The other day I wrote a piece for the NY Post about American Idol in which I suggested that rather than try to revitalize the show by making it more edgy and contemporary, they had decided to focus on satisfying the broad middle of the network TV audience.  (You may read these astounding insights here).

Political people who complain about haters on the right or the left should try just one day in the Idol trenches.  Try ten minutes of staring down a mob of Adam Lambert fans after you’ve written a piece saying you’re happy for Kris Allen after he won.

Anyhow, since my piece ran in the Post, my email box, the rage of an Idol nation aroused by my suggestion that the show is not trying to be young and contemporary.   A few of my favorites, for your enjoyment:

Subject: Uncool

You are a very shallow person. (Uncool)

Subject: Idol Commentary by Synagogue of Satan JEW…or….YOU!

Well Mr. Dick in the bath-house…get it straight…if that is possible for a cultural contaminator such as you. Not all of White Gentile Christian America thinks like those of your venue…you know…that “Sodom up the ass and Gomorrah copulating like rabbits hip hop” pagan heathen “Nimrod” mentality you are em-bedded with and IN! Masturbation mouth promoters of filth in music IS a JEWISH thing…or did you not know that? Major PORNO enterprises are a JEWISH thing…or did you not know that. The…THE moral and spiritual attack on all that is TORAH and CHRISTIAN is a JEWISH thing…and you my “thank G-d” NOT friend…are simply one of the more visible expressions of. Scotty and those who voted for him or Lauren for that matter, will never be CURSED to be like you, think like you, stink like you…whether in TIME or ETERNITY! Funny thing is…ORTHODOX don’t even consider you a JEW…you are a fake…a fraud…a rejector of that which Hashem revealed through Moses…remember him…the ONE you will be judged by in the Spirit World when YOU pass over? He condemned “contemporary”…after it was resurrected from hell by those he led out of EGYPT…after he came from having a confrontation and revelatory experience which brought forth the Ten Commandments etc…and his reaction to what JEWS LIKE YOU decided to embrace? Oh…excuse me…I forgot…Moses…the “fairy tale”…is just that for fake Jews like you…the ones that would sell out Israel even…Jews who use African Americans for PROFIT…Use the “R” word to denigrate American Indians…..double standard of hypocrisy…Rushfield style i.e. Snyder. 

Subject: Hey Rich

you need to get out of the big sewer that you call home and see whatkind of music america likes you retard .. 

Subject: Opinion

Hello, in my opinion, you are at the very least, a “PINHEAD”. Many men and women have severed and died for  this country for  people to have free speech. My late father once told me: ”People might think that you are stupid and ignorant, unless you know what you are talking about, keep your mouth shut and don’t prove them right”.  It is once again, my opinion, if the shoe fits wear it.  Bill

Are you craving the intimacy of the Hampshire classroom experience, but demand a supercharged, 3-day line-up of great minds on the subject of food, farm, and sustainability?

(sent by my alma mater’s alumni office)

:

Spiders Suffer from Human Impact

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2011) — Researchers from the King Juan Carlos University (URJC) have carried out a research study published in Biological Conservation, which looked at whether spiders were more tolerant of human impact than other animals. The answer was no: arachnids suffer the consequences of changes to their landscape just like any other animal.

“The abundance and number of spider species is negatively affected by the impact of many human land uses, such as habitat fragmentation, fire and pesticides,” Samuel Prieto-Benítez and Marcos Méndez, researchers at the URJC Biodiversity and Conservation Department, said.

To which I can only say, bravo humanity.  You’re finally doing something right: screwing things up for the spiders.

Anyone who has studied the matter can tell you, spiders are not gentlemen.  This is not one of these cases where we hate a creature just because of how they look.  No, in the case of spiders, one can say their loathsome appearance is a true manifestation of their inner beauty.   If a spider was invented to be a character in a Dickens novel, he would make it look exactly like a spider.  

And I don’t want to hear about all the other ugly insects they eat.  While I’m glad to see those insects destroyed, when you think about the way spiders commit their foul murders, I won’t be a party to that.  Thank you but no, while I still have a little dignity left, no.   And don’t tell me about the food chain or the fragile ecosystem either.  We’ll do fine without them.  Believe me, you won’t miss them for a second.

And Charlotte’s Web was a movie.  Grow up, people.

Dear Mr. Easton Ellis

In your , you noted that upon our meeting at an Academy Awards viewing party, circa  2006, I expressed disappointment upon learning that your supply of “Brazilian marching powder” as your friend Jay so wittily termed it, was exhausted.   

You of course speak the truth, sadness overtook my countenance when I learned this news but I thought I might take this opportunity to clarify its meaning for you.

When I saw yourself, the famed party boy of new wave letters at the event, I assumed you could only be there for one of four reasons:

A. To write another  cashing out on your former zeitgeisty legacy.

B. To make some “Oh, that naughty Bret” geriatric enfante terrible shock the bourgeoisie sweeping pronouncement, perhaps again about women’s place in the world. 

C. Or to supply us with cocaine.

Other reasons for your presence, I couldn’t imagine.

And so when I learned it was not to be C, I presumed we were in store for A or B, and I, as you noted, looked sad.

But it was great partying with you and hope we can catch up again soon.

Humbly yours,

RR (writing as Kirsten Dunst)

Presented without commentary.  From this weekend’s Finke box office round-up:

I was so convinced that this rare R-rated event comedy featuring women burping and farting for our female amusement wouldn’t make over $13M, even $15M tops, that I promised Universal Pictures chairman Adam Fogelson that I would leave Hollywood reporting forever ifBridesmaids did the $20+ million he thought it would. Well, I’ve called the moving vans because I clearly have no idea what works at the domestic box office anymore. (So you won’t have Nikki to kick around in the comments section. Say goodbye now…)  I couldn’t believe that this is why generations of women fought the feminist revolution: to ensure we had the same opportunities to watch our sex make the same raunchy movie stuff as men. I wasn’t alone. Tipsters told me that the studios weren’t touching any new film comedies that featured women until they saw how Bridesmaids did.

I’m starting a Deadline readers class action to demand she live up to her promise to Fogleson and leave Hollywood reporting forever.  Please join me.

This post at Business Insider pretty much suggests it is.

The author, Megan Angelo, writes, referring to the Gawker item which kicked off this week’s adventures in Nikki: 

“Nothing in Gawker’s piece reflects change. This is how Finke acts all the time. So far, it’s working for her – much like being direct, dogged and flagrantly irreverent works for lots of powerful men.

We see you rolling your eyes – don’t worry, we’re not going to rehash that whole argument. We’ll just say this: Tina Fey recently said that "the definition of ‘crazy’ in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore.”“

Which is to say, the only reason one could object to the tone in Nikki’s email, is of course, sexism because if a man wrote that identical email, everyone would say he was just doing his job and doing it well.

I don’t quite know where to begin with this so let me try:

• First of all, I don’t know Megan Angelo and don’t know what her knowledge of the Nikki ouevre may or my not be, but "direct, dogged and flagrantly irreverent” is pretty much the precise opposite of what Nikki and her methods are.  She is rather:

• Dishonest (her lies on the firing of Maria Russo I present as Exhibit A in that case.  Exhibits B - ZZZZ available at google.com or furnished upon request),

• Lazy (her “scoops: are rarely the result of pavement pounding gumshoe reporting but rather handed to her on a silver platter by someone powerful to further an agenda, knowing that Nikki will print the leak unquestioned).  They are press releases or underhanded attacks gussied up under Finke’s aegis and disguised as news.

• Thin skinned and humorless.  This is a woman who when a reporter friend of mine retweeted a link to an item I had done about her, not only sent him a screaming, rage-filled email, castigating him for A RETWEET, but who cc’d the reporter’s bosses.  And that is all in a day’s work for her,  the least she has done.  The idea that Nikki who flies into screaming rages at the first hint that anyone is questioning her importance is irreverent is just a bizarre notion, and no offense to the author of this piece, I don’t quite see how someone could have read that email where she unprompted trotted out having sat near Howard Fineman as political credentials, could be seen in any light as irreverent.  Famously humorless would be the term juste you seek!

• There certainly is plenty of sexism afoot in both entertainment and journalism, and I’m all for calling that out when we find it.  I’ve done so myself now and then.  However, this ain’t that.  People hate Nikki, not because she is female, or because she’s female and powerful, or female and brash; they hate her because she operates first and foremost with a disregared for the truth that has made generations of journalists’ jaws hit the floor in amazement.   And that in her misperception of what journalism is, she masks carrying water for the powerful as telling the  truth.  Show me a male entertainment journalist who does anything on a scale remotely comprable and I’ll start up HenryLeaks or BernardLeaks or whatever their name is too.

• While sexism is certainly a huge part of the industries I’m involved in, within entertainment industry reporting, the majority of the people at the top of the ladder more often than not seem to be female.  Kim Masters and Claudia Eller come to mind.  And I’ve never heard anybody call either of them crazy or dishonest.

• If you really want to defend women in showbiz and in showbiz journalism, there is no one who has made it her business to tear down women in both those fields, generally in astoundingly personal terms, more than Nikki Finke. (take this piece on "the obnoxious Lauren Zalaznick” for instance).  There are few female reporters in Hollywood who have not been on the receiving end of a Nikki: “Why this journalist is worthless” screed.

• In the end, my definition of “crazy” in a journalist is when you start to mistake yourself with your audience, when you start to think of yourself as important over and above the story you are writing;  when you say that someone who doesn’t return your calls or give you a story before you competitors, spits in the face, not of you, the researcher, but of your readers. Any person in high authority owes the public they serve or service enormous respect.  They owe the free press as a whole the same.  They owe us gumshoes as individuals nothing but the scorn we should return amply to them.  And anyone who forgets that, male reporter or female reporter, has crossed over to JJ Hunsucker land.  And “crazy” is an apt description of that journey.

Yesterday, we ran some thoughts on Gawker’s blockbuster release of a fabulous document of unhinged mayhem, Nikki Finke’s email to a bunch of studio people going nuclear over a very mildly stated note taking issue with a recent item from her site.

In my response to the Gawker piece, I asked why the studios did not show a bit of backbone now and then and refuse to deal with her, finally putting an end to her reign by depriving her of sources.

My thoughts brought the following response from an employee at one of the major studios who granted me permission to post his or her words but for obvious reasons, asked not to be identified.  His point was that the huge majority of Nikki sources are at the agencies rather than the studios.  The response continues as follows:

There really isn’t anything to do other than for studios to threaten to rescind offers, fire, etc. the clients they are leaking about.  Or discuss the sensitivity of leaking such information with the heads of the agencies, but it’s that typical Hollywood kabuki theater, in that no one wants to call anyone else out on their shit for fear of making enemies – it’s all so fragile and silly.  Worse yet, it’s so easy for agents, etc. to do it because you have a rapt audience of reporters more than willing to protect them in return for their currency, which is negligible most of the time.  

As a reporter at the Hollywood Reporter and an editor at Variety recently told me,  because of Nikki, they feel they have to be “assholes” to studios because that is what gets her stories, but when I brought up the issue with agents, et al leaking the information and noting how all these outlets credit the agencies and management companies (essentially rewarding them), when leaving them out would punish them, they both said, we need to get on their good side so they give us scoops. So the thinking is punish the studios, but suck up to the agents, managers, publicists even though the former is usually not the guilty party.  So yes, I blame the people covering the industry just as much as I do the people who suck up to Nikki because they are openly sinking to her level rather than rising above it and setting a different standard.  The irony is one can only deal with so many bullies before you say, fuck off…and I think people reward Nikki because she is the original bully and the others are just pretenders to the throne.

This note I believe makes an important point, which is Nikki is operating now in an atmosphere where the wheels really have come off the cart in terms of accuracy, context and basic ethical standards being part of the world of entertainment journalism.

Nikki is fed by agents and managers who give her very narrow self-serving, possibly inaccurate information to serve a narrow agenda.   

All this would be easy to debunk and put in its place if throughout the rest of the industry, accuracy, context and ethical standards still meant anything.  But from high to low, entertainment reporting has become a stagnant swamp, staffed by people who can’t take the time to understand the basics of what they are writing about.  On the one hand, the larger “consumer” press has, for all intents and purposes become a branch of studio marketing (and that goes everywhere from US to the NY Times and every junket-happy website in between).  On the other hard “industry” reporting became so complacent and remote from its readers, that it is still trying to wake itself up from its coma to chase after this new-found, Nikki-led threat of people who will post any half-baked unconfirmed rumor or leak from an agent or marketeer and call it news. Or “Exclusive” news. 

All of which is to say, our studio friend’s point is well-taken.  If there was a vigorous, vital entertainment press, Nikki’s brand of Toldja journalism and disgraceful lying and bullying would not matter much to anyone.  But from fetid swamps will monsters arise.   Which doesn’t mean that swamp creatures don’t need to be stopped before raze the city to the ground.

So support the NikkiLeaks project and send your swamp creature horror stories and emails today! 

As seen on Gawker.

• First, the dismissed Maria Russo referred to in item 3 is a good friend of mine and my former editor.  I try not to use the word “lie” too much, since the word gets a pretty good airing in our culture without my help.  But Nikki’s claim that she had nothing to do with her firing and knows nothing about it is a capital L Lie.  Not a mistake, an error, or a different perspective. It is something she knows not to be true and says it anyway.  I am confident that in the near future documents will emerge to support that. In the meantime, if Nikki would like to sue me, as she has long promised she would, for saying that, I’m ready - and psyched! - to meet her in court.

• The fact that she would lie so blatantly about something so provably untrue tells you all you need to know about how seriously you should take her as a “journalist.”

• The letter at the top of the post perfectly captures the Finke method: misunderstanding, self-pity, unhinged rage, stupidity, titanic grandiosity, bullying, laughable grasp on the issues she’s dealing with.

• Studio people to whom this was addressed: It is because you and your people cooperate with her and her site that this continues and she is able to treat people this way.  Why not just grow a hint of a backbone and say, we’re done with you. We’re done,  crazy. 

• And while you’re at it, forward more of these emails to me.  The Nikkileaks project is getting underway.

• Hollywood, what must the rest of the galaxy that we take such a mediocre nutjob at all seriously here?  But every industry gets the reporter it deserves…

• That said, has she ever actually gotten anyone fired even once?  She has threatened to many that she will, but I haven’t found a case where it’s worked.  She causes people heartburn, insult, annoyance, forces them to suffer slander.   She threatens to sue everyone who disagrees with her (an odd predilection for an alleged journalist) but in the end, it would seem she can’t find any lawyers to take up the cases. She has made thousands of assistants cry, but in the end, it would seem she is mostly toothless.  

• Which does not make it okay.

• People will oft tell me, when I talk about how crazy she is, that they equate that craziness with fearless, and thus her unhingedness suggests to some that it makes her an effective saber of the little man in Hollywood.  If only that’s what she were, I’d like her nuttiness too.  What I find truly revolting about Nikki is that in the mask of defender of the working stiff spends her time carrying water for powerful, including trashing their enemies in unvetted invective.   When she lashes out at them, its rarely for the crimes against humanity that for which they deserve to be lashed, but crimes against her, like not giving her a piece of casting news first. 

• My favorite part of the email: I sat next to Howard Fineman!  How dare you question me?!

• And finally, as ever I close with a question to zillionaire Jay Penske who has put millions in Nikki’s pockets and continues to bankroll her terror campaign, how long will you continue to allow all this to happen in your name, and your corporation’s name which she invokes constantly?  This isn’t just Nikki Finke doing this, this is on you buddy.

So I’m not a Donald Trump fan, at all.  Not even as a TV host.  But the specter of the DC/Hollywood fancy peoples inviting him to their prom and then proclaiming they had put him in his place, sent him fleeing for the exit after mocking him to death, is at least 90 percent grotesque.  

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want any President Trump and think his so called campaign has been preposterous buffoonery (which generally is my favorite kind) but if he is to be put “in his place” I don’t want it to be done by the assembled powerful and mighty of journalism and politics and showbiz, wearing tuxedos and their finery and toasting each other (when they are supposed to be keeping an eye on each other) and sending this vulgar interloper running back to his tawdry little cave.

I mean, I’ve seen enough movies to know how that ends, when all the soc’s get together to mock the loser…what happens when Carrie comes back to the prom… If I were the DC establishment today, I’d be bragging a little loud about how they “killed.”