50. Alex Rodriguez
Third Base, New York Yankees

The $250 million Yankee is so difficult to like, so impossible to root for,
that he might be the only athlete in all of sports who would actually look better if it came out that
he was a steroid user. If it turned out that A-Rod was a juicer, the ensuing decline-and-fall drama
might add some humanity to his hideous, fake-ass Mr. Perfect public persona. Rodriguez represents
the supreme embodiment of one of the great international villain archetypes: the toothy, handsome,
strapping jock who beats up the nerds before the first school bell rings, stopping just in time to
give an apple to the old-la
dy homeroom teacher who adores him. He is a classic front runner who’s
all charm and smiles when he’s signing the big contract and hitting home runs in Maybut when
the chips are down and his team is losing, he passes the buck, points to his stats or picks on small-time
nobodies like Bronson Arroyo. Coming as he did into a Yankee tradition rich with gritty gamers like
Derek Jeter and Hideki Matsui, and brash free-agent braggarts with a flair for the big stage like
Reggie Jackson, A-Rod is the human equivalent of Disneyland Times Squarethe child-safe
corporate import spackled over the soul of a great city.

49. Daniel Doctoroff
Deputy Mayor

When this Albert Brooks look-alike former investment banker first got his
name in the papers by proposing that New York City host the 2012 Olympics, we giggled nervously,
assuming the preposterous notion would soon be forgotten. This uppity Doctoroff fellow was clearly
just trying to prove that he did, in fact, exist. When his idea became an ominous possibility, Doctoroff
ascended from the ranks of the anonymous pathetic to the truly loathsome. Everything about the
proposal was insane: the West Side Parking Lot, the security nightmare we’ll have to pay for, the
stadium subsidy heist, the traffic nightmares that’ll begin years before the games show up. Most
loathsome of all was Doctoroff’s repeated use of 9/11 imagery to guilt trip the IOC. Never mind that
nobody went to the Athens games last summer because of the terror threat, here he was trying to lure
the Games using terrorist attacks as bait. Doctoroff’s bid was never more than a reckless, dishonest,
desperate (and, thankfully, failing) attempt to stamp his double Ds in the history books. See you
in Paris, Danny.

48. Judith Regan
Publisher, ReganBooks

As HarperCollins executive editor David Hirshey once asked: "Does anybody
think there would be a Paris Hilton autobiography if it weren’t for Judith?" The roster of current
ReganBooks authors reads like an itemized list of what’s wrong with America: Scott Peterson mistress
Amber Frey, steroid mutant Jose Canseco and chlamydia factory Jenna Jameson. The core component
of ReganBooks’ success is sex, with Judith Regan herself appearing as a tarted-up cover model for
several of her own books. But centerfold aspirations are just the iceberg tip of Regan’s mania.
Because of her caustic personal habits, the turnover rate of ReganBooks employees breaks the sound
barrier. Her constant insults of underlings and willfully cruel office political decisions caused
one former employee to describe her as "a destroyer of souls." She not only found Bernie Kerik attractive
enough to screw, she also paid him more than $75,000 in royalties for 11 sentences he wrote that opened
a book advertised as a charity for 9/11 families. She’s almost enough to make us reconsider the ethics
of public book burnings.

47. Lincoln Karim
Bird Lover

Hey, jerk-off, this ain’t the Redwoods. As soon as Pale Male’s nest was removed
from the swank co-op at 927 5th Ave., the whining started and the tears began to flow from a bunch of
self-satisfied, bird-watching dorks who step over the homeless every morning on their way to grab
the perfect perch. The most vocal of these bird lovers was Lincoln Karim, a video engineer at AP Television
News, who may or may not still live with his mother. His rage at having the birds removed was so deep
that he took it out on children. (Paula Zahn’s children, true, but children nevertheless.) He intercepted
them on their way to and from school, screaming for the return of his precious birds. In the end, the
co-op caved and the hawks were allowed backproving once again the power of the mantra adopted
by so many in this town: If you whine and complain enough in an abusive manner, you will eventually
get what you want. No matter how creepy your demand.

46. Lorne Michaels
Producer, SNL

Okay. Let’s cut the bullshitSaturday Night Live was never funny. Watching the coked-up antics of Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Joe Piscopo while completely sober proves it once and for all. Yes, Michaels has discovered and helped launch some clever and talented performers over the years, but he’s just as often destroyed them. Even the current cast has some brilliant writers and performerswhen we’ve seen them live at UCB and away from SNLbut the second Michaels gives them his anti-Midas touch and forces them to aim
for the lowest common denominator, the shit’s outta business. We’ve seen Amy Poehler and Tina Fey
be comic geniuses in person, but under the visionary incompetence of one of the dumbest men in tv
history, you just want to punch them both in the face. But please save your fists for the man responsible
for dumbing down three different generations of society and turning satire into a dirty word. Even
the Bushes watch their caricatures and giggle. Under Michaels’ watch, "Weekend Update," arguably
the nation’s most visible engine of political satire, has muddled through 9/11, the Iraq war and
two contentious presidential elections. Among its most frequent targets? Daytime television
talk show The View. We implore you, Lorne, do the world a favor and resign. Then find your
true calling in life: coke dealer.

45. Max Boot
Writer, Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard

Though a resident of leafy suburban Larchmont, NY, where manly intellectuals
like him go to become child molesters, Max Boot arrives to the WSJ offices decked in leather
bomber, riding crop and knee-high shit-kickers. We know this from his WSJ commentaries,
including his now-infamous piece complaining that not enough American lives were lost in the invasion
of Afghanistan. "President Bush promised that this would not be another bloodless, push-button
war, but that is precisely what it has been," intoned the wonk whose idea of a battle is finding Saturday
parking in downtown Greenwich. "Our bombing campaigndoes not show that we have the determination
to stick a bayonet in the guts of our enemy…" Writing more recently in the New York Times,
the lunatic enthused on the American occupation of the Philippines that ended in the deaths of 200,000
Filipinos: "It was a long, hard, bloody slog." Curiously, we’re told this also describes sex with
Boot’s wife.

44. Fabian Basabe
Male Socialite

The face of the next generation of morons with money. The 26-year-old male
socialite is best known for being pictured in Page Six with other rich layabouts. Basabe gained
notoriety last year for dirty dancing with first daughter Barbara Bush at a Manhattan nightclub,
and in the ensuing media frenzy proved that being an unaccomplished caboose on daddy’s money-train
hasn’t dented his grossly outsized self-importance. "I don’t know how the press has this freedom
to do these inappropriate things," he told reporters covering his Bush frolic. We chose Basabe
not for the obvious reasonsanyone so widely hailed as an "It-boy" automatically deserves
to be slapped in the face with a wet herringbut because he epitomizes an entire American
caste: the smug hereditary plutocracy. Unless stopped, Basabe will be president someday.

43. Mara Reinstein & Joey Bartolomeo
Writers, US Weekly

It would be one thing if the people charged with writing the insta-book knock-off
publishing projects about the collapse of the Brad and Jennifer marriage were Sydney Carton types,
aging boozers with rotted hearts heroically turning one last disgusting buck with a foot already
in the grave. But the authors of this year’s Brad and Jen: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Golden
Couple ($7, Wenner) are a pair of brainless little girls of a type to make one pray for the speedy
return of Stalin to power. The two US Weekly "senior writers" wrote their Brad-and-Jen
book in a single week and in interviews afterward expressed surprise at how long a book is compared
to an article. "Bob Wallace, the head of Wenner Books, said it had to be 40,000 words, which I didn’t
really understand," said Reinstein. "All I knew was that an Us Weekly cover story is, like,
1,300 words, so I knew it would be a lot." Bartolomeo said Wallace gave helpful advice: "The advice
we got was, ‘Hit the return key more often,’" she said. "My paragraphs were too long. That was what
turned my magazine writing into book writing."

42. Lindsay Lohan
Actress

This auburn-haired celebutante trainwreck poisons America’s gossip pages
daily. Late-night sloppy barhops are followed by mysterious illnesses and insane diva tantrums.
She refuses to rehearse and shuts down sets because she can’t remember her lines. The most discordant
detail in this grim Muppet show is that most of this happened while she was filming a movie called
Herbie: Fully Loaded. What’s her encore gonna be? Getting caught having crack smoke blown
up her ass on the set of Lassie Y2K5? There’s nothing wrong with enthusiastic boozing and
drugging. But news items about the Long Island party monster come off like anti-hedonism public
service announcements. She has access to the best chemicals, most exotic locales and wildest people,
but lives like the world’s most famous ugly sorority girl. The comparison to Tara Reid is short-sighted;
Lohan has reached late-70s Liz Taylor levels of pathetic.

41. Norman Podhoretz
Editor Emeritus, Commentary

It’s been a good millennium so far for the city’s most loathsome elderly intellectual.
The Bush White House awarded ol’ Poddy the Presidential Medal of Honor last year for his decades
of tireless support for arms racing, unprovoked aggression and death squads. His wife Midge Decter,
meanwhile, was awarded a National Humanities Medal for her decades of faithful imitation of a menopausal
Mathew Arnold. His leaden-witted son John finally escaped the shadow of fellow mini-con William
Kristol and took over that sophisticated journal of ideas known as the New York Post
op-ed page. Just half a bloodline away, son-in-law Elliot Abrams wormed his way back into the
foreign policy establishment like Iran-Contra never happened. So you’d think Stormin’
Norman would be happy. Hell, last year the Free Press even published a 500-page Norman Podhoretz
Reader. But Norman ain’t happy. Norman’s never happy. His latest piece in Commentary is one long cry of pain and hurt that his own designation for the Clash of Civilizations"World
War IV"hasn’t yet become an international relations meme on par with Walter Lippman’s
"Cold War" or the central, permanent organizing principle for Western Civilization, aka the American
imperium, with him and Midge at the stormy helm. Someone needs to just die already.

40. Frank Bruni
Food Critic, New York Times

Eat this, Frank. The former political reporter has been doling out stars
like the Lucky Charms leprechaun. Bruni should be making fearful hostesses drench their panties,
but instead he’s a literary laughingstock more wont to dole out gilded reviews for pretty wallpaper
than a chef’s sweet knife skill. Such is Bruni’s gonzo-style review regime, one in which he finds
it "calamitous" to have olive juice dribble down his hand while fidgeting with a martini and creams
his pants over a "pastry cart brimming with lollipops." Bruni’s more intent on catering to Platinum
American Express Cardwielding uptowners than informing passionate foodies. His "trend"
pieces on the proliferation of mega-Asian emporiums and super-sized menus are as painfully obvious
as his story ideas are ill-conceived. (Hey! let’s visit a landmark famed for porterhouse and berate
its lunch hamburger!) Restaurant industry veterans are perplexed that such an influential post
has been granted to someone sans a formal culinary background. Bemoaned one chef: "If I had a nickel
for every time I’ve rolled my eyes at that guy’s column, I’d probably be able to afford a meal at Per
Se." Which Bruni gave four stars, by the way.

39. Karen Schwartz
Writer, New York Sun

It is difficult to imagine why anyone would read Karen Schwartz’s weekly
horrorshow in New York’s boutique retro-mini-broadsheet, the New York Sun, which shivers
alone on the far right. A more fitting column for the Sun would be excerpts from the blog of
an evil kibbutzer; or a free-market serial killer; or even a crazed U.N. janitor who knows where
all the bodies are buried in Turtle Bay. Instead the Sun offers up the very model of insipid,
navel-gazing, post-Yuppie garbage the likes of which this town hasn’t seen since Jay McInerney’s
stint as Odeon publicist. Schwartz gives us a dry-heave-inducing "character" named Evepart
freelance writer, part mother-to-be, part denim-jacket-wearing baked potato. Plot developments
of late: Eve has an artsy friend who lives in Williamsburg, she’s pregnant, they’re moving out of
their Cobble Hill apartment they found on Craigslist. Eve thinks it’s kooky in Brooklyn because
it’s not the Upper East Side; out there, you deal with the unwashed "landlord" on a one-to-one basis.
Schwartz is her own cultural wasteland, proof that too many people live in New York City when they
would secretly rather be back in the suburbs.

38. Nick Denton
Publisher, Gawker Media

Though far from a pioneer, Franken-headed Gawker Media emperor Nick Denton
takes partial blame for the dubious distinction of introducing the word "blog" to grandmothers
in Dubuque. Denton single-handedly sandbagged and snarked his way to a post-crash brand of media-mogul-dom
through his ubiquitous cultural blogsGawker.com, Fleshbot.com, Wonkette.comwhile
letting his lowly writer drones peck away all day for Birkenau pay rates. Though the situation has
improved, original Gawker girl Elizabeth Spiers famously made $1000 a month building Denton’s
flagship. Denton has been secretive about the income he made off of his blogger slaves; writers
and editors looking for stories about his alleged riches are, he says, "obsessed, and disoriented:
nostalgic, cynical and now, with the revival of independent web media, daring to dream again."
But based on his beef with designer Noel JacksonDenton allegedly took code from the kid,
used it on his Gizmodo and Gawker sites, then failed to pay for itwe’re sure Denton’s smart
and calculating enough to come out of this blogger mini-boom with full pocketsand zero
friends.

37. Mr. Kim
Video Store Owner

After two years of dodging the loathsome bullet, the quasi-mythical Mr.
Kim takes one between the eyes. The man with the Korean name got his start by opening the first non-adult
video store to prominently display tapes with heavy bondage scenes alongside cult films like A
Clockwork Orange and new releases. He has since become the Bond villain of high-end rental
joints. Clerks at his Avenue A store, now closed, were internationally famous for treating customers
like unwitting participants in their own personal S&M show, complete with studied inattention
and lofty, put upon attitudes. The videos themselves were often bootlegged copies that were scratchy
or unwatchable, but that didn’t stop Kim from renting them again and again. Of course, his surly
shop attendants were being paid shit. Nick Bohn, a musician and drag performer, worked at Kim’s
Video on St. Marks Place for two years before allegedly being choked violently by a homophobic "security
guard." Mr. Kim refused to fire the alleged perpetrator. The acres of specialty CDs and DVDs disguise
a modern-day sweat shop whose often rude aspiring-musician employees might be better off working
at a Staten Island food court. Then again, that’s pretty much what St. Marks has become anyway.

36. Thomas Krens
Guggenheim Director

Hired because he claimed to know how to make money, the Art World’s reigning
Asshole decided to make the Guggenheim a chain operation, like Pier 1 or Pottery Barn. At his first
franchise in Soho, visitors were forced to walk through the expansive gift shop before reaching
the exhibits. Most people believed the Guggenheim Soho was nothing but an expensive gift
shop, and so never bought tickets. After it went belly up, the conniving Krens opened branches in
Venice, Vegas, Bilbao, Salzburg and Berlin. To pay for this, Krens raised ticket prices and replaced
security guards with rent-a-cops. Then he started selling ad space inside the Guggenheim. Give
Krens enough moneylike Ron Perelmanand he’ll name Frank Lloyd Wright’s glorious
rotunda after you. Then came the Armani and BMW solo shows. Since the early 90s, Krens had broken
the cardinal rule of running a world-class art museumhe started selling off the artwork.
Finally, last winter, Peter Lewis, longtime museum trustee, resigned in opposition to Krens’
antics. That’s bad news for Krens, as Lewis was the biggest contributor of all.

35. Eliot Spitzer
Attorney General

Yeah, yeahwe’ve heard all about Super Spitzer and his winning battles
against Big Bad Wall Street. How could we have avoided them, with every periodical in town on their
knees working for his gubernatorial campaign, gurgling up endless column inches of pro-Spitzer
spin? We’re as happy as anyone that Spitzer is taking on giants of corruption and winning, but let’s
peek under the tights. Spitzer is less a ballsy bulldog than a run-of-the-mill politicking pussy.
Instead of levying the appropriate punishment against Wall Street criminals who defraud their
shareholdersthat is, sending the CEOs who helm these corrupt companies to an Oz-like prison
where they’d learn the joys of CriscoSpitzer’s white-knight act amounts to settling with
the "corporate evildoers" for a mere pittance on their billion-dollar balance sheets. Even the
Wall Street Journal editorial board admits he’s harmless, wanting only "a trophy dismissal,
a big fine and favorable headlines." And though he rode into office in 1999 vowing to smash public-sector
corruption, he’s since learned the expedient lesson that it’s unwise to ruffle the feathers of
the political machine that lays the golden egg of incumbency and higher officehence his
studious failure to go after judicial corruption in the Brooklyn Democratic party.

34. Olsen Twins
NYU Students

Fraternal? Identical? Adorable? How about really fucking scrawny and annoying.
The only thing we know for sure about the Olsen twins is that they suckalbeit legally, now
that they’ve reached the age of consent. Though straight-to-DVD dreck is their bread and butter,
don’t expect them to cash out by flashing their itty-bitty titties on film anytime soon. They’re
still a couple more drug addictions and anorexic relapses away from being forced to munch
sisterly snatch, thereby fulfilling the one-handed fantasies of 74 percent of male America and
falling. So what makes these saccharine siblings so repugnant? Swaddled in designer rags, they’re
insults to the city’s hobos. And contrary to the New York Times style section, they aren’t
starting any trends here. Our urine-scented street people have spent years cultivating their
raffish look, complete with rope belts and oversized layers of torn ragsstyle the Olsens
are biting weakly like the pampered Chihuahuas they are. Ladies, we really want to welcome you to
New York. By all means, feel free to snort our cocaine. Eat our Tasti D Lite. Screw Lolita-crazed
men of dubious ethnic origin and much facial hair. Just drop the rebellious act, dress according
to your bank account and for Christ’s sake, eat your veggies.

33. Jeff Singer
Comedy Producer

Singer works with Comedy Central but is best known for running Eating It,
a once-brilliant show that under his command has become a forum for watered-down industry horseshit.
(For those of you who missed it, the show was birthed by alternative comics like Marc Maron and Louis
C.K., co-creator of Pootie Tang). Once upon a time, Eating It was an incredible anomaly:
Writers for SNL, Letterman and Conan O’Brien got together each week to do a free show of material
that was too provocative or creative to make it onto television. It was some of the most brilliant,
subversive comedy ever; rules were broken in more ways than you could count. Once, the Upright Citizens
Brigade passed out joints, beer and chips to the entire audience, then cleaned up the mess. Comics
weren’t even allowed to do their regular material. Then Singer took over and the show became
typical, trite and cheesy, featuring some of the most unfunny comics around, such as the writers
of Jest magazine. With the recent loss of Luna Lounge, the show’s venue for the last decade,
we recommend a new home for Singer’s unwatchable brand of stereotypical sycophantasia: Hoboken.

32. Pedro Martinez
Pitcher, New York Mets

The Yankees may be his daddy, but the Mets are most definitely his bitch. The
mercurial, ferret-looking, 33-year-old crybaby duped the Mets to the tune of $53 million into
thinking he’s an eight-inning pitcher still capable of producing anything but mediocre numbers
and gel stains on his pillow. Pedro can still throw hard, but it’s obvious his days of dominance are
behind him. According to the Daily News, New Mets GM Omar Minaya wanted to bring a high-profile
Dominican player to the franchise in the hopes that future prospects would mimic the fading star
and join the Mets. But one Dominican has already declared he will stay far away form the Mets. Twenty-eight-inch-tall
Nelson de la Rosa, the miniature former actor who befriended and joined Martinez in the clubhouse
after several key Red Sox victories last season has already distanced himself after Pedro reportedly
called de La Rosa a "palm-sized pipsqueak." The tiny Dominican, heartbroken, vowed never to follow
Martinez’s career again. Let the mighty Mets midget curse begin.

31. Cristyne Lategano Nicholas
President & CEO, NYC
& Co.

The Kerik-grade Friend of Rudy may not be a household name yet, but it’s not
for lack of trying. Best known as Giuliani’s mistress (that would be the one before Judi Nathan)
while she worked as Rudy’s Goebbels in City Hall, this little ladder-climbing she-monster alienated
so many people that Rudy had to find her another gig. So he forced her upon the city’s private tourism
agency, "NYC & Co."a position she was so unqualified for that even the pro-Rudy Crain’s
Business Weekly ran an editorial denouncing the appointment. She’s one of the public faces
behind the corporate selling off of much of the city, as well as the slimebag who put all those giant
plastic banners you see on all the street lampsfree ads masquerading as "beautification."
Now, to our nightly horror, she’s even starring in the agency’s ads herself, eating "NYC" brand
cereal and trying hard to look a little less blank than what’s in the bowl.

30. Guy Velella
Felon

This former Republican state senator, Bronx political leader and Rudy pal
would have made Boss Tweed proud. After pleading guilty to fourth-degree conspiracy charges for
accepting at least $137,000 in contractor kickbacks while in office, Velella was forced to resign
in disgrace last year and sentenced to a year at Rikers. In true sleazebag form, he managed to get
out after serving just three months of his sentence by wielding his political influence with the
Local Conditional Release Commission. Of the 7000 inmates who applied for early release, a mere
five were granted their request by the panelamong them Velella and his two codefendants.
Only after public outcry and a direct order from the mayor was the commission forced to send the whining
Velella, who has prostate cancer, back to the can last November. Adding insult to injury, despite
his status as a felon, Velella will likely continue to receive a state pension worth $80,000 a year.

29. Bill O’Reilly
Host, The O’Reilly Factor

Ah, yes, after two near misses, the sun-blotched king of swing finally makes
the list. O’Reilly is the classic lace-curtain Irish boor: thin-skinned, wistful, bloated and
delusional, and a whining Miss Nancy to boot. His personality would be a desperately pitiable object
if he weren’t also the kind of behind-the-scenes suck-up demagogue who will one day be Commissariat
of Information and Media Punishment in George Bush’s Emergency Third Term. This is a man whose only
answer to challenge is girly tantrums, a man who screams down Al Franken when Franken busts him for
lying about winning a Peabody Award, who cuts his guests’ mics when they disagree with him. He calls
his fellow Americans "traitors," "unpatriotic" and "dangerous" when they simply refuse to agree
with the president. When O’Reilly suggests that for Valentine’s Day we buy each other copies of
his lousily written, poorly researched, mendacious tracts, we see a man looking for the love his
drunken abusive daddy never provided to the one and only daughter in the family.

28. Lawrence A. Kudlow
Economist, Pundit

The one-time top Bear Stearns/ING economist and copropagandist on CNBC’s
Kudlow & Cramer wrote cheerily of the economic benefits of invading Iraq: "The shock
therapy of decisive war will elevate the stock market by a couple-thousand points," promised the
vampire, who by day doubles as CEO of his eponymous midtown consulting firm while also writing a
column for National Review. "We will know that our businesses will stay open, that our families
will be safe, and that our future will be unlimited." Soour businesses stayed openbecauseweinvaded
Iraq. The real record since the warpace Kudlow the Market Impalerhas been millions
of jobs lost and a slumping economy. Not to mention the moral nightmare of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo
and what will likely be a decades-long occupation costing billions of dollars that would be better
spent on a space program for sending people like Kudlow to another planet on which to play his mass-homicidal
version of Monopoly.

27. Charles Barron
City Council, District 42

You may know City Councilman Barron for his provocations down at City Hall,
talking about slave reparations and other inflammatory ideas befitting his past as a Black Panther.
The media has spared little expense painting him as the next Al Sharpton (when they acknowledge
him at all), but when we interviewed him, we found him to be one of the smartest, most articulate,
most honest politicians we’ve ever met. (And unlike Al, you’ll never find Barron in cahoots with
GOP operatives.) So why did he make it onto this list? Because he’s a quitter who dropped out of the
mayor’s race in deference to the much softer C. Virginia Fields, claiming that two black candidates
would split support. (And because he couldn’t raise the loads of cash the corporate-friendly Gifford
Ferrer McBloomberg can. We wonder why?) But we suspect the real reason Barron choked and let NYC
down was the state law that bars him from running for reelection in his Brooklyn district (where
he won an incredible 90 percent of the vote) if he also runs for mayor. Thanks for nothing, Chuck.
We were counting on you to make this one interesting.

26. Rocco DiSpirito
Chef

A few short years ago, Italian-by-way-of-Queens chef Rocco DiSpirito was
the toast of Gotham. Young and handsome, classically trained, the mofo could whip up a wicked pasta
fagioli. Then Rocco jumped at the chance to be the next Anna Nicole Smith, and viewers watched the
behind-the-scenes story of how he and Jeffrey Chodorow opened Rocco’s on 22nd St. Suddenly he was
more interested in schmoozing Bay Ridge butterfaces and screaming at his sous chef than actually
cooking. As a shrinking legion of fans looked on, Rocco and Chodorow’s relationship sunk quicker
than a chocolate souffl too soon out of the oven, and before long the guy was legally barred
from the restaurant that bore his name. The Restaurant was canceled, the restaurant was
padlocked and Rocco was without a job. Now he’s hawking Mama’s meatballs and a cooking-in-a-vacuum
contraption on QVC, and flirting with endomorphic Midwestern housewives on his AM radio program:
another sniveling ex-hipster with a motor scooter, an overbearing mother and no real job to speak
of. It doesn’t pain us to say he deserves it.

25. Steven Pearlman
Plastic Surgeon

Predatory Park Ave. cosmetic surgeon Steven Pearlman likes to give his business
a lift by throwing plastic-surgery parties for teenagers at nightclubs, where he helps 13-year-old
girls drinking mock cocktails discover how ugly they are. Sounding like a Dutch techie on a Thai
sex vacation, Pearlman once told the New York Observer, "I can generally start on girls
at 15." Planting the seed for future generations of facelift addicts like Upper East Side socialite
and world-famous ghoul Jocelyn Wildenstein, Dr. Pearlman, who is president of the American Academy
of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, confirms that in the deranged world of Upper Manhattan
there’s no self-esteem like no self-esteem.

24. Katie Couric
Co-host, The Today Show

Couric’s cloying little-girl shtick on NBC’s Today Show is annoying
enough, considering that behind the mask of "America’s sweetheart" is a hard-nosed executive
drawing one of the biggest paychecks in television. Her reportedly $16 million annual salary isn’t
what makes Couric loathsome, however. It’s her disingenuous toeing of the line between serious
journalist and corporate media whore. Couric’s stratospheric stock has long ridden on her supposed
ability to shift effortlessly between fluff and "real reporting"meaning she can move
from a fawning segment flogging the latest big-budget Hollywood pap to a "serious" news story like
the Michael Jackson trial, all without batting a mascara-caked eyelash. The blow-up doll was even
rumored to be a candidate for Dan Rather’s chair at the CBS Evening News, proving once again
that an unctuous ability to operate as a chameleon is a prized asset in the morally bankrupt world
of big media.

23. Jason Calacanis
Chairman, Weblogs Inc.

During the dotcom boom, Jason Calacanis was one of those floppy-haired internet
hucksters who beat the drum so loudly for tech companies that he became one of the era’s major figures.
The New Yorker even commissioned a fawning profile when he was editor of the now-defunct
Silicon Alley Reporter. Now Calacanis is back and shamelessly beating the drum for (guess
what?) blogs. Calacanis is chairman of Weblogs Inc., which now hosts more than 70 blogs about, well,
who the fuck knows? His is a blog company that will make money from advertising while allegedly paying
his army of typers a pittance in a "partnership" that promises a payday from future earnings. Hmm,
where’ve we heard that before? Calacanis even stared down Nick Denton in an article for Paper
Magazine that doubled as a battle cry for mistreated bloggers everywhere: "Bloggers now have
three choices: Work for themselves, work for Nick, or partner with me. In another six months they
will have five choices and in another year they will have 10." Maybe. But it’ll be tough to find talent
out there when all of the naive bloggers holding their breath for their big breaks will have long
since reconciled themselves to temping.

22. Paul Stallings
Landlord, Developer

A name you probably don’t recognize, but should. Stallings was one of the
smart real estate developers who bought lots of buildings on the Lower East Side when it was still
a ghetto in the 1980s. Since then, he’s been caught illegally renovating numerous buildingsbotching
the wiring, blocking fire escapes, etc. He’s also got a long, seedy history of falsifying legal
documents in order to evict tenants who fight back. Just how loathsome is this comic-book-villain
slumlord? He had bodybuilder-thug Rufus Grahamaka NYC’s notorious "Spiderman" burglar,
convicted of many "athletic" crimeskick in the apartment door of one of his apartments
last year after losing an illegal-lockout case in housing court. His latest creation is the Rivington,
a tall and out-of-place hotel on Ludlow. To build it, he destroyed parts of the newly paved street,
which has been cut up and reworked into a patchwork mess, costing taxpayers more than $500,000.

21. Marty Markowitz
Brooklyn Borough President

Once upon a time, when the Board of Estimate ruled graft and contracts in New
York, the five borough presidents had power. Today, it’s a no-show job. The bad news with Markowitz
is that he shows up, and so do his 116 employees, his multi-million-dollar budget and his four SUVs
equipped with police sirens. Not content with doing nothing, Markowitz finds time to advocate
for the downtrodden, such as Ikea, Home Depot and developer Bruce Ratner in their noble quest to
cannibalize mom-and-pop neighborhoods. The porcine oaf is also known for racing around the city
in HOV lanes with police lights flashing, en route to handing out a plaque. Markowitz is up for reelection
next year. Instead, he should save taxpayers millions of dollars and fire himself, fire his employees
and turn Borough Hall into a methadone clinic. At least then we’d have a better class of people hanging
around the place.

20. Sarah Lewitinn (aka Ultragrrrl)
Socialite, Blogger

Would some thin-wristed shoe-gazing bass player please hurry up and fuck
this girl? Once confined to her ultra-vapid sycophantic hipster blog Ultragrrrl, Sarah Lewitinn
has somehow parlayed her love for wimpy bands and kitsch into a career as a record promoter and talking
head abouttwo guesseswimpy bands and kitsch. Lewitinn’s Spin column,
"Making Out with Ultragrrrl," chronicled her giving numerous bands ego-handjobs back stage as
she drunkenly hung on them, making funny rock-star poses. Spin came to its senses and killed
the column, but Ultragrrl never went awayit keeps popping up in stories in the Voice and the Times about prom parties and DJ-spinning circle-jerk events. Take this Times quote about the weekly Misshapes party: "’Last week’s was the best one ever,’ said Sarah Lewitinn,
24, a writer for Spin who on a recent Saturday evening was wearing a vintage Joy Division T-shirt
as a dress over slouchy black suede boots. ‘I made out with three boys and one girl.’" We think we’ll
Ultrahurrrl.

19. Tony Danza
Host, The Tony Danza Show

Why did the American Italian Defense Association sue the producers of The
Sopranos, saying it denigrates their Italian American culture, whilst not voicing a peep
against this monosyllabic, spaghetti-stained perpetrator of more noxious paisan stereotypes
than Martin Scorsese? From his "That’s a spicy meat-a-ball" delivery to his Italia-centric guest
list (anyone who’s ever shown their face on The Sopranos, ever), Tony Danza makes us wish
our Italian grandmother was Lithuanian. If his last name were McDanza, he’d be doing his show dressed
like Lucky the Charm. Black Tony Danza would gobble watermelon; Jewish Tony Danza would spend the
hour popping matzoh balls while counting gold coins. Tonester constantly reminds us that the eye-talians
are a people known for their love of good food. So it makes sense that eating figures large each "Extrava-Danza."
Recovering boozer/homo-hound Liza Minnelli proudly presented her good pal (they watch 24 together religiously) with a pastry billed as the World’s Largest Cannoli. Yet in a city clogged
with Italian restaurants, who does Danza pick to sponsor his food segments? The Olive Garden. Was
Papa Gino’s too busy? For that alone, Danza’s kneecaps should be introduced to a 34-oz. Louisville
Slugger.

18. Ed Koch
Democratic Ex-Mayor

"How’m I doin’?" To our amazement, pretty good, you batty old queen. Koch’s
rep as Mr. New York has managed to survive and even thrive in the 17 years since the publication of
Wayne Barrett and Jack Newfield’s devastating City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New
York. It’s as if the names Meade Esposito, Stanley Friedman and Donald Manes have been scrubbed
from history, allowing Koch to pose against an airbrushed legacy and somehow remain an active player
even as he publicly descends into the middle stages of senility. The man who still insists on calling
himself "Mr. Liberal" has supported local Republicans John Lindsay, Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki,
Al D’Amato and Mike Bloomberg. When W. recognized him at a Wall St. event in 2003"Ed!" Bush
yelled, wavingKoch rushed over and declared his fealty to the Bush Doctrine on the spot.
Soon, he was going public with this support on Hannity & Colmes. And so Koch was the perfect
face for the city’s "Make Nice" campaign in the run-up to the RNC this summer. Sadly, none of the prop
elephants crushed the ex-mayor under a mountain of shit, thus terminating Mr. Liberal’s heartbeat,
to say nothing of his painful film reviews in The Villager.

17. Bruce Smolka
NYPD Assistant Chief

February 1999: Officers in Smolka’s NYPD’s Street Crime Unit pump 41 bullets
into Amadou Diallo. February 2003: Smolka illegally orders horseback-mounted police to charge
a group of peaceful antiwar demonstrators. April 2003: Smolka confronts a group of about 100 demonstrators
in front of the Carlyle Group’s headquarters with 300 officers outfitted in full riot gear. August
2004: Responsible for securing midtown during the RNC, the smoldering chief could be found standing
on "his" perimeter, head clean-shaven, blue eyes piercing, chin jutting, arms folded across his
chest like an urban Patton. He personally oversaw the illegal arrest and detention of hundreds
during the convention. Then, humiliated by August’s 5000-strong Critical Mass ride, he deployed
the NYPD’s full force in an effort to control the monthly gathering. Until December, that is, when
federal judge William Pauley ruled against Smolka’s request for an injunction to stop the ride.
The only upside of being arrested by this thug is that you have an excellent chance of getting off
when your case finally comes before a judge.

16. Edwin Anzalone
FDNY

Yeah, the FDNY guys probably do deserve those raises they’ve been talking
about for years. While we wouldn’t mind three-day workweeks, we’ll hand it to them: fighting fires
is more dangerous than writing. So why the fuck is self-proclaimed FDNY spokesman Edwin Anzalone
shilling for Bloomberg, Mr. Raise-Miser himself, in tv commercials for the proposed Jets stadium?
Better known as Fireman Edthe guy in the ancient Bruce Harper 42 jersey and green fire helmet
who climbs upon his brother’s shoulders to remind 80,000 Gang Green fans how to spell Jets (er, that’s
J-E-T-S)Anzalone defied the Uniformed Firefighters Association to make the stadium
ad. You know the one: With his fellow Bravest lined up behind him like burly Rockettes, Fireman Ed
shouts like the drunk guy itching for a fight outside Farrell’s, bellowing about the benefits of
the Jets playing on this side of the Hudson eight times a year. Hey Fireman Edlet us spell
it out for you: The best firefighters we know are the strong, silent type. Let Bloomberg’s and Dolan’s
scumbag minions quibble over the Far West Side turf. Surely, something’s burning somewhere.

15. Carlos D
Bassist, Interpol

As if being the bassist for the bar-band-quality Joy Division retreads Interpol
will not be ignominy enough in six months, Carlos D’s penis was put on center stage with the briefly
lived blog CarlosDHasHerpes. In it, a peeved guy tells the tale of how his otherwise faithful sweetheart
succumbed to the lyrics "touch your thighs/I’m the lonely one" and got escorted backstage by an
Interpol roadie. Hence, the blogger’s unfortunate outbreak. As certain as we are that every hip
Robert Smithinspired guitarist has herpes (there’s no cure, remember), we find nothing
particularly loathsome about associating rockers with venereal disease. But Carlos D is especially
loathsome for three reasons. The fact that he is forever linked to herpes is technically loathsome
in itself. Second, he has started a trend in which we could conceivably be outed in the blogosphere
for injecting several unknowing victims with chlamydia. Most loathsome of all, we want to fuck
him and start our own blog, IgaveCarlosDchlamydia. But we took our penicillin and aren’t yet ready
for the Simplex II.

14. Amanda Burden
Chair of the City Planning Commission

Once the hope of the public-interest planning community, Burden gets loathsome
points for dating Charlie Rose, but earns her way onto the list in her own right for heading up a rubber-stamp
commission that betrays the true mandate of the city land-use approval process. When she sat on
the board of the commission, Burden was considered a thoughtful and innovative urban planner.
Since taking the body’s helm in 2002, she’s become the ultimate City Hall insider, presiding over
an authoritarian commission that has approved massive zoning changes throughout the city and
paved the way for big developers for decades to come. Like the mayor who appointed her, this Upper
East Side daughter of society fashion icon Babe Paley doesn’t need to work for a living; she does
it to serve the people of New York City. Too bad she doesn’t listen to them more.

13. Andrea Peyser
New York Post columnist

The Post‘s "Columnist of the Year"aka "Manhattan’s Favorite
Harpy," "The Post’s Madame Defarge," a "designated hater" and a "clueless jackass"lives
in a cartoon world in which a thick black line neatly separates the Good (Israel, firefighters,
dead soldiers) from the Bad (liberals, student protesters, most women). She isn’t loathsome on
account of her pedestrian prose and predictable opinions, however. She’s here for the stink of
desperation that rises every time she tries to convince herself she’s anything more than Cindy
Adams on the perpetual rag, a third-rate Steve Dunleavy in old-lady panties. One of these days,
Peyser’s going to wake up in a cold fat sweat and realize that people aren’t intimidated by her, that
they don’t take her "blue collar hero" crap seriously, and that she’s not nearly the celebrity she
thinks she is. She will instead recognize that even her readers consider her an old and unfunny joke.

12.Adam Gopnik
Writer, The New Yorker

We will never forget that immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks, Gopnik
wrote, in all seriousness, that the smell of the burnt bodies and the dust and the fire "blew uptown
on Wednesday night, and is not entirely horrible from a reasonable distancealmost like
the smell of smoked mozzarella, a smell of the bubble time." We smelled something different in Gopnik’s
piece: the stink of a bubble brain fried in the havoc. Gopnik the flaneur fop, accustomed to the richesse
of wistful Paris afternoons and high-culture ephemera and the mozzarella of the bubble economy,
just couldn’t wrap his head around the simple terror and enormity of the event. That Gopnik was actually
framing the disaster as suchDowntown vs. Uptownsuggests a moral and social myopia
of gargantuan proportions. That The New Yorker didn’t fire Gopnik immediately after he
filed his "dispatch" says something about this New York cultural institution and the people it
serves: the masturbatory navel-gazing, the trivial obsessing over cultural signifiers. In year
after year as one of the magazine’s chief voices, Gopniksilly, vain, precious, falsely
plumed and preeningly proudrepresents this tendency par excellence. J’accuse. Asshole.

11. Gifford Miller
Speaker, City Council

This Great Wasp Hope has lofty aspirations to replace Bloomberg as mayor.
Too bad he’s a shrill momma’s boy who renders city councilmembers comatose with his endless monotonic
blather on critical matters such as scooters on city sidewalks. With just three years as speaker
under his belt, Miller, 35, has compensated for his lack of political experience and ability to
accomplish anything meaningful by quickly learning how to play quid pro quo. He’s already corralled
an army of lobbyists with business before his office to help him raise campaign funds. There’s nothing
more irritating than an old-school hack who presents himself as a pious fresh face, even if he is
on the right side of the West Side stadium fight. Case in point: Miller, fighting for the common man,
managed not to forget his Upper East Side roots last year when urging that his wealthy neighborhood
be spared a waste transfer station and instead pushed for one to be reopened in Washington Heights.

10. William B. Harrison Jr.
CEO, JP Morgan Chase & Co.

If you have money in Chase’s vaults, you should already hate this guy for doing
nothing since his appointment in 2001 to fix his company’s usurious, fee-based rape of low-income
depositors. Then there is the matter of all those WorldCom bonds. But lately Bill Harrison’s loathsomeness
has hit a new high: JP Morgan continues to extend huge credit sums to predatory lenders that then
use JP’s line to furnish cash "payday" loans to the working poor with interest rates that can approach
1000 percent. So-called "payday" lenders find an especially fruitful clientele in youthful soldiers.
Thus have payday lenders over the past decade sprung like poison mushrooms in the fecund soil of
the "private sector" around military bases nationwide. All t

“How come you guys are such haters?” someone asked us recently. Shocked and insulted, we shook
our heads. Our biggest issue thus farlast September’s Best of Manhattan issuewas
a compendium of positivity. On any given week we’re founts of compassion: lovers, not haters; uniters,
not dividers. Our Chelsea offices burst with fresh lilacs. We adopt kittens and support the arts.
We volunteer in our communities.

Haters? You must have us confused with those monsters at New York Family

When asked to elaborate, our detractor referred to last year’s inaugural “50
Most Loathsome New Yorkers” issue. Almost a year after its publication, her
impression of New York Press was still stamped by this feature.
So a quick word about 2004′s Top 50.

This list is not about hate. More like highly enriched concern. In defining
the word “loathsome,” we cast a wide net and caught all manner of frauds, blowhards
and bloodsuckers. Sometimes the people displaying this behavior are representative
of unseen forces and larger groups; other times they’re self-contained symbols,
their loathsomeness obvious.

By nailing these 50 men and women to the cross, aren’t we making New York an
even darker, nastier place?

Nope. Like the matter of the universe, loathsomeness can be neither created
nor destroyed. It can only be more justly reshuffled. If you can’t beat all
the loathsomeness in the world, we figure, you might as well catalogue it.

One love.

THE EDITORS

50

Sofia Coppola

Director

AN ART BIMBO whose daddy happens to be movie royalty rides in on the tired
back of Bill Murray and is proclaimed a new film genius. The genius’ film, Lost in Translation,
is the most pretentious, overrated movie of last year, about an alienated Yale brat who feels so
lonely in her five-star hotel that she strips down to her panties and curls up on the windowsill every
half-hour (accompanied by My Bloody Valentine and Jesus & Mary Chain, just in case you didn’t
get how much pain she’s experiencing). Even Translation‘s pretty palette and indie minimalism
couldn’t hide the empty dual core of Coppola and her Tokyo alter ego. L.A. can have her in 2005; this
year the bicoastal princess of pout kicks things off at #50.

49

Bruce Ratner

Developer

YEAH, IT WOULD be nice to have a pro team back in Brooklyn. It would also
be nice if wings sprouted from our shoulders and we could fly like pixies. Wannabe Batman villain
Bruce Ratner pays no heed to the heinous traffic mess a new arena would create for Flatbush and Atlantic
Aves. He speaks nothing of the people forced out of their homes, nor of the enormous amount of public
dough needed to fund his private enterprise, nor of the dozens of buildings being condemned at ludicrously
undervalued priceseven as his nearby, failed Atlantic Center Mall depends on City Hall
back-scratches to pay rent. A true visionary, Ratner can only see his multi-billion-dollar dream
extending heavenward. The people of Brooklyn are just diorama props for investor display, pouring
soda and serving hot dogs at minimum wage.

48

50 Cent

Rapper

WHAT UP, GANGSTA? Look at you, up from the underground with mix tapes
and DVDs in hand, riding the coattails of Jam Master Jay’s murder into the TRL ether. We probably
could have handled the Teen People cover, but the Teen People centerfold was off
the cliff: You posed in a bulletproof vest for a glossy magazine aimed at 12-year-old girls. Did
you know that the press release for your Grammy performance had you next to Celine Dion and Richard
Marx? Time to go get fitted for a pair of MC Hammer pants and bring your act to Foxwoods.

^^^

47

Drew Barrymore & Fabrizio Moretti

Celebrities

CUPID SHOULD BE flambed for piercing this female-condom poster
ho and her pubic-haired li’l drummer boy. This is the kind of celebrity couple one dreams of razoring
into bite-sized nibbles and feeding to baby pigs. If they’re not strolling through Soho, stopping
every 10 feet to tongue wrassle, they’re sticking their hands in one another’s ass pockets, making
Fab’s 15 minutes extra super special. We acted like this, tooin junior high.

46

Michael Gansas

Captain of Staten Island Ferry

PERHAPS HE REALLY was inspecting the lifeboats, as some claim. Or maybe
he was pounding his pud or taking a nap, as many suspect and reports indicate. Whatever he was doing,
he wasn’t anywhere near the helm when the Staten Island Ferry plowed into the pier, which is where
the captain of any ship should be when the vessel sets sail or makes land. His behavior after the accident
was even worse: laying low and hiding behind his legal counsel. Michael, don’t even think of taking
the MTA’s conductor test this spring.

45

Bonnie Bellow

EPA spokesperson

“THERE IS NOTHING we have found that is at a significant level,” said
Bonnie Bellow of the EPA in October 2001, “that would say you should not come here to live or work.”
The lawsuit filed in March against the EPA claims the agency showed “a shockingly deliberate indifference
to human health” and will no doubt highlight this and numerous other statements made by Bellow and
her boss, Jane M. Kenny, who has called the lawsuit “preposterous.” Last fall, Bellow again assured
wary residentsthis time of 114 Liberty St.that their building was safe, in a statement
sounding a lot like those she dutifully issued in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Back then
Bellow’s EPA colluded with a company called the Ambient Group and local realtors to fake test results
of “visible dust” inspectionsall to keep real estate prices up. You got a bridge to sell
us, too, Bonnie? We’ll buy if you jump.

44

Pasquale DiFulco

AirTrain Spokesman

AIRTRAINthe light rail system serving JFK from LIRR’s Jamaica
Station that replaces the free shuttle bus between the A train’s Howard Beach station and airport
terminalsrolled in last December, past due (after a death-dealing accident during trial
runs) and $400 million over budget. Now commuters riding the subway to JFK have to get aboard this
automated rip-off and pay an additional $5 each way, with no discounts for seniors or the disabled.
No matter that the 8.1-mile AirTrain tour takes as long or longer than the free shuttle bus ride,
or that drop-off points are farther from terminal entrances and expose travelers to the elements.
No matter that airport employees say AirTrain service is so erratic they wind up taking cabs between
terminals. Who’s the title-deserving New Yorker behind this insult to the world? Gov. George Pataki
and Port Authority’s Charles A. Gargano share the bulk of the blame, but when we called Port Authority
to ask who’s officially in charge, AirTrain spokesman Pasquale DiFulco couldn’t be bothered to
do his job and hung up on us. You win, dick.

43

Barak Pridor

Data Miner

WHEN THE DEVIL talks, he uses language like this: “Our solutions deliver
complete, industry-proven, content extraction and analysis applications enabling research-intensive
organizations to create new opportunities, shorten time to market, increase productivity and
gain competitive advantage.” Don’t have the faintest idea what that’s all about? That’s probably
because you don’t use technology developed by Pridor’s oxymoronic ClearForest company, which
enables clients like the FBI, the Dept. of Homeland Security and Dow Chemical to surreptitiously
sift through publicly available content to learn More About You. Increasingly, it is pointy-headed,
anonymous entrepreneurs like Pridor who are teaching the Man how to tailor his pitch or craft his
search warrant to ensnare that meddlesome forest animal irritatingly resistant to the cage: the
unwitting, ordinary human being.

42

i-Snobs

THE BLINDING WHITE cords flowing out of my sublimely waxed ears say it
all: I’m in no mood for talking, and my income bracket makes cumbersome CDs so unnecessary, so Second
Wave. With thousands of songs from my iPod at my polished fingertips, I can now walk through life
effortlessly, angelically, shielded by the anodized aluminum of my futuristic listening device.
I can strut with confidence and disinterest past those in my chosen path. I’m cut off from your dirty
world by my ear buds and their enhanced sound and noise-suppression features. I’m a creature of
advertising, a walking cliche with 25-minute skip protection and Volkswagen dreams. Shit, my
profile even resembles the faceless, platonic form in the billboard.

^^^

41

Jim Dolan

Cablevision CEO

THAT THIS RECOVERING alcoholic calls his white-guy blues ensemble
J.D. & the Straight Shot is bad enough. That Dolan owes his entire bloated life to his rich daddy
and has adopted the music of poor black people as his hobby is worse. Maybe Dolan’s love of the blues
made him cut 80 MSG workers this past winterdon’t all good blues songs start, “Done lost
my job”? Sadly, few classic blues songs start “Standard & Poor’s put the company I inherited
from my dad on CreditWatch” or have refrains about SEC probes. Or how the hockey team you own sucks.
Or how your cable company tied for last place in a 2003 Residential Cable/Satellite TV Customer
Satisfaction Survey. Then, maybe our pudgy billionaire bandleader would have something to sing
about.

40

Donny Deutsch

Ad Man

DEUTSCH REPRESENTS THE latest trend in that most loathsome of New York
traditions: the selling of adolescent greed, egomania and narcissism as charisma and depth of
character. The chief of David Deutsch Associates says he only hires “Jews, chicks and fags,” and
is known for tearing off his shirt during office hours and sayingwithout ironythings
like, “I can kick the ass of any CEO in advertising!” Think Steven Seagal meets Charlotte Beers.
The “Elvis of Advertising” has been dabbling with a CNBC talk show and even told New York
magazine that he’d consider running for mayor. Qualifications: good at selling shit, does lots
of pushups. Look out, Bloomie.

39

Eric Alterman

Pundit

WHAT LIBERAL DICKWAD? Milhouse is all grown up: He has a goatee, a PhD
from Stanford and an online diary where he proclaims his love for Jackson Browne. Liberal bloggers
are holding it up like the fucking Alamo, but his run-in with Dennis Miller last month left Alterman
looking like he was about to get his head dunked in the toiletfor the third time. Even if you
agree with him about Ann Coulter and Alexander Cockburn, it’s hard not to root against this smirking,
center-left prick who likes his dinner dates rich and famous and his fois gras seared. “He constantly
wants to remind you that he’s Eric Alterman,” one of his interns revealed in a rumor-confirming
Village Voice hatchet-job, “[and] that he knows a lot of important people, and that you’re
a lowly intern.” Dear future self-respecting Alterman interns: If this creepy Bruce Springsteen
groupie ever cops an attitude, just take a breath, start laughing and print out some of his “Alter-Reviews”
at random. If you’re lucky, you’ll hit a Jackson Browne box set.

38

Chuck Klosterman

Critic

KLOSTERMAN ISN’T A loathsome New Yorker so much as a loathsome creation
of New York, a North Dakota circus monkey desperately trying to ape the role of an authentic Midwestern,
beer-drinking mullet-head. In his excruciatingly stupid collection of essays, Sex, Drugs
and Cocoa Puffs, Klosterman declares that Billy Joel is “great,” Steely Dan “more lyrically
subversive than the Sex Pistols and the Clash combined.” The author goes on to compare himself and
his yuppie girlfriend to Sid and Nancy because they’re both so “self-destructive.” Lester Bangs
would have vomited down this guy’s shirt before shaking his hand.

37

Abe Foxman

National Director of Anti-Defamation League

FOXMAN’S ADL HAS paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and civil
suits for various abuses over the yearslike spying on the African National Congressand
yet continues to enjoy the endorsement of law enforcement officials and a cowed media. The superhumanly
self-righteous gasbag makes $450,000 as Likud’s point man at the highest echelons of U.S. thoughtcrime
enforcement, where he smears critics of Israel with allegations of anti-Semitism and honors the
memory of the Holocaust by allying with oven-chasing lawyers and those who would downplay the Roma
genocide to bolster the case for Jewish exceptionalism. Even fellow Sharon-shill Bill Safire
wanted him to resign after his role in the Marc Rich pardon. For the book on Foxman, see Norman Finkelstein’s
The Holocaust Industry (Verso), written by the child of two survivors. Foxman helped block
the publication of one of Finkelstein’s earlier books in 1998. Just another day at the ADL office.

^^^

36

Bud Selig

MLB Commissioner

HIS FACIAL EXPRESSIONS evoke William S. Burroughs’ “commissioner
of sewers” character. And maybe that’s just what 69-year-old Allan H. “Bud” Selig is. Major League
Baseball’s greed machine has shifted into high gear under his reign as he mishandles one crisis
after another. For years he’s childishly trumpeted increased attendance as an actual barometer
of the sport, while relying on MLB’s dubious marketing schemes and false-fronted emphasis on “internationalizing”
baseball to carry all the public relations weight. Once a below-average auto dealer, he’s Wisconsin
through and through, but Bud’s office is up there on Park Ave. with the rest of the league royalty,
probably pissed that he goes unrecognized when eating at nearby Smith & Wollensky.

35

Thomas Renyi

Banker

THE SLOE-EYED CEO of the Bank of New York just revealed that he paid himself
more than $10.6 million this yearthat’s the compensation that we know aboutproving
once again that in the world of finance, it is always possible to keep the scandal out of Washington
and go back to your old inflated pay scale as soon as the bad press dies down. Renyi was running BoNY
at the time the bank was caught in the biggest money-laundering scheme in the country’s history,
but managed to survive by cutting his bonus that year to a paltry five mil and letting two subordinateshusband
and wife Peter Berlin and Lucy Edwardsassume full responsibility for the billions in dirty
Russian money that was somehow (unbeknownst to him) being pumped through his bank. With profits
finally up again this year, Renyi and his officers are again respectable citizensand back
to being some of the highest-paid bankers in America.

34

Chuck Schumer

U.S. Senator

The Senator puts even his peers to shame with his media whoritude. During
the Waco hearings, he grandstanded by berating the hapless survivors of that tragedy like an alcoholic
school principal. Always trying to protect us from ourselves by pushing for laws to ban anything
that seems dangerous in the slightest, but at the same time doing everything he can to help car owners,
cellphone users and his friends in the (formerly) Big Five accountancy firms. His weekly Sunday
press conferences never amount to anythingexcept in those cases in which he’s taking credit
for someone else’s legislation. Schumer’s most recent loathsome act? Oh yeah, calling on the EPA
to exempt New York from new cleaner gas laws so gas prices wouldn’t go up.

33

Iris Weinshall

DOT Commissioner

CHUCK SCHUMER’S EVEN lesser half physically may resemble the androgynous
“Pat” character from Saturday Night Live, but she has the political instincts of Rudy.
In classic Giuliani fashion, the senator’s wife tried to install a seven-foot-tall chain-link
fence along the Queensboro Bridge without approval from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.
She often (incorrectly) says that her job is “to keep the traffic moving,” which even includes through
city parks: Weinshall opposed making Prospect Park car-free, possibly out of unfounded concern
that overflow traffic from the park would be displaced to Prospect Park West, which happens to be
where she and Chuck live. In the aftermath of the Staten Island Ferry crash, she screamed for investigations
on-camera, but took little action when the microphones disappearedher attention, apparently,
turned back to protecting union boss Mickey McFarland, accused almost two years ago of bilking
the DOT by falsifying the records of waste-disposal runs.

32

James Frey

Author

IT STILL BOGGLES the brain that so many fell for this brawny brat’s 2003
rehab memoir, A Million Little Pieces. Clearly there’s a huge audience starved for dimestore,
parodic Hemingway machismo. And Frey, the self-proclaimed “greatest writer of his generation,”
is the man to give it to them. He boasts about getting in real old-time fistfights with his fellow
junkie patients and about beating a priest almost to death for daring to touch Frey’s very masculine
thighclassic 1930s retro-prose, homoerotic and homophobic at once. His characters are
as anachronistic as his writing; there’s a steelworker “as hard as the material he works with” and
endless tearful farewell scenes with a fisherman, who actually says, “I ain’t much for words, kid.”
Frey’s fellow patients all talk like outtakes from a Spencer Tracy movie, pasted into Frey’s poorly
written, 400-page ode to his family-funded self.

31

Judith Miller

New York Times reporter

CONSIDERED A DOUBLE expert in weapons of mass destruction and Islam
despite lacking both a science background and Arabic language skills, Judith Miller is more than
a veteran lecture-circuit fraud. By relying on Pentagon officials and Ahmed Chalabi for her “scoops,”
she was instrumental in pumping bogus intelligence into the media echo chamber in 2002 and 2003.
Thousands of dead later, she’s been outed by nearly every serious watchdog journal in the country
but is still defending herself. When the Army unit with which she was imbedded decided to abandon
its fruitless search for weapons, she threatened to write an unfavorable story for the Times
unless the search was resumedforcing what one officer called a “rogue operation.” Considering
Miller’s sources, it shouldn’t shock us that no WMD ever turned up. It should shock us that the bitch
still has a job.

^^^

30

Joan Rivers

comedienne

CAN WE TALK? Can we shop? Can this whiny yenta with nine
lives kindly shut the fuck up? The bleach-blond medusa of Puh-lease stabbed a rental car agent in
the eye with a pen in 2002, and over a 30-year career has done more to birth and reinforce negative
stereotypes of her kind than a million New Jersey housewives rushing the sale table at Nordstrom
on a Sunday afternoon. Her celebrity gossip website is a proud exercise in vertical integration
gone wildno product goes unmentioned, no designer goes unblownwhile her QVC line
of beauty products”Nobody’s perfect but why not come as close as you can?”might
have mentioned all the money she’s dumped at the plastic surgeon’s office to anglicize her nose,
raise her breasts, fix her knees and, we can only assume, revitalize her labia. Oh, rightshe
does mention that, every week at Fez, during her abominable mother-daughter show. Is there a heart
still beating beneath that tight, leathery exterior? Or was it replaced with a bionic annoying
bitch machine? Will it ever stop?

29

Strand Staffers

SLAVING AT A used bookshop may be a nobler vocation than trading pork
bellies, but is it too much to ask that someone make eye contact through his or her Elvis Costello
glasses? Is it unreasonable to expect the occasional acknowledgement of a customer’s presence?
Do new employees take classes to learn how to display utter contempt? Screw the Strand and its narrow
aisles and indecipherable shelving practices and overpriced used books and staff of petulant
clerks. They can ram all eight miles of books up their mopey asses. Next to them, the people at Barnes
& Noble are downright motherly.

28

Dick Grasso

ex-CEO of New York Stock Exchange

WHEN FORBES.COM CALLS you “dangerous,” you’re either Hugo Chavez or
a Wall St. monster so grotesque you threaten to bring down the house on the whole party. During the
hunt for Grasso’s shiny scalp, the SEC subpoenaed 65 former NYSE directors, seeking records relating
to Grasso’s pay package of $188 million. After finally stepping down as chairman and CEO, Grasso
gave $48 million back, but his lawyer Brendan Sullivanpreviously seen defending Oliver
North in the Iran-Contra hearingsmade sure there was plenty left over for legal fees. Grasso
may be no worse at root than any other Wall St. douchebagcertainly no more than his meatball-stained
kingmaker Kenneth G. Langonebut the oily dome and snake-in-the-garden grin put Grasso
over the top in 2003.

27

Bonnie Fuller

Tabloid Queen

THIS CANADIAN-BORN tabloid succubus has been getting a hail of belated
bad press for mistreating and overworking her underlings. Despite being among the highest-paid
editors in publishing, she reportedly still hogs the promo merch like

a shifty
intern. Her Evil Queen act would be forgivable if her formula weren’t, as described by her former
employer the Toronto Star, “sex, shopping, clothes, celebrity hairstyles, gossip and
more sex.” Her big genius move at Us Weekly was to run pictures of sweatpants-clothed celebrities
without makeup. She alsocall the Pulitzer committee!ran a slutty picture of Kobe
Bryant’s accuser on the cover of the Globe. Anyone who’s ever wondered in post-9/11 reverie
Why They Hate Us need only ponder this woman’s career. Better yet, do what one of Fuller’s former
colleagues allegedly did: Foul her lunch with bodily fluids.

26

The Hilton Sisters

Socialites

IT IS SAID that in pre-revolution France, aristocrats would dress up
as peasants and roam the countryside. A few years later, their heads sat atop spikes. Let this be
a little cautionary tale for the Hilton girls. Just because you’ve gone to Arkansas and fisted a
cow doesn’t mean you’re anything but the same dirty debutantes with bony behinds. If you’re smartand
based on those empty, coke-burned stares, you’re notyou’ll just drug yourselves into
plush oblivion and leave the world’s celebrity porn sites alone, lest the wrong psycho take a fascination
to you.

25

Lenny Kravitz

Musician

WHEN IN PUBLIC, neo-hippie glam rocker Lenny Kravitzaka Moe
Ronhas been known to employ a man to follow him around and carry the flowing tail of his royal
cardigan sweater. According to Vice magazine’s Jesse Pearson, who once witnessed this
crime with his own eyes, Kravitz’s sweater chauffeur carries the hanging garment at an appropriate
distance, “like a bridesmaid.” We knew Leonard Albert Kravitz was a lip-glossed prima donna who
spent two hours a day touching himself in front of a full-length mirrorbut a bridesmaid
for a boutique cardigan? That’s 51 percent loathsome, 49 percent humiliatingfor all of
us. Don’t stop fucking yourself, Lenny.

^^^

24

Mr. Wiggles

Teddy Bear

IN THE ANNALS of New York cartooning, never has there been a more loathsome
character than this vile little child-molesting bear. Foul-mouthed and foul-smelling, Mr. Wiggles
gives teddy bears come-to-life a bad name. His partner and creator, Neil Swaab, deserves at least
half the blame for the crimes of this Frankenstein anti-Pooh. Not only did the sinister Swaab once
pee in Tony Millionaire’s soda, he still laughs about it.

23

Diane Sawyer

Anchorwoman

THE QUEEN OF broadcast journalism infotainment, Diane is ABC News’
incessant ingenue that we hope one day interviews a hungry Siberian tiger. As Good Morning America‘s
50-something going on 30-something blond and blue-eyed eternal debutante, she coyly sucks pudding
from Wolfgang Puck’s spoon, creams over celebrities and moguls of any stripe, cries like an insipid
crocodile for the victims of fted daily tragedies and bats her eyelashes while touting
her Nixon-White-House-past. For her current multi-million-dollar-per-year contract, Diane
guarantees an overdose of saccharine sufficiently strong to send viewers into a coma, but not strong
enough to flush the fourth-place network’s morning ratings out of the toilet.

22

Pierre Rougier

Fashion publicist

IN THE SEA of slimy New York fashion publicists, Pierre Rougier is a giant
squid: oozy, tentacle-wielding and capable of inflating to a tremendous size. It’s a mystery why
his designer clients don’t bolt from the nose-in-the-air, thumb-up-the-ass Frenchman. With
all the tact of Courtney Love and foresight of Martha Stewart, Rougier brown-noses fashion royalty
to the point where even they notice, all the while shafting, with barely a shrug, anyone not endowed
with a wardrobe allowance. But revenge will be sweet. Gucci execs have been urging Balenciaga designer
Nicolas Ghesquiere to cut the cord, and Anna Wintour, the famously frosty editrix whose repugnance
for Rougier is her only shared trait with the rest of humanity, has repeatedly called for his perfumed
head.

21

Cast of Queer Eye

for the Straight Guy