Posted on 02/08/2005 11:42:28 AM PST by Liz
"How come you guys are such haters?" someone asked us recently. Shocked and insulted, we shook our heads. Our biggest issue thus far—last September's Best of Manhattan issue—was a compendium of positivity. On any given week we're founts of compassion: lovers, not haters; uniters, not dividers. Our Chelsea offices burst with fresh lilacs. We adopt kittens and support the arts. We volunteer in our communities.
Haters? You must have us confused with those monsters at New York Family.
When asked to elaborate, our detractor referred to last year's inaugural "50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers" issue. Almost a year after its publication, her impression of New York Press was still stamped by this feature. So a quick word about 2004's Top 50.
This list is not about hate. More like highly enriched concern. In defining the word "loathsome," we cast a wide net and caught all manner of frauds, blowhards and bloodsuckers. Sometimes the people displaying this behavior are representative of unseen forces and larger groups; other times they're self-contained symbols, their loathsomeness obvious.
By nailing these 50 men and women to the cross, aren't we making New York an even darker, nastier place?
Nope. Like the matter of the universe, loathsomeness can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only be more justly reshuffled. If you can't beat all the loathsomeness in the world, we figure, you might as well catalogue it.
One love.
THE EDITORS
50 Sofia Coppola Director
AN ART BIMBO whose daddy happens to be movie royalty rides in on the tired back of Bill Murray and is proclaimed a new film genius. The genius' film, Lost in Translation, is the most pretentious, overrated movie of last year, about an alienated Yale brat who feels so lonely in her five-star hotel that she strips down to her panties and curls up on the windowsill every half-hour (accompanied by My Bloody Valentine and Jesus & Mary Chain, just in case you didn't get how much pain she's experiencing). Even Translation's pretty palette and indie minimalism couldn't hide the empty dual core of Coppola and her Tokyo alter ego. L.A. can have her in 2005; this year the bicoastal princess of pout kicks things off at #50.
49 Bruce Ratner Developer
YEAH, IT WOULD be nice to have a pro team back in Brooklyn. It would also be nice if wings sprouted from our shoulders and we could fly like pixies. Wannabe Batman villain Bruce Ratner pays no heed to the heinous traffic mess a new arena would create for Flatbush and Atlantic Aves. He speaks nothing of the people forced out of their homes, nor of the enormous amount of public dough needed to fund his private enterprise, nor of the dozens of buildings being condemned at ludicrously undervalued prices—even as his nearby, failed Atlantic Center Mall depends on City Hall back-scratches to pay rent. A true visionary, Ratner can only see his multi-billion-dollar dream extending heavenward. The people of Brooklyn are just diorama props for investor display, pouring soda and serving hot dogs at minimum wage.
48 50 Cent Rapper
WHAT UP, GANGSTA? Look at you, up from the underground with mix tapes and DVDs in hand, riding the coattails of Jam Master Jay's murder into the TRL ether. We probably could have handled the Teen People cover, but the Teen People centerfold was off the cliff: You posed in a bulletproof vest for a glossy magazine aimed at 12-year-old girls. Did you know that the press release for your Grammy performance had you next to Celine Dion and Richard Marx? Time to go get fitted for a pair of MC Hammer pants and bring your act to Foxwoods.
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Numero uno - an ex NYer - Barbara Boxer.
MoDo
I thought everyone in flyover coutry loved NYers.
We can only choose 50??
Billy Jeff Clinton (transplanted New Yorker)
Bruce Ratner who commissioned a statue of the firemen raising the flag at the WTC......and changed the ethnicity of the REAL heroes who raised the flag that day.
I don't hate Boxer at all. In fact I'll be changing registration and voting in the California primaries in support of the BOXER/Hillary '08! ticket!!!
AAAAaaaarrrrggghhhhhh!
Hitlery Rodham Clinton aka the faux Yankee fan and wanna be New Yorker.... By 800 miles.
She should be in Sing Sing instead of in the Senate....
I call her the wicked *itch of the East (with Pelousy being the wicked *itch of the West).
She was my inspiration to leave the state of New York.
A-MEN!
Course me bein' a Ranger fan may have somethin' to with it.
Lovelovelove. Envyenvyenvy.
If I didn't have the golden opportunity to live in my car, I'd definitely move there as my second choice.
If you ever get the chance to register democratic, do so.Once you do you can get telephone surveys targetted to them where you can respond how bad they are, vote in and mess up their primaries, screw up their projected vote totals and demographics....There is no end to the fun you can have!
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