Alternative Touchy Feely Weekly

A strange thing happened to me on the way to literary immortality. I got downsized by the Village Voice. My time there began in 1987, when I hunkered down in the copy department, slaving away at commas, hyphens, and style. (By the way, it's Voice style to insert commas in a serial like that, before the "and," which is unlike what I learnt in skool.) After paying much dues I was finally promoted to staff writer in the mid-'90s, something that gave me a great sense of accomplishment. Managed to publish two cover stories, one about santeria (controversial, made some missteps, but satisfying) and another about Latinos in the media, and many pieces I'm very proud of. But then some twisted internal politics, including a sit-in led by effete elitist senior editors, forced out the woman who promoted me, and she was replaced by the current editor in chief. I'd always found it strange that at this most progressive of alternative weeklies, when we finally got a woman editor it was too much for the senior staff and she was quickly shoved aside for a real father figure. A crude and uninteresting father figure at that. He couldn't find a way to hold onto one of my favorite section editors, a woman of color, and soon after she left, I was on the block to be downsized. This was accomplished when he read a private e-mail I sent to the substitute sports editor about my piece about the Trinidad-La Hoya fight. A week later, he called me into his office and with the managing editor sitting dutifully by, announced that I had lost my "passion" for writing.

Last month, the editor in chief was sued by Richard Goldstein, whom he downsized recently after Goldstein had spent almost 40 years at the paper. Goldstein makes some wild accusations in the lawsuit. They're probably all true. You can read them here. The accusations involve his sexual harassment of the openly gay Goldstein, as well as several female staffers, and a nasty Vietnam Era slur he directed at a Vietanm employee. I wonder what he called me behind my back sometimes. So I leave you with this photo of the editor in chief, Donald Forst, "consoling" a Newsday writer after the New York office was shut down in the early '90s. It's just a little harmless fun. Sure does seem to speak volumes in this context, maybe?




Freddy Still Losing

It's amazing, but Freddy Ferrer is still behind Bloomberg by 20 percentage points in the polls. He came out swinging the other day in El Diario, trashing the press and pollsters for blinding voters and psyching them out before the election. How dare he. So Clyde Haberman metes out some nasty retribution in his omniscient column in da papah o' rekkid. First, the Murdoch-like GOP talking points attack: Mr. Ferrer might have been his own worst enemy at times, appearing to go wobbly on certain issues and allowing voters to wonder if his FF monogram perhaps stood for Flip-Flopper. Kind of brings back those images of John Kerry wearing French sandals. Should have said maybe, "Freddy be wearing chinelas, yo." Haberman continues by saying Freddy spoke the truth by saying there was technically no crime committed in the police shooting of Amadou Diallo, but when he tried to gloss over the blunder, he wavered.
I'm not even going to talk about the Post editorial today, because no one should ever read the Post, much less even think about it. However you should be outraged because (and I only found out about this through NY1's "In the Papers" segment, because I never read nor even think about the Post) they said something along the lines of Freddy's campaign was a waste of taxpayer money. Yes, those meager matching funds that allowed him to run one commercial for like 8,000 for Bloomberg should be eliminated.










This last photo kind of struck me a little strange when I saw it earlier tonight. I had something to do with some Kennedy Center awards ceremony. I just don't understand how George W. is that much bigger than Tinat Turner. Are these chairs purposefully small? Is this a pilot for a revival of the '60s TV show Land of the Giants? I'm not exactly sure.