Category / Media

by Edward Champion

People with Mental Disabilities Are Not Your Online Playthings

Talented writers are often exploited by media outlets, often at the expense of their own mental health. This practice needs to stop. We need empathy and understanding, not exploitation.

On February 14, 2024, The Cut published an essay by Emily Gould. A few people forwarded it to me — perhaps because of my own checkered history with Gould, a history for which I feel great shame and deep regret about.

Presumably, a few of these people hoped that I would snark it up.

Well, I can’t. It is absolutely impossible for me to do so in any way after reading that essay.

Aside from the fact that Emily Gould is, like all of us, a human being, there’s also this to consider: I did wrong. Significant wrong. Tectonic-plate shifting wrong that has largely (and perhaps rightly) been perceived as unforgivable.

I am not asking for forgiveness. But because I have done wrong, it is my duty and my responsibility to address Gould’s essay. It’s important for people to know and fully understand exactly how the New York media world openly exploits people with mental health issues and how we perceive people on social media through these hideous fishbowls that only intensify the pain that they have to live with. They did it to me. They have done it to so many other people with Everest-sized hearts and stratospheric talent. They’ll continue to do it to others.

Right now they’re doing it to Emily Gould.

And that is absolutely wrong.

I have to put my foot down.

Enough is enough.

It is morally indefensible to leave Emily Gould so open and vulnerable to vituperative comments and attacks that she should not be reading right now.

Emily Gould is a human being who needs help. It’s truly that simple.

I attempted to leave a version of the below essay in the Cut comments, but, rather predictably, the New York Magazine people censored me. I’m honestly not surprised. Online hate is the only currency they have to recoup their investment on whatever vilely picayune amount they paid out to Emily Gould for her essay. This whole business of exploiting someone’s worst demons like this is a deeply sickening and repugnant three-ring circus that only grows worse as so many media outlets cut more jobs.

Here is the goddamned truth. I will not be able to sleep tonight if I don’t say what I have to say — which is probably not what you are going to expect from me. So here goes.

* * *

In 2007, Emily Gould put up a vicious post on Gawker in which she defamed me. I had made a splash as a quirky literary journalist with some reach. I was literally living hand-to-mouth and Gould was savage and merciless, ridiculing me as I was desperately trying to collect a check from a deadbeat editor to buy food. I later learned that Gould had been planting seeds of gossip about me on the literary cocktail party circuit.

Seven years after Gould’s post, I went through a significant mental health crisis that went terribly public. The same thing that’s happening with Gould’s essay. I was unwell, much as Gould here is unwell.

While reading this essay, I misted up several times, recognizing patterns of self-delusion that I believed in when I had my breakdown. You see, when I went through my own mental breakdown, I should not have been writing publicly like some monkey dancing for other people’s amusement in a zoo. At the time, I had the wrong friends, the wrong partner, and the wrong support group. I should have removed myself entirely from the media/literary circuit and asked for help and forgiveness. I did not do that. Instead, I went full-bore self-destructive, much like Gould here. That’s the great cruelty of mental illness: you truly and stupidly believe that you are invincible and you often refuse to acknowledge your own wrongs. Even when you are unknowingly and uncontrollably hurting people. (I feel so bad for Keith and the kids.)

I wrote an extremely vicious and completely unacceptable article about Gould that I still feel great shame about to this very day, that I again apologize for, and that I wish that I had never published. This piece was seized upon by the very rumormongering crowd that Gould ran with. It only served to exacerbate my crisis and erode the good will and high caliber offerings that I had spent years building up. When I returned with my podcast in an attempt to “reclaim” myself (like Gould here), Gould helped lead a hateful campaign against me and, in a now deleted tweet, expressed her great hope that I would kill myself. And it helped to push me over the edge, leading to an uncontrolled drinking binge, a suicide attempt, my hospitalization, six months of homelessness, and a long article with a substantial number of completely untrue and unverified stories about me that I still have to answer to nearly ten years later. Anyone who knows me in the real world knows who I am. Anyone who has never met me believes I am something else: a cartoonish villain that has been created by the media industrial complex. I am absolutely certain that there is a similar disparity between the Real Emily and the Media Emily. And I was absolutely wrong to perpetuate any notion of Emily Gould as a cartoon.

I have read Emily Gould’s essay three times. As someone who has been through the wringer and who has cleaned himself up, I am asking all of you to back off here. Please do not speculate. Please do not condemn. Please do not judge. You do not know Emily Gould anymore than I do. This is only going to make things worse for Gould, her family, and her friends.

Empathy. That’s what I’m calling for. Gould has the same problem I had: spill all your problems into a major public forum, get attention, but never entirely address the true underlying problems.

Emily, if you’re reading this, I urge you — as a fellow depressive who has no ill will towards you, who forgives you, and who apologizes for any harm I have caused — to keep your demons private and to not allow any editor to exploit your pain and depression for mercantile gain. And if you think you can’t do it, I’m telling you that you can. I got off heavy drinking. I got off cigarettes. And I was highly accomplished at both of those forms of slow suicide. I’m now in a happy relationship and I am a father figure to two lovely kids. And that matters more than any “fame” I once had or any infamy I now possess in spurts. Live. Be humble and grateful. Take care of yourself. That’s more important than being a writer. I urge you from the bottom of my heart to live the best and most peaceful life you can. We only go around this merry-go-round once and you, like anyone, deserve the best ride imaginable.

2/14/24 PM UPDATE: The exploitation of Emily Gould’s mental disability for financial gain appears to be much bigger than I initially estimated. Publishers Lunch reports that Gould will apparently be publishing a book version of her bipolar year with Avid Reader Press. Presumably, the essay featured in The Cut serves as a precursor. Gould’s original Twitter account was suspended — for reasons unknown. But she is still going strong with a Twitter account sanctioned by New York Magazine.

2/15/24 UPDATE: While I quietly unpublished my 2014 essay about Emily Gould (and its attendant comments) last night, my understanding is that some people are still able to access it through a Google cache. I respectfully request that you do not read it or track it down. There is no reason to cause any of the parties further pain or grief. Let me be clear: I fully renounce the ugly words that I wrote in 2014. It was a colossal mistake and I again sincerely apologize to anyone who I had ever hurt. Thank you.

by Edward Champion

Can WNYC’s Toxic Work Culture Be Cured?

Instead of living up to its vital duties as a local center for news and innovation, under the inept leadership of Audrey Cooper, WNYC has transformed into a Game of Thrones hellscape where rolling heads, constant standoffs, and kangaroo courts are now the norm.

Ben Smith’s May 23rd column in the New York Times has painted a juicy yet troubling portrait of a flagship public radio station grappling with some serious Game of Thrones vibes. Hubris-fueled superstar hosts have been peremptorily shitcanned and accused of throwing pity parties. Faceless producers who toil long hours have been significantly mistreated. The human resources department has become WNYC’s answer to the small council of Seven Kingdoms, with complaints begetting further complaints and radio veteran Fred Mogul serving as public radio’s Tyrion Lannister. A sacrificial lamb in a kangaroo court.

Despite the fact that it’s a common practice among journalists to use and attribute Associated Press copy to flesh out a story — particularly when they are staring into the barrel of an intense deadline — Mogul, an eighteen-year veteran who was never properly investigated, was ratted out by an editor and fired by Audrey Cooper, WNYC’s editor-in-chief since last July.

Cooper, a white woman who was hired despite repeated calls for diversity, is the Cersei Lannister of 160 Varick. Embarrassingly, Cooper had scant knowledge of New York public radio before accepting the job. In Smith’s column, one gets the sense not so much of an experienced professional who once led a newsroom, but of a nervous grad student doing a lot of late-night cribbing in a dorm room subsumed with fumes from the bong. Her lack of transparency in relation to Mogul’s firing to Smith, complete with her touchy-feely West Coast bromides (“It’s totally OK to be sad.”) in response to an inequitable fall of the axe, hasn’t inspired confidence. But it did result in a complaint on Sunday, filed by the WNYC union, from the National Labor Relations Board, which accused Cooper of waging a “coordinated and aggressive campaign” against internal critics. When you’re less than a year into your job, and you’ve failed to quell preventable conflicts, one must rightfully ask how the person in charge fell upward. And then one recalls the hideous legacy of Gaius Caligula.

Bob Garfield — the co-host of On the Media — was also perp walked to the chopping block. We may never know the full reasons for why he went aggro. But it was a paradigm-shifting moment that, whatever your feelings for Garfield, truly stunned most WNYC listeners. It appears that The Takeaway‘s Tanzina Vega could be next. Because stress levels are high at WNYC thanks to the pandemic, any once pardonable reaction to unprecedented working conditions can now now categorized as “abuse” or “bullying” by a nimble underling hoping to stab his way to a less thankless position. Even Radiolab, once among WNYC’s crown jewels, has been ravening for a breakout episode after a shaky and awkward host reshuffling following Robert Krulwich’s retirement. Adding insult to self-injury, WNYC has also failed to acknowledge diversity — both among its staff and in its coverage. Back in 2018, Gothamist was bought by WNYC. But Cooper has proven to be so tone-deaf about New York voice that she has even ordered Gothamist‘s reporters to be less critical of the New York Police Department, failing to understand that Gothamist has, in many vital ways, filled the shoes of the long departed Village Voice.

When Cooper was announced for the editor-in-chief gig, the New York Public Radio press release announced that she would be “a change agent with a track record of modernizing a newsroom’s staff to make it more representative of the community it serves and make it work in new ways to serve that community.” Cooper initially did not understand why universally loved morning show host Brian Lehrer was popular. But when you read the word “modernizing” in any press release, it’s usually code for ridding an operation of its more experienced old school innovators. Among the fourteen staffers led to the guillotine in late April were people who weren’t afraid to take a stand: All Things Considered producer Richard Yeh, Allie Yeh (thankfully now working on a project with Kaitlin Priest), and veteran Gothamist journalists John Del Signore and Christopher Robbins.

It’s also clear that the long-running scabs from recent years (sexual harassment and abuse allegations from Leonard Lopate, John Hockenberry, and Jonathan Schwartz — all fired) have been roughly and abrasively ripped off. Under Cooper’s failed leadership, WNYC is bleeding more profusely than the Red Wedding guest list. Without a significant course correct — and this appears increasingly unlikely to occur under Cooper — one wonders if WNYC can even be healed at all.

by Edward Champion

In Defense of David Denby

In an effort to liven things up, New York Magazine has assigned Adam Sternbergh, the snark practitioner who cut his teeth with Fametracker, to review David Denby’s Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation. I don’t believe the subtitle is fair to the arguments contained within the book, but I can understand why some marketing type at Simon & Schuster included it: controversy drums up sales. And controversy, particularly the unthinking and tendentious variety that is on display in Sternbergh’s review, drums up attention.

As someone who has actually read Denby’s book, and as someone who has indulged in snark from time to time, I find myself in the strange position of defending Denby. Sternbergh’s “appropriate response” completely misses the point of Denby’s thesis and Sternbergh, in his efforts to persuade us of snark’s great glory, unintentionally reenforces Denby’s argument.

Denby does not, contrary to Sternbergh’s claims, argue that snark is “humor as a vehicle for cruelty.” Denby states at the beginning that he’s “all in favor of nasty comedy, incessant profanity, trash talk, any kind of satire, and certain kinds of invective.” And he concludes his book on the same note, urging readers and writers to commit “vituperation that is insulting, nasty, but, well, clean.” If one must be vituperative, Denby hopes for writing along the lines of Gore Vidal’s evisceration of Truman Capote in his 1976 essay, “Some Memories of the Glorious Bird and an Earlier Self,” in which Vidal’s carefully worded insult (labeled here as “high snark”) takes into account specific biographical details about Capote. In Denby’s view, this follows quite naturally in Juvenal’s tradition. And even he cannot resist this.

Nor is Denby “rehashing the arguments mounted against irony.” It is indeed irony that Denby is championing. Denby brings up Stephen Colbert’s infamous 2006 appearance at the White House Correspondents Dinner, writing:

I don’t think the jokes are Colbert’s best, yet the event is still a classic of comedy and of citizenly virtue. Why? Because it’s not snark. It’s irony, an apparent act of kinship with the president that is actually a violent unseating of the president. (121)

But irony alone isn’t what Denby’s after here. He believes that good satire involves praising “some corresponding set of virtues, even if only by implication.” And in Sternbergh’s view, it is the “acid-tongued readers” who constantly complain that present “the best fans a culture could hope to produce.” While sarcasm and vituperation certainly have their place, and can be exceptionally potent qualities when a writer wishes to pursue a larger truth, I must again side with Denby here. Is it really “passion” that drives a writer or a commentator who is always sour? Or is there really nothing more than bitter resentment? What is the point of nothing more than nimble flayings if you are not fighting for something better?

Sternbergh also takes umbrage about Denby’s observation that snark “has too modest a rooting interest in artists actually succeeding at anything,” and insists that the contributions to Television Without Pity were “never, ever, disengaged.” But “disengagement” is not what Denby is identifying here. One can be sourly “engaged” when one is merely an “acid-tongued reader” too terrified to express anything joyful or marvelous about the universe. Denby’s wondering why some writers refuse to offer so much as a positive word. And Sternbergh, in his defense of TWoP, never cites a single example from the website in which its writers wrote something along the lines of, “That episode of Lost was fantastic. And the filmmakers should be commended for an intelligent script and taut direction.”

I agree with Sternbergh that Denby doesn’t quite identify where snark originated (but he does make a half-decent effort to pinpoint its contemporary roots at Spy Magazine), but the very irony that Sternbergh identifies as “a defense against inheriting a two-faced world” isn’t the issue here. Because the best defense in these cases is hardly an effective offense. As Denby observes of Spy‘s infiltration of Bohemian Grove, “The malicious rug-pulling was fun to watch, but there was also something creepy, parasitic, and fully meaningless about such minor invasions. Spy never did find out how power worked in New York or what deals between political and corporate honchos were struck in Bohemian Grove; it discovered only where power hung out and what its vulgar habits were.” While I disagree with Denby’s suggestion that pranksterism and tomfoolery fail to loosen minor realities which lead others towards a better understanding of how the world operates (computer hackers, driven by curiosity and mischief, force administrators to enact better security; Sarah Palin is revealed to be woefully unqualified by a Quebec comedy duo), he is right to point to a certain vacuity in many snarky experiments. You can read a website like Television Without Pity and realize that the people who write for it are wasting their talents drinking in nothing but the poisonous tonic of sarcasm. These writers have no desire to understand or properly rebel against the “two-faced world” that’s apparently so evil. Indeed, in TWoP’s case, NBC Universal snatched it up and this caused others to take umbrage at the distilled results.

This is the precise cycle that Denby identifies in Gawker (citing Vanessa Grigoriadis’s “Everybody Sucks”). The real motivations of these young snarky writers are to take the jobs of those within the mainstream. And just as Jessica Coen and Choire Sicha have moved within the gates, so too has TWoP. The “revolters” become the establishment. The founders flee their garret and get good jobs. And then they have friends, such as Adam Sternbergh, defending them at their new vantage point in the parapets. (See an archive of Tara Ariano’s articles for New York and an archive of Sarah D. Bunting’s articles for New York. Both were founders of TWoP.)

Sternbergh quotes Denby’s “lazy generalization” about people in the thirties and the forties being “in the same boat,” but he conveniently elides the sentences that follow:

But at the moment, the attitude is that there is no common boat, and that, if there were one, other people should be thrown out of it. Income inequalities and Rovian tactics that exacerbate ethnic and class differences have made for sandpapery relations or blank indifference, and snark serves not to break down the walls of loneliness and fear but to solidify them by servicing communities held together by resentment. This isn’t the place for economic and sociological analysis, but everyone knows there’s an infinite amount of anger out there.

Now, you could calmly point out Sternbergh’s almost total inability to grok historical context or his failure to challenge Denby on how snark “breaks down the walls of loneliness.” Or you could respond, “Sternbergh, you dumbass, have you ever read any fucking books about the economic and social conditions during the Great Depression or World War II?” Witness Sternbergh’s total disregard for (a) trying to figure out where Denby is coming from and (b) deliberately cutting off his quote so that Denby’s larger point about isolation is curtailed.

Denby is certainly not disputing how Peggy Noonan’s slip clips away at pores in the wall. His argument rests on how snark fails to puncture it. When Maureen Dowd, who Denby devotes a full chapter to, consistently shifts her messages or fixates on Al Gore’s mannerisms (which has nothing to do with political realities), he is pointing out quite clearly that the snarky response is not always the best response and that, without any corresponding set of virtues, it’s utterly meaningless to public discourse.

While there may be some truth to Sternbergh’s theory that snark may turn its volume down if people say what they actually believe, one is likewise struck by Sternbergh’s unwillingness to give Tom Cruise the benefit of the doubt. I’m certainly no Tom Cruise fan, but I’m not such a jaded bastard to view Cruise as a total enemy incarnate (particularly with true scum like Bernard Madoff swindling good people). Cruise has certainly made an ass of himself jumping on Oprah’s couch and the like. But like Denby, I’ve never met the guy. And I probably never will. For all I know, we might get along.

What I can address is Tom Cruise’s strengths and failings as an actor. That is within the legitimate realm of public discourse, because that is my relationship with Tom Cruise. I can likewise address, as Sternbergh suggests, the “draconian information control” that prevents Cruise from answering tough questions about his craft and perhaps growing as an actor. But what contribution does describing Cruise as “a smaller, yappy version of Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator” make to public discourse? How does it help us to understand Tom Cruise? It would be just as ignoble if I described Adam Sternbergh as a “third-rate David Caruso with a silly chin” (based on this photo) or Sternbergh describing Denby as “an Internet-age Andy Rooney” in his review. But what merit or thought do such descriptions have when we are considering thoughts and ideas? None whatsoever.

Denby isn’t asking us to keep our voices down. He’s asking us to reconsider how we use our voices. And unlike previous books that have railed against the Internet (recent volumes from Lee Siegel and Andrew Keen come to mind; Denby, for what its worth, dismisses the former), Denby is not entirely against the Internet’s possibilities for expression. And this is what makes his book more nuanced and more interesting.

He rails against anonymous trolls, but his complaints extend more to the anonymity behind the comment. Why go to the trouble to slander someone when you can put your name to it? (Easy. You divest yourself of responsibility.) He bemoans websites and blogs that don’t bother to check or corroborate information, but that insist that they’re doing a better job than mainstream journalism while they simultaneously declare that they lack the time and the resources to fact-check. (And to demonstrate that Denby is not an enemy of the Internet, he commends Talking Points Memo for its fact-checking.)

He also bravely reveals an excerpt of his own snark, to show that he is not above taking snarky potshots. Indeed, we’re all capable of it. That’s part of the problem. Do we lob Sternberghian spitballs at those whose arguments we cannot intelligently address? Or do we do so with a corresponding set of virtues in mind? Do we say something positive or constructive every now and then? If we work in media, do we close the gates to those who are just starting out? Or do we give these struggling voices opportunities and include them into the framework? Most importantly, do we siphon our rage into something that involves unexpected revelations about the world we live in? Just about anybody can fire off a cheap shot, but it takes a thoughtful individual with real guts to reveal the full scope of terrible truths. And to give Sternbergh the benefit of the doubt, I hope he reconsiders what pursuing these truths really entails.

by Edward Champion

David Perel: Fuckhead of the Month

Among the many media casualties on this Black Friday was Radar going down. I’ve been told that Radar staffers were asked to clear their desks by 3:00 PM and likewise asked to sign off on a voluntary layoff form. And as if these developments weren’t disgusting enough, editor David Perel announced on the same day just how happy he was to be on board. Perel, moving to Radar from the National Enquirer, had this to say to Mark Paretsky’s Cover Awards this afternoon: “I have already been contacted today by some top entertainment and news journalists who want to be part of this new venture. I am looking forward to putting together a new team that is the best of the best. We are hiring now!”

It’s possible that Perel is just too much of a fucktard to understand that writers and editors were being unmoored while he spoke these words. But surely even the biggest dunderhead in the media world could understand that any makeover into a TMZ competitor would likely involve laying a few people off. Perel’s total insensitivity to the Radar staffers who were let go earns him the rare honor of Fuckhead of the Month — never awarded to anyone in this site’s history!

(via Gawker)

by Edward Champion

The Early Films of Jim Henson

Before the days of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, Jim Henson was an independent filmmaker in New York, making experimental films between commercial gigs. It was the mid-sixties. According to John Bell’s Strings, Hands, Shadows: A Modern Puppet History, Henson was sharing a workshop space for a few months in the basement of a New York City library with a German sculptor and choreographer named Peter Schumann. Schumann specialized in avant-garde performances, entertaining crowds with masks, puppets, and postmodern dance, often employing these for political demonstrations.

In watching 1965’s “Time Piece,” seen above and recently unearthed by Metafilter, it’s difficult to consider it without Schumann in mind. The film played in New York theaters on a double bill with Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman and concerns itself with a man (played by Henson) being examined in a hospital. As the clock ticks away, a grand surrealistic array of experiential memories overtakes his existence. Gorillas bounce on pogo sticks. There is the quiet Kermit-like plea of “Help!” Chickens emerge in strip clubs. And all this is intercut with optically printed pixellated squares.

The film is set to a intermittent drum rhythm that echoes the heartbeat of time. What’s particularly intriguing is that, according to David P. Campbell’s The Complete Inklings, “Time Piece” so captured Campbell’s imagination that the film was shown at an a seminar at the Minnesota Statewide Testing Program annual conference, with Henson’s film projected on one screen and the test results of a random individual projected on another. The idea was to show Henson’s film, with Campbell announcing to the students, “We should always remember that there is a person behind each of these test scores; to make that point dramatically, here is one person’s test scores and here is a product of his considerable imagination.”This permissive cultural climate permitted Henson to make “The Cube” in 1969, a teleplay that independent filmmaker Vincenzo Natali appears to have handily pilfered from.

A protagonist, known only as “The Man in the Cube,” is trapped inside a cube of white rectangular panels, with strange individuals who enter and exit through other doors. This premise gave Henson the opportunity to explore a wide variety of topics: racism, sexism, the realm between reality and fantasy. There is even reference to the fourth wall. At one point, a professor addresses the man, pointing out that he is in a television play.

Believe it or not, “The Cube” was commissioned for a television series called Experiment in Television, a now forgotten program that aired on NBC between 1968 and 1971. This series came about because NBC needed filler material to provide late Sunday afternoon programming when the football season had ended. And they decided, quite amazingly, to provide a venue without commercials for documentaries and experimental films.

In the end, it was public television that secured Henson’s rise to fame. But today, unless you’re as squeaky-clean as Ken Burns, your prospects for national exposure are slim. Now that the first season of Sesame Street has been issued on DVD, it’s been issued with a parental advisory reading, “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” The idea of children running around an inner city, looking to learning as a way out, is apparently too threatening a concept.

Given this drastic shift in priorities — the unusual idea of commissioning an experimental film for a testing conference, the now antediluvian notion of creating a space on national television where filmmakers can pursue alternative ideas, and the censure on anything slightly offensive to “suit the needs” of children — one is forced to contemplate the current media atmosphere. Certainly, there is YouTube and the Internet. But this online landscape increasingly values views — and thereby advertising revenue — over notions that are not popular or lucrative, and one wonders just how tomorrow’s Hensons will thrive. Of course, any artist who feels compelled to create will not let any obstacle stop him. But by hindering the spectrum of expression with our priorities (what sells, what’s safe, et al.), I’m wondering if we’re closing the floodgates to those who might have new and innovative ways to get a mass audience excited about the world around us.