Tara Reid's nostrils after a Friday-night bender. Not unlike Maer Roshan's Radar, the magazine with more lives and less common sense than a convoy of dyspeptic Siamese cats. Roshan's pop-culture chronicle became a newsstand blip in 2003, coasting on a wave of deep-pocketed PR bluster and screeds penned by 80s retreads like Bret Easton Ellis. Radar skewered J. Lo and Bush's niece. And they used Kool-Aid colors! And collected more than 20,000 subscribers! And, after two issues, folded. Now, about a year and a half later, Radar is back with a $25 million infusion from Daily News patriarch Mort Zuckerman and Wall Street financier Jeffrey Epstein. Why? Quotas, baby. Roshan is gay, Jewish and Iranian. But not even this three-pointer can alter Roshan's status as a nattily dressed hack cross-breeding Spy with Us Weekly and a little National Enquirer. Sorry, Maer, but even gay Iranian Jews need better ideas than this.
[B]1. Michael R. Bloomberg Mayor of New York City[/B]
We were hoping, praying even, that we could avoid giving this year’s top honor to the most obvious choice, but there was just no way around it. Bloomberg is the most loathsome person in NYC. Just glance back at his “achievement” of bringing the Republican National Convention to town and the mini-police state inspired by it. From the criminal arrest and unlawful detainment of innocent people walking down the street, to his barricading of roads and subsequent damage to local businesses, the RNC alone puts Bloomie in the top 10. Now in reelection mode, “Mayor Mike” is cranking the average-guy happy face to 11, but don’t be fooled. He’s still the same scheming billionaire who spent his entire life up until his first election getting filthy rich and—in his own immortal words—“dining well and chasing women.” Since buying office from a shaken post-9/11 electorate, he’s stayed busy punishing victims of crime instead of helping them (see his innovation of fining for graffiti-strewn newspaper boxes), harassing innocent storeowners (for having extra information on their awnings), and slashing social services. All in order to plug the holes in his Swiss cheese budgets. There’s something for everyone to hate in the born-again Republican mayor: shuttered firehouses; pushing cops to harass people to meet ticket quotas; his 18 percent property tax hike; his retarded and dishonest Olympics pursuit (and his hilarious call on New Yorkers to visit Greece to show support for the same); his exclusion of parents from any decisions on the future of their kids’ schools; “Snapple loves New York, and New York loves Snapple!”; his complicity in abuse of eminent domain statutes; his initial refusal to investigate Guy Velella’s release (changing his mind only after the media shitstorm); his support for the secret 22 percent pay raise given by Pataki to the MTA’s loathsome Katie Lapp; his “tort reform,” which forces local property owners to pay the damages when someone gets hurt on a broken sidewalk; his vulgar efforts to buy off journalists and political parties to serve his needs (such as the $250,000 he gave to the Independence party, without whose ballot line he can’t win). The list goes on. Do we even need to go into the stadium, or his election promise to “never” use tax money for…stadiums? He has the gall to criticize the MTA when he was all but silent in 2003 after they raised the fare an unprecedented 33 percent. But what would you expect from a man who has dedicated his life to one man and one man only? Mike Bloomberg has never cared about anyone but himself, and for that, he wears the crown in 2005. [/SIZE] [/FONT] [url]http://www.nypress.com/18/13/news&columns/50most.cfm[/url] [/QUOTE]
2005-04-05 14:19 | User Profile
[font=Century Gothic]19. Tony Danza Host, The Tony Danza Show
Why did the American Italian Defense Association sue the producers of The Sopranos, saying it denigrates their Italian American culture, whilst not voicing a peep against this monosyllabic, spaghetti-stained perpetrator of more noxious paisan stereotypes than Martin Scorsese? From his "That's a spicy meat-a-ball" delivery to his Italia-centric guest list (anyone who's ever shown their face on The Sopranos, ever), Tony Danza makes us wish our Italian grandmother was Lithuanian. If his last name were McDanza, he'd be doing his show dressed like Lucky the Charm. Black Tony Danza would gobble watermelon; Jewish Tony Danza would spend the hour popping matzoh balls while counting gold coins... [/font]
Tony Danza is the most powerful man in television. That's the only thing that explains it.
2005-04-05 15:28 | User Profile
Don't know, Spidey, I'da bumped this pinstriped Trotskyite pimp to the top 10, at least.
But then, we Old Rightists have been reviling these vermin for eons before the unwashed caught on. Now everybody hates the Neo-Cons...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 41. Norman Podhoretz Editor Emeritus, Commentary
It's been a good millennium so far for the city's most loathsome elderly intellectual. The Bush White House awarded ol' Poddy the Presidential Medal of Honor last year for his decades of tireless support for arms racing, unprovoked aggression and death squads. His wife Midge Decter, meanwhile, was awarded a National Humanities Medal for her decades of faithful imitation of a menopausal Mathew Arnold. His leaden-witted son John finally escaped the shadow of fellow mini-con William Kristol and took over that sophisticated journal of ideas known as the New York Post op-ed page. Just half a bloodline away, son-in-law Elliot Abrams wormed his way back into the foreign policy establishment like Iran-Contra never happened. So you'd think Stormin' Norman would be happy. Hell, last year the Free Press even published a 500-page Norman Podhoretz Reader. But Norman ain't happy. Norman's never happy. His latest piece in Commentary is one long cry of pain and hurt that his own designation for the Clash of Civilizationsââ¬â"World War IV"ââ¬âhasn't yet become an international relations meme on par with Walter Lippman's "Cold War" or the central, permanent organizing principle for Western Civilization, aka the American imperium, with him and Midge at the stormy helm. Someone needs to just die already.
2005-04-05 18:46 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Howard Campbell, Jr.]His leaden-witted son John finally escaped the shadow of fellow mini-con William Kristol and took over that sophisticated journal of ideas known as the New York Post op-ed page.[/QUOTE]
I'da put Johnny in place of daddy. Norman is like the big bully in A Christmas Story who picks on Ralphie, and John is like the little sidekick bully.
This whole feature was great! The NYP is brimming with bracing misanthropy these days, and who can deny that even in a city run by Jews, a lot of them made this list.