The Prostitution of Writing
By Bill Lalor
Posted On March 21, 2005

NY Press probably deserves its reputation among many New Yorkers as a snarky, semi-viable alternative to the Village Voice. It can occasionally be astute and readable, especially when compared to the “mainstream” media’s bland-if-you’re-lucky fish wrappers. But thanks to Matt Taibbi’s front-page Pope-trashing a few weeks ago – a rare feat of “dull” and “offensive” in equal doses – and the doings of Taibbi’s thuggish alt-editor Jeff Koyen, NYP might have suffered a serious dent, at least among anyone who expects at least marginally respectable writing.

By most standards Taibbi’s wasn’t a “column” at all but a trite, sophomoric string of boorishness. His response to the ensuing uproar didn’t help, either, nor did Koyen’s. In Taibbi’s March 8th follow-up, he first offered a serious-if-you-believe-me excuse, saying the column was “written in the waning hours of a Vicodin haze the previous Saturday morning,” but in the end whined like a petulant teenager: “This, incidentally, is what the alternative media is supposed to be for…there has to be someplace where the individual psychopath-loser, i.e. me, can say "I don't care." Koyen, who’d come aboard NYP about a year ago with a speckled background all but assuring something like this would happen, upon losing his post was his usual belligerent self and lashed at the NYP “weenies,” calling them “spineless turds.”

As much as I enjoyed aspects of the Koyen-era NYP, with all of his juvenile intransigence over the Pope, of all people, I’m not about to mourn for him if his career suffered for it, and the same goes for Matt Taibbi. And this isn’t because the list was vile; or because NYP and Taibbi would only direct this faux boldness to white people and Gentiles. (The city’s creepy politicos have done just fine with the outrage bit, and the Internet, together with NYP’s credible Russ Smith, handled everything else.) In the end Taibbi’s offense against Catholics is somewhat forgettable thanks to the inconsequence of its “look how gross I can be” vulgarity: kids will be kids.

The lower blow, and the one tougher to forget, is the one landed on every writer in this city who works a lot harder than Matt Taibbi evidently does at, you know, writing. Worse yet was Koyen’s shockingly off-kilter judgment and his use of Taibbi to satisfy his bad-boy fix.

All of this reminded me of the splash made recently by Amy Fisher, that early-1990s trash-culture icon of Long Island. The more I thought about it, the more difficult it was to ignore the parallels between Fisher’s entrée on the writing scene and the NYP mess (a worthwhile debate is which of the two should feel more insulted by the comparison) and the respective stain each has left on the writing profession.

It’s been a few years since Fisher was released from prison and America was reacquainted with her less hair-sprayed new self in the form of a clichéd “tough times” chronicle. Fisher later landed a column with the newbie Long Island Press (thanks in part to her book’s co-author, Robbie Woliver, who happened to be editor-in-chief at LIP) a development that still galls legitimate writers throughout the tri-state area. One wonders whether Koyen was taking notes; LIP was hard up for circulation and determined to brand itself as a Newsday contender and, one senses, was in much the same position in which Koyen and NYP found themselves vis a vis the Village Voice.

Since then Fisher has paled next to the likes of Ed Lowe, a local favorite who finds himself anchoring the paper’s editorial page and in a spot only a fat retirement check can explain. These days she’s punching out flaccid columns on everything from Taser guns (“Having one pointed at you—or worse, fired at you…seems terrifying; even more so if you are a child”) to Mary Kay LeTourneau (for reconnecting with her young beau: “Apparently the word "rehabilitated" doesn't apply to Mary Kay Letourneau”). And she’s not precisely an awful writer but is certainly a bore; her voice is reminiscent of a child who, having been told by a 747 pilot that she’s “flying the plane,” really thinks she’s “flying the plane.” (Yay! This is easy!) In the end, nothing Fisher manages to scribble out will ever pass for serious writing.

It’s frustrating to see Amy Fisher jump the line based solely on her Long Island Lolita status but it’s also hard to blame her. One must take life’s hand-outs, I suppose. But it was never easy to forgive LIP for undertaking what was essentially the editorial version of running around naked in centerfield during a Yankee game carrying a placard with your new website’s name on it. With this in mind, and despite a homegrown distaste for Newsday’s editorial page that has me pulling for LIP, I can’t help but wonder whether Wolliver’s willingness to scrape together publicity by any means derailed whatever run LIP could have made at competing with Newsday.

The Taibbi/Koyen flap resonates the same ugly theme for NYP. Although by most accounts Koyen and Taibbi weren’t looking for cheap publicity (even Russ Smith – “Mugger” – dismissed that idea even as he skewered Taibbi last week) it’s also hard to ignore that in Taibbi’s laziness Koyen saw, simply enough, yet another opportunity to give a giant “up yours” to people he doesn’t like. He didn’t particularly care the article was trash, and NYP came away looking cheap much the same way LIP has with their Amy Fisher canoodling: in the end, writing is a whore.

Judging by the Taibbi/Koyen affair, NYP’s writers and readers would do well to reconsider whether their paper, despite the work of some , will ever transcend its role as a paper that does little more than say “fuck” when it so pleases. No matter what people like Jeff Koyen might believe about the alt-weekly market, as long as bad-boy myopia prevails, NYP isn’t about to compete with the Village Voice. Last December when I'd heard Ed Lowe had joined LIP I didn't know whether to be disguisted or feel pity. But Mugger, I weep for thee.

Bill Lalor can be reached at penmannyc@yahoo.com.

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