Martin Does Page Six; World Laughs on the Inside
Now that pretty much everyone and their doormen have weighed in on the extortion controversy afflicting Page Six freelancer Jared Paul Stern, we can finally sift through the pile-up to sort the dead. For example, Gawker compromised its unofficial “Payola Six” reporting leadership by allowing Stern a weekend editing gig, which he handled about as elegantly as he stammered out his $220,000 request to Ron Burkle. And then there is Art Buchwald, whose evidently terminal unfunniness (he wrote from hospice) persisted Monday in The Washington Post with ruminations like, “In any case, I liked the story because it had nothing to do with leaks from the White House.”
But the most mangled casualty to be dragged smoldering from the cultural collision might be Steve Martin, who wrote up his own parody of Page Six for The New Yorker. Loaded with “full disclosures” and other in-“jokes,” Martin’s piece has swept the Web as some sort of piercing satire; but as much as I wanted to be amused, I found myself reading it with a waning enthusiasm not dissimilar to the ethos guiding Martin’s film career.
I mean, is this what passes for funny in The New Yorker?
Later, Late Show
David Letterman, the poor man’s Alan Thicke (full disclosure: Dave refused to match our Oscar gift basket), made a snide joke on his show about Page Six appearing not on page 6 but on page 12. Yeah, well, so? The reason that Page Six appears on page 12 is that we are getting a regular envelope under the door from the Committee to Promote the Number Twelve, and it would be too confusing to our readers to change the name of the column to Page Twelve, and, anyway, we are also receiving a tasty monthly contribution from the Society to Promote the Number Six.
Look on the bright side: At least David Denby can rest easy knowing he is, for once, not the magazine’s most insipid contributor. A thank-you card must be in order.
i enjoy reading the New Yorker, but have never ever found any of their alleged humor pieces to be even remotely funny.
I actually thought this week’s “The Rough Guide to My Apartment” was the first funny “Shouts and Murmurs” in five or six years. Check it out at the website.