Celebrity blogger Virginia Postrel is writing a regular column for D Magazine, our local city mag. (I had no idea until I saw her byline that she lives only a few blocks from me. Back when I was a hyperpolitical teenager, I used to read her libertarian magazine Reason.)
Her political blog ranks up there with my fave, Mickey Kaus’ newly Slate-d kausfiles, and Josh Marshall’s TPM as far as blogs-by-opinion-journalists go.
Anyway, her column on downtown this month (and especially her dead-on takedown of the McKinney Avenue Trolley last month) are refreshing counters to the typical mess of economic development pablum usually serve up. If you’re interested in urban design and how cities become more vital places, she’s a good read.
And if you’re not interested in urban design and how cities become more vital places, well, while you’re at the D Mag website, you can hear Mark Cuban threaten to “come and slice your fucking nuts off.”
6 thoughts on “virginia postrel’s new column in d”
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Yep, that Mark’s a real sweetie. But you can’t really blame him for telling D to back off.
Really? I didn’t think D was that out of line. I don’t think an eight-inch feature on the new wife of Texas’s most eligible bachelor (and quite possibly Dallas’s biggest celebrity) is out of line. I didn’t seem to me that they were trying to dig up much dirt — just a few phone calls and some background.
Yeah, but we know how unbearably annoying the press can get, especially when it comes to celebrity personal junk. You can’t blame a journalist for trying, sure, but s/he shouldn’t get all freaked out when the celeb doen’t want to serve up his innermosts on a platter so D can sell magazines. Yet Mark could use a just a little more anger management therapy, wouldn’t you say? Or a hug or something.
Tim should also get a hug. A seriously big one. That guy handled this call as best as probably could happen, even getting another interview potentially lined up at the end.
I don’t feel sorry for Cuban. He’s purposefully made himself into a media hound. He puts himself into every story about the Mavs. He has his own TV show, for heaven’s sake! He’s not exactly a hermit living in a hillside cave. And from what I can tell, the reporter wasn’t trying to dig up something really personal, like:
WHAT WAS THE BEST PICKUP LINE A WOMAN EVER USED ON YOU? “Wanna fuck?”
WHAT’s THE WORST THING A GIRLFRIEND HAS EVER DONE TO YOU? She told me that she didn’t like the way I went down on her. But the learning how was good.
WHAT HAS BEEN THE STRANGEST THING A GIRL HAS ASKED YOU TO DO DURING SEX? This one girl wanted me to let her bite me while she was ……. I yanked her off so hard I thought I would get sued for causing whiplash.
Oh, wait…Cuban’s already volunteered all that.
For him to claim that publishing the name and a few meaningless details of his fiance’s life would expose some sort of security risk is absurd. If he was so concerned about security, he wouldn’t have purposefully made himself the celeb he has.
I don’t know anybody who feels sorry for Cuban, or even likes him for that matter. But for the reporter to keep saying, “Look, man, this isn’t my fault, my boss is making me fill this page” was very lilly-livered and hard to respect. If I were Cuban and could give an interview to just about anybody I pleased, I definitely wouldn’t give one after a request like that, especially not about my girlfriend. I could respect something more like “This interview would be really big for our magazine, since we’re about Dallas and you’re so big here” or even honesty like “Our magazine wants to make money off the personal life of celebrities,” which is what it really is. If that’s the essence of the piece, at least own up to your work and don’t act like some journalistic martyr.