File under "internecene squabbles":

After criticizing Matt Taibbi's essay on Kurt Andersen last week, Russ Smith moves on to Taibbi's infamous Pope story:

after the ruckus created last week by Matt Taibbi's juvenile list of 52 reasons why the Pope's death will be funny, some common sense is in order. It's my suspicion that Taibbi, searching for a quick and easy column that would annoy the greatest number of people, and probably not wanting to miss a re-run of Seinfeld, dashed off his spectacular exercise in bad taste in less than a half hour, congratulated himself for being a clever dude and went on with his business—whatever that is...world-weary Matt appears headed for a long stay at the funny farm, and his latest effort would seem to nail that coffin shut, so to speak. So that much is clear: Click on Taibbi as a hysteric looking for cheap giggles and don't bother reading him again, wherever his prose turns up.

We're awaiting Taibbi's rebuttal, which will probably have a title (and implicit critique) as original as the previous ones. Like "Russ Smith: You're Old and You Suck."

Side note: between Jeff Koyen leaving, Pope jokes and whatnot, we haven't devoted this many brain cells to anything related to the New York Press in ages. What are they going to do for an encore?