Wait, what?

I adore kids, but I loathe stupid helicopter parents who overindulge and spoil their kids.

I've found that briefly, sternly, but politely telling a misbehaving child to be quiet and behave almost always works (too bad their odious parents can't be bothered to do so first). Not a single one of these bad parents has ever had the chutzpah to confront me afterward -- if they've passive aggressively reacted, I have honestly not noticed because I was too happy to be able to return to whatever I was doing, in peace.

Totally agreed that they've rewritten him as crazy rather than mentally handicapped. To much funnier effect.

Having said that, the racial cluelessness of 30 Rock is one of its qualities that never quite sits right. I try not to think too hard about its representational politics in general, or I'd have some serious qualms about, say, the fabulously successful family woman Tina Fey lampooning single women as sexless, pathetic sub-Cathy caricatures. I enjoy the show enough to suspend my disbelief.

Just checking, and it looks like almost none of Foxymorons is archived, even in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine... That's really a shame.

Heh true.

I would like him to have a grander exit (so to speak) -- give him a chance to go out with a Lexi Featherston bang.
[youtube R85m76_cfyc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R85m76_cfyc youtube]

Aw, I still enjoy it. Though if I had my druthers, I'd get rid of Debra Messing's whole treacly family storyline, as well as, obviously, the execrable Ellis (who does not even make a good villain), and I'd put Ivy front and center. Uma Thurman doesn't bother me, since her character is supposed to be ridiculous. I only resent her for gobbling up what should be Ivy's screentime.

Oh also, apparently Willam from Rupaul's Drag Race filmed a scene that never made it to broadcast, and that tragic error obviously needs to be rectified.

The single thing I've enjoyed about the Gawker relaunch or whatever is that Denton has been quite active in the comments. Here he is replying to me about past incarnations of Gawker. I'm not a Nick Denton groupie, so maybe he's talked about his memories of past Gawker eras elsewhere, but I've never read it before. There were some surprises, for me. Thoughts?

Solomon Grundy @Nick Denton
How do you remember past eras of Gawker? Wistfully? Derisively? Or like a necessary experiment leading eschatologically to the greatness of today? What would the Gawker of Choire Sicha or Emily Gould have to say about the "our pet videos are better than other people's" Gawker of today?

Nick Denton @Solomon Grundy
If I remember right, even the Gawker of Choire indulged in some web populism. During his tenure, Alex Balk's most popular post was an embedded video of a kid getting hit by a skateboard during an impromptu performance in Times Square subway station.

Solomon Grundy @Nick Denton
Lol, so you remember previous eras in terms of which articles got the most views. Well, that makes sense. I was just curious if you were at all nostalgic for the erstwhile Gawkers, as far as the content or brand.

Nick Denton @Solomon Grundy

Okay, here's what I miss...

Elizabeth Spiers' parenthetical wit. Her web punctuation was pioneering. Serious argument leavened but not undermined by witty asides, clearly marked as digressions.

Choire Sicha's tone. He was the ultimate blogger. Seemingly revealing and personal, actually completely opaque. Introduced the Yes? to instant messaging, passive-aggressive and non-committal and uniquely his. Speaking of instant messaging, Choire's chats were even more him than his text.

Alex Balk? That skateboard video and his liking for British politics. But that's about it. I never got the obsession with Balk. He was always too bleak for me.

Jessica Coen's epic burn of Joe Dolce on her last day on the job. I spent her goodbye party reading the comments. I've always loved a writer who'll say the unsayable. That's why I was always fond of Brian Moylan.

The drama of Emily and Josh. It was theater. Messy from an HR perspective. But entertaining, even after both of them were working elsewhere.

Matt Haber's encyclopedic knowledge of media history, even though that proved a rapidly depreciating asset as print media itself became history.

And I could go on. But I need to deal with other questions! Later.

brotherparish @Nick Denton
Would you list three things that Brian Moylan said that no one else would?

Nick Denton @brotherparish
At least three of the subheads on The Secrets Gay Men Don’t Want Straight People to Know.

brotherparish @Nick Denton
You thought those were "unsayable"? Maybe people don't bother to say them because they are about at the level of "Water is wet."

Nick Denton @brotherparish

I disagree. I think most writers avoid the unsayable either because they're afraid of dismissive comments like yours, or because they're afraid of violating one of the tenets of political correctness. Many of the most unsayable things *are* that obvious, at least to insiders. The emperor has no clothes. That's the best of all stories, because readers nod and say: finally, someone said it. Except for those like you, who'll say: "Oh, but everybody can see that the emperor has no clothes. Why does that little boy need to say it? Silly little boy."

brotherparish @Nick Denton
"Gay men love to bottom" is not equivalent to "The emperor has no clothes." There was a cost to saying the latter: It was subversive, and disruptive to the power structure. It shocked people. The former statement was a childish attempt to be shocking. And showed how sheltered Brian is, that he thought straight people would be shocked by this stuff.

Lol OK. I just never read his stuff any more because he's always writing about random crap. I'll trust your judgment that he can write knowledgeably about media...

Heh OK, but my boyfriend is a non-supervisory state employee who's always complaining about how lazy his colleagues are, and how he has to do everything while they joke about calling their union rep. And I'm in a (non-governmental) union myself... I would respectfully suggest that Canadians might not be able to even conceptualize how insanely lazy and entitled average Americans can be. We are just the worst.

But agreed with your basic response to DB.