The FishbowlNY Guide to Blog Snobbery

From Kit Seelye’s article on the death of the traditional gossip column:

But [Liz] Smith said that the blogs left her cold. She says she reads six newspapers a day, but not the blogs. “I only have a few years left to live, and I don’t have time for them,” she said. “Besides, I don’t believe them.”

We’re inclined to think that’s not entirely true. We were still writing Gawker on April Fool’s day of 2003 and facetiously claimed to have installed a new editor named “Liz Smith” who immediately changed the Gawker motto from “if you can’t say nice things about people, start your own weblog” to “everyone is happy, pretty and smart in their own unique way.” The next day we recanted, claiming to have locked the fictional “Liz Smith” in the Gawker supply closet.

From Smith’s column, April 6, 2003:

“THE GAWKER Web site has me locked in a closet, wondering about my invite to Barbra Streisand’s birthday party. Hmm, don’t they know Babs doesn’t have a thing to do with me? I’m on her Z list, the last person she’d invite April 24!”

We’re flattered that she read the blog, but deeply saddened by the fact that she seems to have repressed all memory of us.

The whole thing reminds us of an exchange between Tina Brown and our predecessor at mediabistro:

Oxfeld: Do you read the website Wonkette.com? … the woman who runs Wonkette seems to despise you.

Brown: She really does. I mean…I regard it as unrequited love, I have to say. I see that kind of obsessive stalkerism as unrequited love. That’s the best way to look at it, what else am I to do?

Oxfeld: Thursday your column appears, and every Thursday she runs a column on Wonkette called I believe “Tina Translated,” I believe she calls it. Where she runs through half a dozen or so quotes from your column and gives translations of them. The translations of them are typically—

Brown: Do you know something, I actually haven’t read it.

Oxfeld: Oh you said before you did read it.

Brown: Well I’ve read a couple of times, but I don’t check in every week, I have to admit. I’m not as obsessed with Wonkette as she is with I. But hey, you know, tell me some, I’d love to hear it.

Oxfeld: Generally, she tends to find most of your, most of the lines translate into penis.

Wonkette has since appeared on Topic A, and there seems to have been an amicable resolution, but for future reference we’d like to offer the following:

The FishbowlNY Guide to Pretending Like You’ve Never Heard of the Blogs That Keep Mentioning You. If you’re going to feign ignorance, do it convincingly!

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