When Vogue invited Michelle Obama to do a cover story in early 2009, reactions from her staff illustrated the constant role of racial politics in the first lady's decision-making process, according to Jodi Kantor's new book, The Obamas. Read More
Robert Crumb, the alt-comic writer with a piggyback fetish, has always been ahead of his time. That's what made his comics--usually featuring giant Amazonian women with humungous thighs as a chronic masturbatory fantasy-- so transgressive to begin with.
But for all his former subversiveness, Mr. Crumb is pretty mainstream nowadays. Maybe not New Yorker mainstream though: Vice magazine unearthed a 2009 drawing from the cartoonist that was rejected by David Remnick's magazine. Though an answer was never given on why the cover wasn't run, Mr. Crumb suspects it was because the New Yorker was too afraid of offending people with the image of a (possible?) drag queen and a twee person of unidentifiable sex trying talking to a sweating official from the marriage license bureau, with a sign pointing to a "Genders Inspection" office next to his window.
Below, a high res image of the cartoon, which was discovered at the Venice Biennale in June.
Read More
On Wednesday The Hollywood Reporter reported that Twilight teen heartthrob Taylor Lautner had optioned a New Yorker story to be made into a small-budget movie directed by Gus Van Sant.
After the critical and box office failure of his first post-Twilight job, Abduction, the combination of the New Yorker and Mr. Van Sant lent the 19-year-old an instant aura of taste and gravitas, causing a spike in the Mr. Lautner futures market. Read More
In 1972, Gerard Damiano was a 43-year-old hairdresser from the Bronx with a cheap toupee and an opulent dream: to become the first auteur of hardcore. Over a single weekend, he wrote a script centering on the erotic act Humbert Humbert referred to as “a fancy embrace,” convinced local mobsters to kick in a couple bucks and started shooting. The 61-minute movie that resulted might not have had Godard shaking in his pantaloons but it did have a few things going for it: a cute title, an even cuter gimmick, and a leading lady who wasn’t the usual sex-kitten-cum-hell-cat triple-X vixen but a fresh-faced young moppet with an alliterative name and the most muted gag reflex this side of Barnum & Bailey. Read More
The Occupy Wall Street protest has had some legitimate backlash, include the personal American dreams on the 53 percent Tumblr, a reference to the 53 percent of Americans who pay income taxes. But there is a movement for a counter-protest simmering over on the largely OWS-sympathizer forum Reddit. "Interested in a OWS counter-protest?" the thread says, inviting "people who have unwrinkled business attire" to join an ironic supplemental protest in the spirit of "Occupy Occupy Wall Street," a development that reminds us of the Million Bunny March at Burning Man, which was protested by attendees dressed as carrots. Read More
Don’t let the warm weather fool you, we are officially in Fall season mode. You can always tell the changing of the seasons by the changing of the leaves, or at least by the changing of the hair colors of The Real Housewives of New York—which we anticipate will take place any day now in some of the city’s higher end hair care establishments as LuAnn de Lesseps and Ramona Singer reap the rewards of their cast-off cast members by doubling their salary. The two will now be getting $500,000 each to throw champagne in each other’s faces. Who says that there are no high-paying jobs anymore? Rather unbelievably, fellow New Yorkers, these are the 1%. Read More
Nancy Franklin announced that she is stepping down from her position as New Yorker television critic on Twitter today. "I've been a critic for 18 years, and a TV critic for 13 of them. That's a lot of sitting alone indoors playing with one's equipment," Ms. Franklin wrote the Observer in an e-mail. "I wanted to get out of Read More
If you've never had a winning submission to The New Yorker's cartoon caption contest, you're in good company. It took Roger Ebert 107 tries before coming up with a winning line, while other famous people such as Maureen Dowd, Michael Bloomberg, and Zach Galifianakis have also found their entries regarding what a pig in Read More
The New Yorker launched an iPhone app today that enhances the magazine's Goings On About Town (GOAT) listings with digital doodads like maps, GPS, links to buy tickets and contact venues, the option to filter by date, filter by location filters, and clip-and-save favorites, editor Ben Greenman announced today.
It also includes original text and audio from marquis New Yorker names like Alex Ross, Susan Orlean, Roz Chast, Peter Schjeldahl, Paul Goldberger, Calvin Trillin and Patricia Marx. The announcement suggests the New Yorker has found a way to offer a digital point of entry to the magazine without diluting the brand or sacrificing their subscription revenue. Read More
Certain rumors about Marcus Bachmann, husband to presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, have not gained much traction in mainstream-press publications' profiles of Ms. Bachmann, despite the best efforts of Dan Savage, Jon Stewart, et al. Ryan Lizza's exceptional New Yorker profile of of Ms. Bachmann, published today, outs Mr. Bachmann--as a confirmed oddball (what Read More
Did Nicholas Schmidle's New Yorker story "Getting Bin Laden: What happened that night in Abbottabad" give the impression that he spoke directly with Navy SEALS? Many critics think so, according to WWD. Guardian journalist Nick Davies thinks James Murdoch will have a hard time recovering, politically, from misleading Parliament, as he believes reports will Read More
In today's New York Post, a variety of scandals play themselves out (most prominently, the unveiling of the maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of rape), but the ongoing saga of Rupert Murdoch is dealt with only obliquely, and deep within the book. A Page 26 review of various magazines out this week deals first Read More
2003: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days: Kate Hudson plays a beautiful reporter for a lightly fictionalized Cosmopolitan called Composure. 2004: 13 Going on 30: Jennifer Garner plays a beautiful editor at a lightly fictionized, let's say Elle, called Poise. 2006: The Devil Wears Prada: Meryl Streep plays the imperious editor of a Read More
Foreclosure filings were down 19 percent in New York City last month and 35 percent compared to this time last year. But that could simply mean a cold holiday season for homeowners.
There were 1,466 foreclosure filings in the city last month, according to a report that came out today from Realty Trac. The Daily News Read More
Malcolm Gladwell is sick and tired of hearing about the way social media will change the world for the better. In a lengthy article this week comparing online activism to the Civil Rights movement, The New Yorker scribe belittles Web 2.0's importance as a tool for social change. "A networked, weak-tie world is good Read More
