empty-headed and ill-mannered

James Lileks gets to the core of media “bias”—and it’s got nothing to do with politics:

Entertainment Weekly [recently] ran the annual list of up-and-comers. For Morgan Spurlock, the wonderfully named filmmaker who did the “Supersize Me” doc, they used this photo:

[this is a close-up of the photo on Lileks's site --ed.]

He’s bare-chested, arms out in a crucifixion posture, a hamburger in each hand. It’s funny ‘cause he, like, ate Big Macs for our sins! Apparently it never occurred to anyone at EW how this image might strike someone who doesn’t look at religious iconography as a handy source of photo-shot ideas.

The person who came up with the idea didn’t know this would be offensive, or didn’t care. The photographer didn’t know, or didn’t care. The person who chose the photo didn’t know, or didn’t care. The editor who approved the section didn’t know, or didn’t care.

Actually, I think it there’s a likelier explanation: it was done deliberately, for that frisson of “transgressiveness.” Only, the folks who thought it up haven’t gotten the message yet: that “transgressive” is so 20th century.
Read the whole thing, including the backstory.

(via the extremely entertaining American Digest,

Wolcott’s been sinking lower on the NY Scribbler Food Chain for years. To revive his slumping significance, Wolcott has latched onto blogdom — probably because the initial plan of changing his first name to “Alexander” didn’t land him a lot of lunches at Michaels.

And how do you “rise” in blogdom? Pretty much in the same way you rise in the Lit’ry World of New York City — you get the attention of the Alphas.

Wolcott’s an old hand at sucking-up in the magazine canyons. His smarm is so well known, in fact, that it is rumored Graydon Carter dons a wet suit before taking even a phone call from Wolcott. But sucking-up is a mug’s game in the blogosphere where men like Lileks save the email for their columns and men like Reynolds are really in the realm of finite posts vs. infinite email stacks. For the Alphas of the Blogosphere, the Suckupathon never stops.

and originally linked by Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit, who directed me there with the irresistible link title “reverse suckupathon”)