A typical "New Yorker" cartoon caption that you didn't write

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 top hat might say to an old-timey bartender rejected.

Adding insult to injury, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that New Yorker cartoon editor Robert Mankoff probably didn't even bother reading your very clever meta-joke ("I've heard of homonyms but this is ridiculous!"). Aided by his assistant and a computer program, Mankoff himself reads only approximately 100 captions a week.

If the caption comes from a Bloomberg email address, it automatically goes in the trash.

“Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America—not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to ‘redefine’ rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of ‘family’ and ‘marriage’ means.”

The head of the nation’s second-largest Catholic archdiocese and the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a man 60 Minutes had declared “The American Pope” only months before, felt himself staring into the abyss. And the abyss seemed to be staring back: New York was on the eve of voting in gay rights—at the urging of a Catholic governor, no less!—and his months of trying to stop it had come to naught. So he did what a lot of us do and vented on the Internet, seemingly resigned but combative nonetheless.

It was 9:26 a.m. on June 14—10 days, it turned out, before gay marriage would pass.

“But, please, not here! Our country’s founding principles speak of rights given by God, not invented by government, and certain noble values—life, home, marriage, children, faith—that are protected, not re-defined, by a state presuming omnipotence.” Bam!

Who was to blame for this absurdity? Who else?

“The media,” the archbishop typed, “mainly sympathetic to this rush to tamper with a definition as old as human reason and ordered good, reports annoyance on the part of some senators that those in defense of traditional marriage just don’t see the light, as we persist in opposing this enlightened, progressive, cause.” Bam, bam!

On June 18, Maureen Dowd, fallen Irish-Catholic, answered the man she calls “the starchbishop” in the world’s most influential newspaper: “In the same blog, Mr. Dolan snidely dismissed the notion that gay marriage is a civil right. ‘We acknowledge that not every desire, urge, want, or chic cause is automatically a “right,”’ he wrote. ‘And, what about other rights, like that of a child to be raised in a family with a mom and a dad?’

"And how about the right of a child not to be molested by the parish priest?"

Zing!

It can’t be easy being Timothy Dolan. Every time he tries to score a point for the Catechism—on women in the church, on abortion, on gay marriage especially—here comes the liberal media with its invocation of the epic Catholic clergy abuse scandal that claimed the well-being of thousands of victims, billions in church property and investments, and large chunks of the reputations of men like Mr. Dolan.

Even when he tries to do the whole Irish thing—talking and drinking, and talking about drinking (see the above clip of him, his predecessor, Edward Egan, and the governor at the Puerto Rican Day Parade in June); lots of back-slapping and references to his mom—it can’t seem to charm the likes of Ms. Dowd (who did not respond to an interview request).

There is a pattern here. Before being posted in New York, the archbishop was in Milwaukee, where in 2002, he succeeded Archbishop Rembert Weakland, an aptly named sport who, while fighting the claims of clergy abuse victims, carried on an affair with another man, whom he later paid off with $450,000 in church funds.

Mr. Dolan’s appointment was no accident. Mr. Weakland was an intellectual, the church’s version of a hierarchical radical, though pedantic and reserved per his calling as a Benedictine monk. The Times in 1996 called him “one of the most eloquent spokesmen for the liberal wing of American Catholic bishops, a frequent thorn in the side of the Vatican establishment.” The New Yorker five years earlier suggested he might be the first American pope, for real. Mr. Dolan, by comparison, was your uncle three hours into the Fourth of July barbecue—a smart man, a Ph.D. in church history, in fact, with fluency in Italian, but he didn’t come off as a know-it-all egghead.

“He seemed like a big shift from Weakland, who was more cerebral, a classical pianist and a hit with the East Coast media,” said Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Kim Kissinger, who occasionally covered both archbishops.

So Mr. Dolan, now enjoying his own papabile moment, hit northeastern Wisconsin like a bracing mug of Irish coffee. “What I can tell you is that Dolan had a meeting with reporters early in his time here,” Ms. Kissinger said, “and made something of a hit drinking beer and joking around. … Lots of jokes about the Brewers and the Cardinals.”

Reality, however, eventually overtook perception. Mr. Dolan spent a lot of his seven years in Milwaukee racing to the bottom on the crisis, keeping up the legal fights like his predecessor while begging forgiveness at every turn (though being more transparent financially), eventually settling to the tune of at least $26.5 million.

Then, in 2009, it was on to New York City, where the Vatican dispatched him in no small part because of his way with reporters (Time called it "a winning papal P.R. move"). The glare of the world’s media capital has, however, only accentuated the uphill climb Mr. Dolan faces against the news of the day. A few wisecracks might have charmed and disarmed them in the territories, but here? Not so much.

Most of the people who run this city and state agree with gay marriage (the mayor and the governor, for a start), as do a fair amount of reporters, whether they say so out loud or not. Railing against it as the celibate head of an organization inextricably linked in the public mind to rampant sexual abuse can’t be easy. How do you out-message The New York Times, after all? Especially from such a weakened position?

Mr. Dolan carries the additional crucible of succeeding the man Edward Egan succeeded. Where Mr. Egan was perceived as taciturn and aloof, the late John J. O’Connor was perceived—simply was—bold and savvy, gleefully combative during his tenure as archbishop from 1984 into 2000. O’Connor took on all comers, here and everywhere. This reporter, a former altar boy who grew up in Charlotte, remembers reading in the old Time magazine about his feud with Ozzy Osborne in the late 1980s, a fight over the interpretation of the song “Suicide Solution," wherein Mr. Osborne insisted that “solution”  meant liquid, as in the booze that killed a close friend, while O’Connor interpreted it to signify the ultimate trump card. (Those were the days.)

“In some way Archbishop Dolan is a throwback to Cardinal O'Connor in style after the mostly silent Cardinal Egan,” said Peter Steinfels, who wrote the Beliefs column in The Times for two decades and who is now the co-director of the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture. “Now, however, he has a blog to do what Cardinal O'Connor used to do with curbside comments or his after-Sunday Mass press conferences at St. Patrick's.

“I think Cardinal O'Connor's years in the Navy gave him perhaps a greater savvy about the impact of his remarks. When he wanted to stir up a brouhaha by tossing some red meat to reporters, he often did so in a premeditated manner. I am not sure about Archbishop Dolan.”

The loss on gay marriage won’t likely cow Mr. Dolan, though for now he appears to be laying low, perhaps wary and weary of the microphones. "There are no events planned for him to do any radio appearances, sit-downs with journalists, press conferences, related to the vote last Friday in Albany," a spokesman said in response to questions from The Observer about the media strategy in the vote's wake. "He spoke with the press [Sunday] morning, but has no other such events planned."

That impromptu press conference was outside St. Patrick’s after the 10:15 Mass (during which, he did not mention the Friday night rights). “I would have to say I was sad because it’s not good for the common good,” he told reporters, according to City Room. “I think society and culture is at its peril.”

Somewhere, Maureen Dowd started typing.

Video clip courtesy of Azi Paybarah at PolitickerNY.

Magazine owners on the redder side of budget sheets, however, harbored their suspicions. In a look at the civil war zone that's been the Harper's newsroom for the last 12 months, New York discovered that publisher Rick MacArthur may be jealous over the giddy lack of losses over at David Bradley's D.C.-based mag.

MacArthur's a bit of a Luddite. In an article published in his magazine last December he referred to the Internet as "a gigantic, unthinking Xerox machine" (A bit Ted Stevens-esque, no?) With this distrust of the Internet, it's understandable that a rival magazine's ability to wring money from the online world would rankle such a man.

And going by the article in New York, rankle it did!

When one staffer brought MacArthur’s attention to a recent New York Times article that stated The Atlantic was profitable this year because of its heavy investments in the web, MacArthur responded: “They’re lying. They’re a private company and they can say whatever they want.”

It looks like Harper's won't be poaching Andrew Sullivan to blog for them anytime soon.

Click for Scandal Report: Everything Will Be OK, Taylor Swift >>

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

In an article from November 1981: "A relative gastronomic backwater only 10 years ago..."

In an article from January 1990: "For years, well-traveled food mavens from New York and other gastronomic centers considered Washington about as provocative as a tax audit..."

In an article from March 2003: "The less than good news is that as in the rest of Washington, the number of mediocre restaurants remains high and the number of steakhouses -- four, and not one worth visiting..."

The catalyst that prompted this plea to end the bullying was a piece in The Times by Jennifer Steinhauer exploring the recent explosion of nostalgia-inspired menus about town, heavy on comfort food and lacking in the elevated taste New Yorkers take for granted.

"When they open restaurants, what they want, it seems, is not a crack at a Michelin star, but rather mid-level places where they could get food from their childhood, and attract residents who craved the same," the Times story explained. 

Then the beef gets serious. The Post lists a few restaurants that could stand up to a place in Manhattan, and even makes a tenuous metaphor likening the D.C.-loves-junk-food argument to political disaffection. So cute, Post! D.C. people are always doing that out-of-nowhere political allegory thing.

Anyway, instead of building a grandiose defense of Washington's restaurants, or at least its food culture, it falls back on that longstanding inferiority complex.

"We understand by now," the article reads. "You're better than we are. Your fashion is better than ours, your art is better and, of course, your restaurants are better. Washingtonians will forever cower in the long shadow cast by Gotham, nervously picking our nails and hoping you will like us one day."

Correct on all counts! Now can we go back to ignoring you, Washington Post? We're busy reading The Times over New York's unparalleled bagels, coffee, pizza, pastrami, matzoh ball soup, pretzels, falafel, dumplings, and all the restaurant food places in D.C. can't compete with.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

After Gawker posted 14 pages of Sarah Palin's upcoming book America By Heart, the former governor of Alaska tweeted about how such a post was "illegal." Her publisher, HarperCollins, sued Gawker to get them to take the photos down. And though Gawker seems to be fairly slippery when it comes to avoiding cease-and-desist orders, a judge ordered Gawker to remove the pictures of the pages and Gawker complied. A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 30.

Politico's Ben Smith has a roundup of several legal takes on the matter. It appears that despite Gawker's initial cavalier attitude regarding the matter - the original post told Palin to call her lawyers, confident that the law would side with Gawker - many experts believe that Palin is correct, and Gawker in the wrong.

Smith quotes from, among other places, a blog post by William A. Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law, which claims that Palin could ask Gawker and its head lawyer, Gaby Darbyshire, to hand over any and all material related to Palin that Gawker and its employees have ever produced. 

It's called discovery.  In a litigation your lawyers are entitled to e-mails, and all Gawker's internal documents regarding not only this theft, but you.  Because you will want to prove that their intent was to harm you and damage you, so everything they ever have written off-the-record, everyone with whom they ever have communicated about you, every strategy they have employed to take you down, now is fair game.

As The Observer wrote for a profile last July, Darbyshire might be "the glue" that holds Gawker Media together and consiglieri to Nick Denton, but perhaps she's outmatched this time around.

nfreeman at observer.com |@nfreeman1234

Turns out Murdoch might be in for a bit of a shock. The winning bid of $86,000 was placed by Media Matters for America, the liberal advocacy group with the mission to counter all things Rupert Murdoch. The group announced its victory in a press release that included a statement from founder and CEO David Brock.

I look forward to this opportunity to have a friendly lunch with Rupert Murdoch, along with five of my invited guests.  I will soon contact Mr. Murdoch's office to determine a mutually convenient time and place in New York. 

The auction's website, however, does state that the winner must go through a security screening and background check, making it possible for Murdoch to squeeze out of the potentially awkward small talk. But doing so would probably incite a firestorm over Murdoch's openness to conversation. We're thinking he'll bite.

So, David, keep us posted on the locale. We'd love to crash this little get-together!

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

From: Nick Denton 
Subject: We overtook Huffpo (temporarily)
To: edit@gawker.com
Date: Thursday, October 14, 2010, 11:14 AM

Well, the fuck thesis and the Favre scandal broke through. Even the ESPN commentators were forced to give Deadspin recognition during Monday night football.

The sites as a whole have brought in 9.1m people in the US in the last seven days. That's higher even than during iPhone week earlier this year. To give you an idea, here's how we currently rank against competitors also measured by Quantcast...

9.1m Gawker Media
8.7m Huffington Post
4.8m Drudge
4.2m TMZ
2.7m Time

Huffpo will probably take back the lead once the current stories fade. But hopefully we'll have a new lot by then!

Nick

The long-awaited New Yorker profile of Denton that hit newsstands last Monday included an anecdote indicating that relations with Arianna Huffington had gone sour. This was not always the case: a 2005 profile of Denton in The Observer depicts a party in his Soho apartment in which Huffington calls him the "Rupert Murdoch of the blogosphere."

nfreeman@observer.com

Twitter: @NFreeman1234

Hortense Smith at Jezebel called it "the cruelest profile I've ever seen in the Style section," deeming Horyn's takedown "condescending" toward one of this new century's most visible Garden State icons. In her take on the piece at Salon, Mary Elizabeth Williams called Horyn "that bitch from the paper of record" and went on to brutally attack the piece.

Horyn's [piece] neatly encapsulates everything most despicable about the Times and its cultural coverage — its snotty, keep 'em at arm's length, can you believe these people? attitude, the way you can practically feel the reporter holding her nose while she writes.

Now, in today's Daily Beast profile of Horyn, the fashion beat writer goes on the record about the vicious response to the article, which has racked up 800,000 page views. Naturally — given her history of fielding affronts from the notoriously whiny fashion industry she often tears apart in her writing — she defends everything the article said.

"I wanted to say to people 'read the article,'" Horyn says. "I described her as a silhouette and an icon by virtue of her pouf and her body shape. I've acknowledged her and her impact. But am I going to be tough with her? Yeah. I don't think people understood it, honestly, and I don't know what they expected to read."

The story does not, however, reveal Horyn's thoughts on Snooki's recent book deal. Perhaps she wasn't surprised, having predicted it in the Times story, complete with a acidic diss: "Snooki is trying to spin her image into Snooki-theme products and maybe a book, which undoubtedly she will never read," Horyn wrote.  

nfreeman@observer.com

Twitter: @NFreeman1234

Once its expansion is complete, Bloomberg Government will have 300 journalists and economic experts staffed in the nation's capital. Subscriptions will cost $5,700 a year, with government users receiving a discount.

Those who pony up for a subscription will be privy to, among other tools, vast amounts of aggregated stories, in-house analysis and research and a Congressional staff database. 

If the brash strategy works, Congressional Quarterly and National Journal — as well as places like Politico — won't be the only D.C. institutions to be endangered: lobbyists who are paid to provide government figures with this type of information may find themselves outpaced by this well-oiled hybrid of of news service and database tool.

Health care lobbyist Jean Higgens, for example, nervously joked that the service could render her job obsolete. “If I live outside Washington, this is a pretty big universe of information I pay a lobbyist to know,” she told The Times. “I guess I think at the end of the day a computer can’t take someone to Capitol Hill to meet a member of Congress. Until that happens, I think I’ll be O.K.”

Whispers of New Yorker staff writer Ben McGrath's forthcoming exploration of all things Nick Denton have been circulating since mid-summer, when he began to hit up many of the writers who have, at one point or another, worked under the blog baron.

But the McGrath piece in The New Yorker has yet to materialize. Michael Idov's piece in this week's New York hews close to past glimpses into Denton's soul. Idov's profile traces Denton's climb, from his falling in with a group of journalists deemed the "Young Chiefs" while at Oxford, to his time covering the revolution in Hungary for the Financial Times, to his bid for success in the start-up boom in San Francisco. 

The piece bears some resemblance to the 2007 Vanessa Grigoriadis cover piece in the same magazine that explored a past Gawker, one not as firmly entrenched in the media power structure as it is now. Despite the time gap, similarities between the two articles still abound; for instance, Idov mentions in his lede the Soho restaurant Balthazar, the very location that Grigoriadis informed readers was Denton's "unofficial office." The most notable difference, perhaps, is the fact that Denton seemed to have actually cooperated with Idov. Grigoriadis quoted mostly from the comments he left on Gawker posts. 

Presumably, The New Yorker has (had?) something along these lines in mind for its Denton profile. Hours after it went up on New York's website, Gawker founding editor Elizabeth Spiers took to her Tumblr in response. 

This is actually a pretty good Nick Denton profile. I almost wonder if it’ll scoop the New Yorker one. (Requisite disclosure: I talked to the NYer reporter, who I like and know, but don’t know well. And I neglected to call Michael Idov back after we missed each other via phone.) 

So, if McGrath really did reach out to so many people about Nick Denton, where is this mythical piece? Is it still on the docket, or has it been killed? And now that we have another old-media-versus-new-media article on Denton that ties together his Fleet Street past with his hankering for Balthazar bread, is another profile of the Gawker kingpin really necessary?