How to get coverage in the New York Times if you're a (living) woman

Let's say you're a woman and you want coverage in The New York Times. (You're alive for the sake of this piece. Not deceased. That's the subject of our editorial.) How do you get it?

It helps if you play off the end of your blogging career as your decision and not something that the people employing you were discussing over ten months ago. Success always plays well to the paper. What helps even better is if you're someone willing to tear down women because The New York Times loves tearing down women, especially feminists. (Which accounts for the non-trend "trend" stories of women leaving the workforce in droves.)

Now if you've refashioned yourself, that's even better. Say you were a semi-serious reporter who suddenly became a woman who supposedly dished. They love that. "Girls Who Gossip!" is the sort of "dusty" stereotype the paper can always get into. But even better if you can fashion yourself as the Anka (Radakovich) of this decade (while avoiding addressing any of the topics that Anka actually addressed -- but, hey, hype trumps substance). It's a long way from Round Rock, Texas but if you've fooled people into thinking you're the Britney Spears of the net, they'll probably buy that as well.

So the former Wonkette releases a book and she's all over The New York Times. Janet Maslin reviews Dog Days (the non-reading reviewer reviews for the non-reading public), former Wonks get a profile piece, she writes an op-ed and she pens a book review. You may think that's all in a year's time but you'd be wrong. In basically fourteen days or less, Wonks get saturation coverage.

How do you do that when your roman a clef depends upon the activities of the others? Dog Days gives new meaning to the phrase Wallflower At The Orgy. In fact, had Nora Ephron not used that for the first collection of her writings, Wonks could have. When it's so badly written, try as you may to paint yourself as the Barbara Hower, it's not happening. (It helps that Hower had something in her own life to write about.)

So what's a Wonks to do to get the publicity needed to make her failed attempt at writing a novel break even? (The contracts still wet for the second novel!) Trash feminists. Which Wonks did.
While supposedly reviewing a book, she took jabs at Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda. "Dusty relics" was the term, right?

Gloria Steinem's a pioneer, an inspiration and someone that's lived on the public stage for four decades now. We don't think heroes become relics, dusty or otherwise. Jane Fonda? Well, we could note that her return to film in May of 2005 found her back at number one on the box office charts. But let's cut a little closer to Wonks. 2005 was also the year that My Life So Far topped the nonfiction book charts. All the way to number one. We're not seeing Dog Days make that leap. (We're not even seeing it chart significantly.) So the "dusty relic" achieved what Wonks can't.

Somewhere in Wonks is a real person. But when your paid a buck for every site-visit you attract, you can lose sight of reality and resort to flashy charges in an attempt to get recognition from the mainstream media. And it must be difficult for her to see how easily she was replaced. (The Common Ills warned her repeatedly of that prospect for almost a year.) So now she's the former Wonks and crossing over into fiction (or psuedo fiction) because her cartoonish version of Britney Does Politics pretty much killed what should have been a promising career as a journalist.

It's hard to be "saucy" in public and the meet & greets haven't been going all that well. It doesn't help when you look very little like the illustration that accompanied your, oops, their website. On the other hand, appearing on The Times' Sunday Magazine cover seated between two old men, while dressed as though you just shot the video for ". . . Baby One More Time," does wonders for your sex appeal . . . by comparison. Possibly, you could bring them on the road to stand next to you?

The simple truth is that for all the "naughty," Wonks was rather dull in real life. That's why she couldn't write about her own life in the uncelebrated first novel. It's not a crime to be a dull person. No one's ever prosecuted for it. And we're neither prosecuting or perscuting here. But we are calling Wonks out. By trashing feminists, she had a lengthy run in the paper of record. But she's not serious enough to be one of the middle-aged women they prefer to feature and, Wonks, you are middle-aged no matter how hard you strive to come off like Britney. (If it's any comfort, Liz Phair's attempts to be Avril are pretty pathetic as well.)

Wonks played the card she had to for coverage in the paper of record. It doesn't appear to have helped sales of the book (but then, what would, short of rewriting?).

We have no idea what the future holds for Wonks. We are aware that when self-promoters can't
make it in the mainstream, they tend to go rightwing. After the jabs at feminists, that really wouldn't surprise us. But Wonks, you're not only a long, long way from Round Rock, you're also a long, long way from Ann Marie Cox. She was going to make a difference. Today, you're just one more schill cracking unfunny jokes.