3.2000. The treatment of Patrick Ewing. I have loved this man since his guest spot on Webster. I love that he got an art degree at Georgetown and actually uses it. I love that he paints and helps art centers for children. I love that he leads a quiet life off the court. I love that he is one of the few NBA players who has the brains to see what a fast one the owners pulled during the lockout. It is preposterous that the owners locked the players out and then made it appear that the players were too greedy. Pay people what they're worth, buttpipes. If the players had listened to Ewing, had a little more backbone, and comported themselves as he did--you know, commenting intelligently on the actual issues presented by the lockout--they might not find themselves taking salary hits all the time so their teams can afford to sign other players. More than this, though, Ewing always played his hardest, always carried a team of journeymen farther than they had a right to go, and always took the blame for any failures--even when they weren't his. The Knicks are going to go down in flames now that they don't have anybody who is going to: a. rebound, and b. take the fall for collective fuck-ups. We'll see how chummy the rest of the team is when they don't have anybody to blame next time they tank. I hope Ewing leads the Sonics to domination.

NOTE: I am compelled to do something unprecedented: I am retracting an outrage. It's not that I somehow now think the Knicks were in the right, it's that I no longer can work up outrage on his behalf. I don't demand a lot from my preferred celebrities--they don't have to be good or even merely faithful husbands; they don't have to stay out of strip clubs; they don't have to consort exclusively with wonderful people. They do, however, have to NOT get "comped" fellatio from strippers as a gift from extortionists. It's a reasonably low bar, yet he did not clear it. Sigh. I hate losing people I can admire, or at least root for.

7. Ongoing. Salma Hayek. Okay, I admit she's hot, but can anybody name a movie she's been in that didn't suck? Her filmography is like a car accident--54, Wild Wild West, Dogma, From Dusk till Dawn. The closest she came to being in something good was having Cartman imitate her on an episode of South Park. How many stinkers do you have to be a part of before either a. I get to stop hearing about you, or b. you take up modeling?

Editor's Note: This opinion is unchanged by Frida. Julie Taymor made some interesting moves, but Salma Hayek remained distressingly bad. I knew this movie was her baby, so I went in willing to believe that for her "role of a lifetime" she would give a convincing performance. Alas. Great that she grew a monobrow and all, but she still stunk.

10. Ongoing, especially the 2000 election fiasco. Chris Matthews. I know that the airwaves are clogged with bombastic egotists, and that political commentators/hosts are the worst of all. But this guy is a whole new world of intolerable. For those who don't know him--and he's not really important, just self-important, so there's no need to feel embarrassed if you are unfamiliar with him--Matthews is host of MSNBC's Hardball. A sample of his prose:

Spend some time in the Oval Office, and you will find it much like any other office, much as the Congress is like other large, complex organizations. There are friends and enemies, deals and reputations being made. And there are gladiators, people who keep score by the body count around them. Once you learn the rules, you will have the street smarts not only to survive the world of everyday politics, but to thrive in it.

Intelligent readers will, from this passage, readily discover the first problem: the man's a moron. I spared you a great many clichés by keeping the quotation that short, but his resorting to the always-atrocious gladiator comparison tells you all you need to know. The title should clue you in to the second problem, reeking as it does of ludicrous and illusive machismo. This is the man who phrased his call for authority in the Florida mess as, "Who's going to be the daddy?" Decide for yourself which is worse in a man who presents himself as so politically savvy: that he didn't notice or care what a ridiculously sexist statement he'd made, or that his own attempts to "be the daddy" on his show consist exclusively of interrupting and yelling at his guests. He can neither hold his own in a debate nor allow another to express an opinion. Always, when a guest, whether a conservative economist or the editor of a liberal magazine, tries to explain a view which--shocking!--implies a belief in something beyond personal advantage, Matthews puts on this sarcastic smirk and interrupts. I think I'm as cynical as anybody, but even I acknowledge that some people believe in what they're doing. Even the most calculating, slimy players choose a side, and I'd wager that in the majority of cases there's a reason they do; politics is hardly the only vocation for the power-hungry and manipulative, and certainly not the most lucrative. Just because Chris Matthews is incapable of demonstrating an interest in anything but his own weak attempt at being John Wayne, doesn't mean everyone else on the planet is as limited.

11. August 30, 2001. This friggin' album review. No, my problem with this review isn't that it's negative about one of my favorite artists. (I've linked to worse reviews that I felt were coherent and defensible; besides, I think this reviewer actually means to be positive.) My beef is this: the writer, Ben Sisario, takes a simple assignment--critique a new album--and tries to make a great "state of the music industry" statement out of it, complete with pompous opening. "Pity the male singer-songwriter . . " GAG!

This review should have discussed the new Freedy Johnston album, and offered praise, criticism, and applicable comparisons as warranted. Instead, the writer tosses off a few sentences about the album and then tries to bitch and moan about what he perceives to be differing benchmarks for male and female singer-songwriters. (I'd also like to note that Sisario's exposition of two of the three songs he bothers to cite is completely, obviously WRONG. Did he listen to the album at all? Or is it hard to discern even the most straightforward lyrical content when one's head is in one's rectum?)

I wonder: did it ever occur to the writer that PJ Harvey had one semi-hit ("Down by the Water") in roughly the same period Freedy Johnston had his ("Bad Reputation"). Did he perhaps think that the subsequent failure on both of their parts to dominate radio, despite producing solid work, had more to do with a general trend toward dance-pop/idiot frat rock than some sort of alt-rock affirmative action program?

Another point: does this guy know Liz Phair et al, and not know Freedy Johnston? No? Then why do they get familiar and diminutive first-name treatment and not him?

I don't even like all of these artists, yet I find myself compelled to defend them along with the artists whose work I do enjoy; it is not necessary to like Alanis Morrissette in order to be offended by stupid, sexist crap being hurled at her. Her music is not about absolute self-reliance, or overstatement, and it is not successful simply because she's a woman. Maybe--I know I'm getting crazy here, try to bear with me--other people like it? For perfectly legitimate reasons?

It depresses me that somebody is making a living as a music critic who would lump such different artists as PJ Harvey, Ani DiFranco, Liz Phair, Sarah McLachlan, and Alanis Morrissette into one category based on the fact that they all have uteruses, and then demand pity for the male singer-songwriter. Bite me. I'll pity the male singer-songwriter when somebody gives me a reason beyond, "Men are better at it! For real!"