Tag: New York Magazine

Oh Boy, This Olivia Nuzzi Thing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m way way way too lazy to go into any detail about the recent Olivia Nuzzi — RFK Jr romantic scandal, but I will give you my long Tweet hot take on the general scandal.

My key take away isn’t even about Nuzzi so much as the publication she works for — New York Magazine. I’ve always been fond of New York Magazine, even if sometimes it’s editorial judgement is a bit…uh…leaving something to be desired?

It has a tendency to pick up stories that are barely even the time of the old Gawker before it died, much less an actual print magazine. It was at the center of the “FOTUS” scandal where a lot of people — including myself — thought Trump might have forced a woman to have an abortion against her will.

Upon reflection, of course, that was very quaint thinking on our part. Trump simply is an absolute force of political nature now and I sometimes think even if he shuffled off this mortal coil, he would somehow still be a viable candidate.

Anyway, that’s not the only time New York Magazine has dabbled in dumb, weird stories that just make no sense if you hope to be taken seriously. Regardless, I’m just a rando in the middle of nowhere that no one takes seriously or listens to.

Happy Birthday, New York Magazine

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There is probably an alternative universe out there where I at some point in the past worked for New York Magazine. I first became aware of the magazine not by reading it, but reading about it. I used to work at the Virginia Press Association and they had a small media-oriented library and among the books they had was one about The New York Herald-Tribune.

It was dry as dirt and I only read about 2/3rds of it, but what I did read was interesting. New York Magazine was originally the Sunday magazine of The New York Herald-Tribune. The paper was a bastion of Northeast Republican thought.

Anyway.

I love magazines as a concept and there was a point when I was really into New York Magazine. But, alas, as I’ve grown older, all my media consumption has grown extremely passive. The only contact I have with New York Magazine now is the occasional link on Twitter that I just read the headline of and never go any further.

But once I blow up with my DJ (novel) money, I would love to write for them in some capacity. With my luck, of course, they’ll probably write some profile of me that leads to me being “canceled.”

New York Magazine Pitch: ‘2024’s (Potential) Perfect Storm’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Long after being a journalist slipped out of my fingers, I’ve finally reached the point where I realize I just don’t have it in me to be a “serious” journalist. I may one day get to write for a living again, but it will after I sell my first novel as an old coot and start to churn out novels on a regular basis.

In the few remaining years I have before I drop dead, of course.

Ugh.

I fucking hate being old.

Anyway, someone at New York Magazine or Wired should write a thoughtful piece about the looming, theoretical “perfect storm” the global economy may faces between now and, say, spring of 2025. The scenario goes something like this — Republicans fuck up the global economy because they play chicken with the debt ceiling. This causes a severe, global recession.

This, in turn, causes businesses to turn to the “just good enough” chatbot technology to replace an array of jobs across the economy. This, in turn, causes an already severe recession to get worse. The severe recession hides that we’ve reached a Petite Singularity in the sense that a lot of jobs replaced by chatbots just aren’t coming back.

So, as we enter the 2024 presidential cycle the fucking MAGA fascists gain a huge amount of power because of a downturn….that they caused…and Trump wins the 2024 election. But his incoming agenda is so absolutely radical that Blues say “fuck that” and begin the process of leaving the Union. So, as such, my dystopian hellscape prediction of Something Big happening in late 2024, early 2025 becomes a reality.

I wish I could lay theory of the case out for New York Magazine or Wired, but I’m a drunk crank loser in the middle of nowhere struggling with my first novel. Ugh. Maybe someone else will write it.