In The Life of Samuel Johnson, Boswell describes the hero having fled the room while someone was reading one of his old works aloud—“and somebody having asked him the reason of this, he replied, ‘Sir, I thought it had been better.’”
Memory has always been a shaky witness. But writing was checkable, to one degree or another. There could be differences of taste or opinion, but there was the text lurking, waiting to settle the question. If you told someone else a piece of writing was good (or gorgeous, or moving, or persuasive), that claim would have to survive the other person’s reading of it.
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Suddenly, via YouTube links, those lost moments click back into view, as if a telegram from your great-grandfather were showing up in your e-mail.
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The Internet left writers more exposed than ever. If you were published from the mid-90’s onward, you ended up in a text-based panopticon: At any time, someone, somewhere, could conceivably be reading something you had written. No longer would people have to go to the library to find old arguments and past errors. Every few months, I get an e-mail from a reader responding to something or other I wrote eight years and three jobs ago. Thanks to a retroactive Web-archiving initiative, a college intern from last summer could crack wise about something I’d written as an undergraduate myself.
Video had always been more elusive. It defeated secondhand reports; a critic might describe a scene, but the moving image was unquotable. The original moment was transformed by the telling into something else—probably something funnier or more original or more shocking.
But now the moments—all the moments, even the ones thought lost—have begun looping back around for public inspection. You can relive the bubble-gum commercial wars of the 80’s (they even call them the bubble-gum wars on the Web). You can test which sketch-comedy shows hold up (SCTV, yes; The Kids in the Hall, not so much).
These opportunities represent, in part, a surprise victory for library science. As we plunged into the digital age, one of the great fears was of format obsolescence: People would throw out old-fashioned paper in favor of electronic archives, only to suddenly find that they had all the works of human knowledge stored on five-and-a-quarter-inch floppies and nobody was making floppy drives anymore. But with Web video, people are raiding their personal, inaccessible stashes of VHS tapes, winding through them till they find the important bits, and transferring them from a near-obsolete medium to a current one.
So TV’s past is being clipped and replayed and distributed by anyone with a computer, to anyone with a computer—the professional TV product mixed in with home videos and Webcam feeds and amateur animation. There are too many video sites to keep track of: Google Video, Veoh, iFilm, Evtv1, Gotuit, blip.tv.
YouTube, though, is the one that everyone talks about, even if they’re talking about the other sites. It has the grab-bag quality the good sites had back when the Internet was exciting. It keeps getting busted for copyright problems and throwing out the problem content, as people paste up more and more new stuff.
The other sites may have their advantages: better-synchronized sound and video, cleaner pictures, more violence and nudity than the scrupulously PG-13 YouTube offerings. YouTube, though, is the phenomenon; YouTube is the one the New York Post reported was being bandied about as a billion-dollar property, even though (or because?) it has no discernable revenue model.
It has even already begun acting out the Web-downfall script by being undermined and co-opted. This summer, marketing and publicity took off around video of Mentos dissolving in Diet Coke to make violent fountains—an established Web-vid genre, like parking-lot car-drifting videos. A YouTube competitor, Revver, staked its claim on public attention with the most elaborate Coke-spout clip, and Mentos bought ad space.
YouTube stands as the opposite of old television because, above all, it’s easy. It doesn’t demand that you install a player; it doesn’t crash your browser. It embeds in blogs and plays there, freely.
What it does, then, is break the synchrony of television. It makes television work like text. Last month, on the 20th anniversary of Len Bias’ death, newspaper let me down. The Baltimore Sun had no stories that described the Bias I remembered, the basketball player before he became a cocaine casualty. So I went to YouTube. And there he was, alive if a little blurry, on the court at No. 1 North Carolina, making the greatest sequence of plays I’d ever known: burying a shot, then flashing to steal the inbounds pass, rising up and—with the assurance of a man who did not know what limits were on a basketball court—dunking it, two-handed, in reverse.
APRIL 30, 2006 BY ANNA SCHNEIDER-MAYERSON
Mrs. Spitzer Suits Up
Attorney Silda Wall Never Counted On Becoming—Eccch!—a Candidate’s Wife
LAST WEEK AT THE CONTEMPORARY photography gallery at Christie’s, an Elizabeth Montgomery look-alike named Silda Wall took the podium before a polished mix of lawyers, Wall Streeters and politicos. She wore a crisp cream-colored shift and slingbacks, and her honey-brown hair was set in a perfect Samantha flip.
Meanwhile, her husband—ruddy-cheeked, handsome and working his way through a glass of white wine—stood joking near the bar with an old friend, playing the cheerfully obedient spouse. But his presence was hardly incidental, to this or any other public or private evening in Manhattan these days at which the couple turns up. Ms. Wall’s husband of almost 19 years is Eliot Spitzer, outgoing state attorney general and the favorite to become the next governor of New York. And many of the deep-pocketed minglers gathered that night at Christie’s had helped fuel his surge to the top of New York politics.
The couple had been married for six and a half years when Ms. Wall gave birth to their third daughter, Jenna, in May of 1994. A week later (or before—neither can remember), Mr. Spitzer announced that he was running for attorney general.
“This was not something that I had anticipated,” said Ms. Wall. “Certainly not at this stage of life, with the children at the ages that they are. It was not my expectation that Eliot would be running for office. So I had to process that.”
“I don’t think Silda had ever expected that I would be in politics or government in an elected capacity,” Mr. Spitzer, 46, said, calling from his cell phone two days later. “And frankly, that’s because I had never anticipated that that was the direction my career would take. At the end of the day, the most important point was that her conclusion was: If I wanted to do it, it was necessarily the right thing to do. Because she didn’t want the dream to be unfulfilled. Win or lose, her attitude was: If the passion is there to try it, you’ve got to try it.”
MAY 21, 2006 BY SUZY HANSEN
BROOKLYN CIVIL WAR: IT’S NORTH VS. SOUTH, RATNER AGAINST LEDGER
JOHN FLANSBURGH, OF THE band They Might Be Giants, was on the phone. “I have mixed emotions about ‘fabulous’ Williamsburg,” said Mr. Flansburgh, 47, who has lived in that neighborhood for over 20 years, watching as bars and boutiques began to choke Bedford Avenue. “It’s quickly becoming a life-size replica of St. Marks Place, and honestly, I’ve never wanted to live on St. Marks Place.”
None of the elite streaming out of Manhattan and over the pretty bridge to the mirror world on the other side want to live on St. Marks Place. But what do they want exactly? Brooklyn isn’t a united front. The North Brooklyn of do-it-yourself fashion and vinyl siding (Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick) just feels separate from brownstone South Brooklyn (from Fort Greene to Park Slope). South Brooklyn is rich and pretty; North is rougher-edged and moody.
“I’m firmly committed to the notion that there’s an unbridgeable divide,” said a 27-year-old Bushwick resident, who explained that he even feels this way about “literary-minded, quasi-hipsters” like himself who live in the nether regions of the Hills and Slopes and Heights. “I’ve always felt deeply uncomfortable in Park Slope. And for everything that’s hateable about Williamsburg, I have this feeling that they’re my people.”
Of course, all of gentrified Brooklyn is s
omewhat similar. It’s mostly white. It’s mostly partial to some form of indie rock. Refugees from small colleges like Vassar and Wesleyan may trudge North; shiny Ivy Leaguers could prefer the South—but the bottom line is that they all attended fancy colleges.
Southerners reluctantly fork over deceptively low salaries for DVF dresses and Paper, Denim, Whatever jeans; Northern chicks would rather jump off the Williamsburg Bridge than wear something they didn’t iron on themselves.
But they all care a lot about what they wear. So why can’t they get along? It might be that development, from Ratnerville to waterfront condos, threatens the borough’s beloved low-rise lifestyle.
The gentrifiers are being gentrified.
Gotham Gothic: Judi and Rudy cotton to the red states
Illustrated by Victor Juhasz
Clockwise from left: Marla Maples, Ivana, Ivanka, Donald, Jr., Donald, Melania and baby Barron
Illustrated by Drew Friedman
JULY 10, 2006 BY GABRIEL SHERMAN
Us Editor Janice Min Dictates: In Raw Times, Jessica, Jen, Jolie
“THE WHOLE AGE OF THE SOFT interview is gone,” Janice Min said.
Ms. Min, 36, is approaching her third anniversary as editor of Us Weekly. She ascended to the job in July 2003, the same month that George W. Bush, savoring a quick and tidy army-on-army victory, dared Iraqi insurgents to “Bring ’em on.”
Ms. Min has had a better three years than Mr. Bush. Circulation has doubled, to 1.75 million. Since January, Us—“the Newsweek of celebrity,” in Ms. Min’s words—has pulled in some $107 million in revenue. Rolling Stone, Wenner Media’s flagship, which makes room for war and politics, has made $70 million.
“It’s not a pick-me-up to read about American soldiers getting beheaded,” Ms. Min said.
Ms. Min, a onetime reporter for the Reporter-Dispatch in Westchester County, was cheery and matter-of-fact. On June 5, the magazine had put out its best-selling issue ever, with Janet Jackson on the cover: “How I Got Thin: 60 Pounds in 4 Months!”
Magazines are magazines; either people read them or they don’t. And people want—at this moment in history, when American Idol outdraws the evening news 7 to 1—to read Us, with its flurries of exclamation points, its snappy captions, its photos of the famous on the hoof with the franchise slogan: “Stars—They’re Just Like Us!”
And who cares to read a soft piece about one of us? Us deals in escapism, but an escape into drama and conflict—human-shaped conflict, if not exactly human-sized. The plot lines are coupling and uncoupling, childbirth and divorce, recounted with cynical affability and enthusiasm for minute detail. “Entertainers are themselves the entertainment,” Ms. Min said.
“I guess in an era when probably politicians and many people [are] wishing people would be involved in the Iraq debate, you know, people are more interested in debating did Jen Aniston get the shaft?”
JULY 24, 2006 BY LIZZY RATNER
Brave New Boutique: Baby Sex Selection Sold On East Side
LAST WEEK, BRITAIN’S HEALTH Minister Caroline Flint announced plans to ban the brave new reproductive practice known as elective gender selection. Raising the specter of a slippery ethical slope, she warned that it could usher in a new era of gender inequality and, newspapers reported, “designer babies.”
But while the Brits were digesting this sad news, the story made barely a ripple across the Atlantic. In America’s high-tech baby capitals, the thorny but potentially lucrative business of choosing a child’s sex was chugging away as merrily as ever.
A controversial West Coast fertility pioneer named Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg was finishing a license application to open up his first satellite office in the heart of Manhattan’s Baby Belt.
“Everybody’s saying, ‘Open in New York, open in New York!’” said Dr. Steinberg, who already runs clinics in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Guadalajara, and who estimates that from 5 to 10 percent of his sex-selection patients come from New York. “We’ve had a huge demand from Europe, and there’s a lot from New York…a lot from the Upper East Side and quite a few from Queens.
“It’s about convenience for the patients,” he said.
OCTOBER 2, 2006 BY HOOMAN MAJD
Mahmoud and Me
Ahmadinejad’s Wild Week, by His Translator: ‘I Heard You Sounded Great!’ Meet the Wife; Asks for Michael Moore; Big Dinner at Hilton
ON TUESDAY, SEPT. 19, THE DAY OF HIS NOW-FAMOUS speech, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad entered the General Assembly at the United Nations and sat down with his foreign minister and the Iranian U.N. ambassador. He waved in my direction, and I waved back. Me and Mahmoud, I thought to myself.
I had seen the text of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech before he’d even arrived in Manhattan on Monday, Sept. 18: I was his interpreter, or at least his English voice, at the U.N.
My father was an ambassador under the Shah, and I’ve spent most of my life in the U.S. After a career in the entertainment industry, I had written about President Khatami for U.S. publications and made contacts within his government. That experience, along with my credentials as an apparently trustworthy Iranian, led to my invitation to be Mr. Ahmadinejad’s translator, and to attend some of his public pit stops, as well as an Iranian-only (and media-free) celebration at the Hilton. There, I thought, I’d glimpse the real Ahmadinejad.
His speech used the simple “man of the people,” anti-intellectual language that Mr. Ahmadinejad is known for, and was translated expertly. Any nuance would be in Mr. Ahmadinejad’s tone or body language, neither of which I would be able to reproduce from my booth overlooking the General Assembly.
Nuance in Persian is difficult to translate, but it can be most misleading—sometimes comically so—during interviews with the American press. When Brian Williams of NBC asked about Mr. Ahmadinejad’s attire—a suit rather than his trademark windbreaker—the Iranian president replied, “Sheneedem shoma kot-shalvaree hasteen, manam kotshalvar poosheedam”—which was translated as “…you wear a suit, so I wore a suit.” The phrase is actually much closer to “…you are a suit, so I wore a suit.”
And when Mr. Williams asked if he wanted to see anything else in America other than Manhattan, the president’s response was yes. Pressed for details, Mr. Ahmadinejad stuck firmly to generalities, but also said, “Albateh, esrary nadareem,” which was correctly translated as “Of course, we’re not insistent.” But the meaning was closer to “Of course, we don’t really care.” While Mr. Ahmadinejad thought America might be interesting, it’s apparently not that interesting, at least to him.
Perhaps Mr. Ahmadinejad just didn’t want to tarnish his revolutionary credentials by showing overt eagerness, but the president neither ventured to any Manhattan landmarks nor expressed a desire to do so. Instead, limited by his special visa to a 25-mile radius from U.N. headquarters, Mr. Ahmadinejad spent most of his first day less than a mile away, ensconced in his suite or in meeting rooms at the Intercontinental Hotel on Lexington and 48th, which had been turned into a fortress. Midtown Manhattan through the tinted, bullet-proof windows of a government-supplied limousine is just about all that Mr. Ahmadinejad has ever seen of America—other than his rides to and from J.F.K., which have been under cover of darkness.
COCA LEAVES AND CHADORS
The Tuesday afternoon before his speech, President Ahmadinejad didn’t seem particularly concerned that he was missing both a luncheon given by Kofi Annan (the fact that wine was being served may have had something to do with his absence) or President Bush’s own highly anticipated speech at the U.N. Mr. Ahmadinejad and I spoke briefly about his own speech, before he was whisked away by his minders.
An hour later, I made my way to the floor of the General Assembly and sat on one side, flanked by two Iranian diplomats and facing Evo Morales of Bolivia. I was more than a little nervous. I fought the temptation to ask if I could have my picture taken with the Bolivian head of state (which would have been a certain hit with some friends) and, since I was in the midst of a nicotine fit, to al
so ask him if I could bum a coca leaf or two. (He later brandished a leaf during his speech.)
Anxious, I decided to take a walk around the hall and came across Mr. Ahmadinejad’s wife, milling about in full black chador, protected by a lone female Secret Service agent. I knew that she, unlike the wives of previous Iranian dignitaries, had accompanied him on his trip. It would have been both un-Islamic and rude of me to approach her, so I watched as Mrs. Ahmadinejad made her way to a row of seats off in one corner behind the podium to wait for her husband’s speech.
Attendance was curiously sparse, perhaps because of the evening hour and the fact that the speech was being carried live on CNN. The Iraqi delegation, however, was in full attendance. Presumably they were not willing to offend their true patrons.
Illustrated by Victor Juhasz
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I began to sweat. The realization hit me that whatever I said would be heard the world over, and all I could think of was Ronald Reagan’s infamous “We begin bombing in five minutes” quip into what he thought were unplugged microphones.
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I began to sweat. The realization hit me that whatever I said would be heard the world over, and all I could think of was Ronald Reagan’s infamous “We begin bombing in five minutes” quip into what he thought were unplugged microphones. I had no intention of veering from the text, but it was both tantalizing and terrifying to know that a few extra words here and there would create headlines and headaches across the globe, if not land me either in Gitmo or Evin prison in Tehran.
In fact, I remember little of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech or my reading of it; I was far too busy concentrating on listening to him in one ear, checking where we were in the text, and watching him out of the corner of one eye. After the address was over, I was stopped by an African U.N. security guard; he begged me for a copy of the speech, saying it was the best thing he’d ever heard. I had left my copy behind in the booth. The Iranian diplomat with me promised him a personal copy on Islamic Republic of Iran letterhead.
The Kingdom of New York: Knights, Knaves, Billionaires, and Beauties in the City of Big Shots Page 61
