http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/riffraff/archives/2006/02/dem_franchize_b.phpthe topper is the comments from folks like "I hate rap" egging him on.
― Alex in Baltimore (Alex in Baltimore), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:01 (eighteen years ago) link
Well, some gangstas don't. They just lean wit it, rock wit it. They might just set in one place, moving back and forth or moving side to side--or leaning and rocking.
It just seems like gangsters would want to dance. Like, you're a gangster--dance.
― gear (gear), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― gear (gear), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:06 (eighteen years ago) link
I hate that we live in the shadow of "Lean Back." It's OK to dance guys: it's supposed to indicate how well you fuck. Why are you afraid of showing that?
― ham'ron (dubplatestyle), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:07 (eighteen years ago) link
― Edward III (edward iii), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dan (Think Before You Post, People) Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:12 (eighteen years ago) link
Select: What about the whole murder/gang/violence allegations surrounding you?
Snoop: That don't matter. Like if I pulled a gun on you right now, you'd be scared, right?
Select: Possibly.
Snoop: But if I dropped a rhyme right now, you'd love me?
Select: Perhaps.
Snoop: Do you wanna hear me bust a rhyme right now?
Select: No.
― NoTimeBeforeTime (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― Sterling (Yeah, Like You Always Do) Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:14 (eighteen years ago) link
But really, that's the subtext that upsetting people.
― Edward III (edward iii), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:14 (eighteen years ago) link
― Sterling (No Shit!) Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:14 (eighteen years ago) link
― Edward III (edward iii), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:18 (eighteen years ago) link
now i get it.
that interview was bad.
― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:36 (eighteen years ago) link
― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:40 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in Baltimore (Alex in Baltimore), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:40 (eighteen years ago) link
I want to talk about the dance.
What's going on.
Just the dance.
What about it.
It's the best dance I've ever seen.
We're trendsetters.
Did this come to you in a dream?
No it came from the "White Tee" song. That's what we used to do around the neighborhood. I like to think I added a twist to it, came over the song and everything, and the rest is history. It is what it is.
That's awesome. But why lean wit it first and then rock wit it? Why not rock wit it first?
Because in the dance you lean first, then you rock wit it.
So you're saying it would look pretty funny if you rock first.
Yeah it would look funny if you rock first.
Who's the best at this dance?
Parlae outta the Franchize.
How about among your friends, who's the best?
Oh yeah! Friends, fans, celebrities, athletes, everybody's doing it their own sexy little way. Ain't no exact way to do it. You do it how you want.
Right, like if you want to rock wit it first.
Add your little flavor to it.
Jermaine Dupri is probably pretty bad at this dance.
Oh yeah! He got his own little flavor. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Parlae do it the best.
Do you think the Lean Wit It Rock Wit It is better than the Macarena?
I mean, yeah. You really got to get sweaty, but if you want to get sweaty, you can.
One of the things you say in the song, gangsters don't dance--is that true you think?
It just seems like gangsters would want to dance. Like, you're a gangster--dance. Do you have any dances in the works for gangsters?
It just came about. In "White Tee", we were leaning and rocking. Folks started catching on. So Parlae figured out: Name the dance and perfect it, and expose it to the world.
People are calling your dance the Electric Slide of the South.
It's something like that.
Other people are calling it Atlanta's hokey-pokey.
Atlanta's hokey-pokey.
Yeah.
I ain't gonna agree with no hokey-pokey.
Snap music is big now; what's the next snap?
What's the next snap?
Do you think people will start slapping each other on the butt?
Excuse me?
If it ain't broke don't fix it.
― darin (darin), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:44 (eighteen years ago) link
1) Nick is now the effigy of the Village Voice for everyone who wants to take a shot at them. This has been picked up for national dailies via the AP.
2) In more Shattered Glass parallels, everyone wants to play the cool snoop role and dig up the huge conspiracy a la Caruso's AP story, which ends with:
In an August story about cheating on college campuses, Sylvester described interviewing a student who spent $500,000 to have a multiplication table tattooed over his entire body; a Harvard Medical School graduate who cheated with Morse code; a Boston College junior named Simeon Criz who cheated using a specially designed deck of playing cards; and a Manhattan doctor named Noam Feldstein who delivers "a hundred newborn babies each day."
Boston College said it had no record of a student named Simeon Criz. The board that licenses doctors in New York said it had no record of a physician named Noam Feldstein.
They're playing themselves in the movie of this in their minds.
― Chris Ott (Chris Ott), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:49 (eighteen years ago) link
― geoff (gcannon), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:54 (eighteen years ago) link
xpost: But who WOULDN'T want to be Peter Sarsgaard in that movie?? Even if he does look exactly like Chloe Sevigny.
One your 1), Chris, yes, that's what happens when you create situations out of whole cloth and run them as fact. Your publication's reputation takes a big fucking hit. This is about much more than NS now.
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― reacher, Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― Chris Ott (Chris Ott), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:57 (eighteen years ago) link
Well Nick's brand reveals that you can get all the way to senior associate editor being pretty much full of shit at all times.
― Candicissima (candicissima), Thursday, 2 March 2006 20:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― senseiDancer (sexyDancer), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:00 (eighteen years ago) link
i mean, i wonder how journalists who did actual research for their stories feel about having their bylines held in the same esteem as the "obviously" fake stories. no matter how outre or unbelievable they seemed, those faux-satirical pieces have now cast a shadow on their reputations as well.
that said, my stomach did turn a bit when the e & p story showed up on drudge.
― maura (maura), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― geoff (gcannon), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:03 (eighteen years ago) link
If you can't tell this is satire, you probably shouldn't be, like, reading.
― Eppy (Eppy), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― ham'ron (dubplatestyle), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― maura (maura), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eppy (Eppy), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:07 (eighteen years ago) link
― senseiDancer (sexyDancer), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eppy (Eppy), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:09 (eighteen years ago) link
-- Thomas Tallis
was this on a thread here, or what? i'd love to read it. i've got an interview coming up (first non-review work! pat on the back) with a guy who i may disagree with on a lot of issues surrounding his work. i'm sure all the hardened pros can give a cub a tip or two (to make a thread worth a good goddam for once)
― geoff (gcannon), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:11 (eighteen years ago) link
― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:12 (eighteen years ago) link
Musicians, usually supplying entertainment instead of information, aren't held to a code of ethics and standards.
If they were then we would never have David Allen Coe.
― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:12 (eighteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:12 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eppy (Eppy), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― midi sanskrit (sanskrit), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― senseiDancer (sexyDancer), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― midi sanskrit (sanskrit), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:17 (eighteen years ago) link
MARISSA MARCHANT SIGHTED ON PROGRESSIVEHOUSE.COM!!!
― Confounded (Confounded), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:19 (eighteen years ago) link
Good: "You know, some people might consider a song like that a little mysoginistic"
Bad: "Quite frankly, I think you're a fucking woman-hater and an total douchenozzle, Mr. Mayer!"
― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:20 (eighteen years ago) link
― geoff (gcannon), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:23 (eighteen years ago) link
"Jonathan Swift proposes using Irish babies as foodstuffs."
― M. Biondi (M. Biondi), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:32 (eighteen years ago) link
― Edward III (edward iii), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:39 (eighteen years ago) link
"More to the point: How does anyone, in this day and age, think they can get away with it? As CBS News learned during Memogate, the Internet has connected us to the point where critics can seize on a misstep nearly instantaneously. That's not to say we live in an era free of journalistic sin – far from it. But technological innovation has made it pretty damn hard to get away with an outright fabrication, which is a pretty good reason not to do it, if ethics ain't enough to sway you."
The technological innovation of the voice fact-checking after the article has already come out? Yeah, damn those internets.
― Eppy (Eppy), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:42 (eighteen years ago) link
certainly the stakes were raised with this being a cover story (tho we do not know if it was assigned as such), but this is pretty much a standard nick sylvester piece. it has a very narrative structure, it's full of asides and the quotes are very rich. of course this was cooked -- that's his style!
it is certainly within a publication's rights to refuse that sort of writing -- witness wolfe and the like thriving at new york and esquire in the '60s while the new yorker thumbed its nose at them for shoddy journalism. it's a style of writing with a long history: swift, dickens, london, thompson and countless more. in fact, up until the '20s, that *was* journalism. the point was the moral, not the facts.
of course this changed and this has largely been for the good (i say largely because politically this leads to lots of he said she said pieces where the existence of cold hard facts is ignored -- it's a twist on journalism 101 that benefits the deceiver). but there are still writers who work around this, most notably -- and ironically -- strauss. i could see glass as a possible parallel here except that i can't imagine nick ever really honestly claiming his pieces as fact. he writes classic ledes and all of that with a wink and a nudge to make sure we're in on the joke.
and so in this instance i think the issue came from: a) someone complaining (as was absolutely their right to do) and b) a new editor who was unfamiliar with how nick writes. i agree that there are journalistic standards -- i strongly advocate them -- but nick is not a journalist! he's a features writer, plain and simple. and so from that miscommunication (or at least that's what i see it to be) between the editor seeing nick as a journo and nick seeing himself as nick, we've reached this hubbub that i'm finding really hard to take.
somehow, even tho we're a society so immune and oblivious to fact, we are now demanding total transparency in the strangest places. sure, politicians and companies can lie, but not movie stars or writers that we never read. there's this false standard that has arisen from i dunno the fuck where, and through a confluence of bad decisions and timing (nick is not absolved of guilt here, tho i do not really blame him for being the writer that he is) nick has gotten caught up in this. needless to say, i'm pulling for him.
― Jams Murphy (ystrickler), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― Bob D., Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:54 (eighteen years ago) link
Jams, I have to be blunt -- this completely undercuts what I think is a good and spirited defense, because it puts the onus on us that somehow we are all individually at fault for this failing which you envision as endemic. I find that insulting, if not patronizing, and I hope I don't have to spell out why.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 2 March 2006 21:54 (eighteen years ago) link