Gawker, Oligarchs, Nate Jacobs & Newton's Third Law

Recently I was reading a long article about the 10-year "anniversary" of the fall of Gawker -- the early 2000s and 2010s NYC gossip blog that was known for being nasty, funny, and totally no-holds-barred in whom it covered and lampooned (including reporting on Harvey Weinstein's predations long before the rest of the media). As Chatgtp summarizes Gawker's history:

"Gawker.com was a highly influential American gossip and media blog founded in 2002 by Nick Denton. It became known for sharp, sarcastic coverage of media, politics, technology, and celebrity culture, especially focused on New York media insiders and internet culture.

Key things about Gawker:

• It helped define the “blog era” of the 2000s alongside sites like Gizmodo, Jezebel, Deadspin, and Kotaku, which were all part of the larger Gawker Media network.
• The site mixed investigative reporting with aggressive gossip and commentary.
• It became famous — and controversial — for publishing leaked information, embarrassing stories about public figures, and a blunt editorial tone.

The site effectively ended after a major lawsuit involving wrestler Hulk Hogan. In 2012, Gawker published excerpts of a private sex tape involving Hogan. He sued for invasion of privacy and won a $140 million judgment in 2016. The lawsuit was secretly funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, who had longstanding grievances against Gawker after it publicly outed him as gay years earlier.

The verdict forced Gawker Media into bankruptcy, and its assets were sold to Univision. The original Gawker site shut down in 2016."

When it shut down, Nick Denton wrote its last post called "How Things Work" about how wealthy and powerful people can abuse, lie, and destroy -- and get away with it. It's not unconincidental that a few months later Trump was elected president and the reign of the oligarchs -- Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, the Eillisons, and others -- began. And not since the Gilded Age has American government, media, and life been this corrupt and cruel, acting with impunity, treating everyone as either an employee or an enemy, absorbing or ruining everything and everyone in its way. 

Gawker spoke truth to power -- so naturally power destroyed it.

And yet ... Newton's Third Law of Motion still exists: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You see this in the opposition to Trump: the massive No Kings protests, the election results that are going horribly for his party, the surge of independent media cracking open the truth. 

Monsters and despots are eventually destroyed -- Caligula, Napoleon, Hitler, and countless others. 

I've watching the third season of the HBO show Euphoria. In the first two seasons, the character of Nate Jacobs (playing brilliantly by Jacob Elordi) is everything that's wrong with American men today: his large size, goodlooks, and family's wealthy allows him to abuse men and women, commit crimes (and get away with it) and just generally be an asshole. 

And yet ... karma eventually comes for Nate. Character is fate -- and the horrible Nate has, not shockingly, gotten deeply into debt after conning a gangster out of money. Naturally the gangster comes to collect -- and it comes in the form of beating Nate senseless and cutting off his pinky toe, and on his wedding day no less! No one feels sorry for him -- his years of abuse and impunity towards those weaker than him has lead him to this point ... and now a force more powerful than him is striking back, horrifcally.

One day the monsters ruling out world will be get their commupance -- and they can only hope that they will have all their fingers and toes and limbs at the end of it.

John Sterling RIP

The longtime Voice of the Yankees, John Sterling, has passed away. RIP.

Two Million & Up

So today Mr NYC hit another milestone -- two million views!

It took 18 years to get to one million but -- whatyaknow?! -- in just another a year this blog has doubled its total views.

The first million truly is the hardest. It's all compound views from now on!

Congratulations ... to me!

The King & Queen Take Manhattan

The English in NYC

As the British King and Queen visit America, it's a nice time to remember that, while England might be America's Mother Country, a lot of English people have found NYC to be a nice place to visit -- or even move to.

Including the Royals -- I've blogged a lot about royal excursions in NYC, and this big Vanity Fair article is all about their favorite hotel to stay in while visiting the city. 

After all, the bond between NYC and England is inescapable: the City of New York is named after the City of York in England -- although obviously the sequel has far surpassed its OG namesake. 

Anyway, here's a couple of interesting documentaries about English people in NYC -- including one about gay icon Quentin Crips aka The Naked Civil Servant. Enjoy!

Manhattan's Vertical Mansions

 

Remembering "The Howard Stern Interview"

In the early 1990s, radio shock jock Howard Stern was becoming a cultural force. Based in NYC, he had been syndicated around the country and was becoming a national media figure -- dubbing himself "The King of All Media."

Even though he was the star of radio, he wanted to be on television. He had done his local NYC show on Channel 9 for two years (1990-1992) but he wanted to go national. So in 1992 Howard did an interview show on E! Entertainment cable television.

It was a weird show -- it was just Howard sitting on a couch in a room with warm lighting interviewing someoone. His radio crew (Gary, Robin, Fred, etc.) wasn't there, he wasn't taking phone calls or doing bits -- it was just a stripped down, one-to-one talk show, Howard Stern without "The Howard Stern Show." 

And it was awkward to watch. Brilliant on the radio, Howard's broadcasting genius stumbled a bit on TV. He was clearly more comfortable behind a microphone and not in front of a camera. His outrageous morning radio NYC shtick didn't quite translate into this nation-wide televised mileau. It was soon cancelled and, in 1994, E! started to broadcast parts of his radio show -- and it was a big hit that lasted until 2005.

"The Howard Stern Interview" is largely forgotten in the long, incredible career of NYC's biggest radio talk show host ever. But this particular episode, where he's interviewing great NYC singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, is a great example of what this show so odd and interesting. Enjoy!

Remembering the Lufthansa Heist of December 1978

The original news coverage ...

The history and fallout as explained by a former James Bond ...

And as it's immortalized in cinematic history ...

Last Paragraph of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road"

"So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty."

NYC Subway Action Scenes

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (1974)

Dressed to Kill (1980)

Nighthawks (1981)

Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Carlito's Way (1993)

Money Train (1995)

The Devil's Advocate (1997)

Knowing (2009)

Safe (2012)

Joker: Origin (2019)

Scream VI (2023)