Little (Whore)House of Horrors

Horror of horrors! That indomitable defender of civilized values and defenders of American righteousness, The New York Post, is being maligned by a disgruntled former employee for (gasp)… corruption!

For the same journal that declared Jesus to be a Republican because, as a carpenter, he was a small business owner to be accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks, of killing stories that might prejudice the far-flung business interests of owner Rupert Murdoch, for the paper’s editor to be named as receiving complimentary lap dances at Scores strip bar without even leaving a tip, for Page Six editor Richard Johnson to admit receiving envelopes filled with cash in return for plugging restaurants in his column – it simply reduces my faith in journalistic integrity to…A STEAMING PILE OF MANURE!

Oh, I had my doubts, to be sure. I always suspected that inside that inflated Superman suit of working class respectability there might lurk a loudmouth, drunken twit of a semi-literate screwball basket case. As my dear, departed mother once told me, “Insanity is in the blood,” and I long suspected insanity to be an integral aspect of The Post’s corporate family.

I’ve made jokes about the paper in this blog, but that’s because I didn’t want to confront the possibility that New York’s public opinion was being shaped by a bunch of lunar nut jobs. But between the discreet, middle class dysfunction of The New York Times, with its Ding-Dong School of Arthur Sulzberger, Judith Miller, Jayson Blair, Maureen Dowd and what-have-you, and the wildly bouncing-off-the-walls Murdoch Gong Show (we’ll just leave the largely irrelevant Daily News in its own rubber room for now), my heart went out to The Post. Unlike The Times, which thinks it’s an institution when it deserves to be locked up in one, The Post makes no pretension of being other than a Coney Island freak show of raw chicken-eating geeks, bomb-lobbing reactionaries, loudmouth fascist poseurs and wildly fanatical charlatans backed up by the best staff of sportswriters in the city. At least, with The Post you get fantastic baseball coverage and photos.

I have always maintained that all writers are whores, and The Post has kindly stepped up to the plate to illustrate my point. Look what you got here:

“Accepting [bribes and gratuities] was not only condoned by the Company but encouraged as a way to decrease the newspaper’s out-of-pocket expenses.”

“Post Editor-in-Chief Col Allen “had taken kickbacks and bribes, often in return for favorable Post coverage.”

Page Six editor Richard Johnson, who is a fanatical lush, known for drinking for free in every bar in the city, and current business editor Sean Garner receiving envelopes of cash from restaurant owners in return for plugging the eateries.

These items, published in The Post itself in order to be able to claim deniability before the rest of the news media get hold of them, are contained in a lawsuit by yet another former Page Six stringer who himself reportedly went unhinged and tried to shake down a millionaire celebrity with threats of negative press coverage. The reporter was fired and is now trying to shake down The Post. Oy vey!

I have my own problem with The Post. My former employer, Helmer Toro, tried to stick me with a $20,000 tax bill as part of his ongoing shenanigans with the New York State Department of Taxation. I couldn’t convince the Tax Department that I was Toro’s unwilling sucker and they were about to start proceedings to attach my paycheck. The only way out of it for me was to hire an expensive attorney and go to court, which I had no intention of ever spending even one nickel on this scumbag, Toro.

So I came up with the idea of exposing his whole scam to the newspapers, but I needed a hook that would interest them, so I composed a poem about Toro that called him a fucking stooge and an idiot.

Page Six loved the poem, which is a masterpiece of malevolence, and they ran with it, right at the top of the page. After that, Toro moved fast to get my name off his phony articles of incorporation.

The only problem is, lunatic scumbags that they are, The Post also blasted ME for having a vicious mouth, when all I was trying to do was to get this moron, Toro, off my back without having to pay an attorney.

Now, when you Google my name, up pops this Post item, like a herpes sore, calling me vicious and showing the poem that I wrote about a former employer. Never mind that all the other items about me are really tremendous fiction stories that I’ve had published by respected literary journals here and abroad, the only thing people see is this atrocious piece from The Post. With prospective employers more and more checking you on Google, it’s not helping my employment situation any.

What are you going to do? You live in New York long enough, things are going to happen to you. Back in the old times people caught the plague just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Today the plague is other New Yorkers.

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Posted on 5/18/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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