​"In the old days, reporters, in the pages of the Voice, went after one another. Readers enjoyed taking sides in these civil wars, and we ourselves sometimes discovered what we should have known before we so confidently wrote."

So wrote Nat Hentoff in "Why I Oppose the Downtown Mosque: How I questioned an imam's motives and broke Tom Robbins's heart" in September of 2010, when Hentoff went after his colleague, friend and onetime union shop steward.

Indeed, there is a long, proud, half-century old tradition here at the Voice of writers duking it out with words within our own paper. "I do not want to get in the way of what looks like it has the making of a really good feud (the old Voice excelled at these; usually we had them with each other)" Robbins himself commented on another 2010 Voice article, where Editor in Chief Tony Ortega got into the ring with Louis Black of the Austin Chronicle. (After Robbins dropped in, he ended his message, "gentlemen, please go back to ripping each other up.")

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​"You know that feeling: You hit Send -- and your heart nearly stops," reads an article in today's Wall Street Journal. "You just hit REPLY ALL!" emails a panicked co-worker to her sloppy friend in one of the anecdotes used by the Journal to argue that the "Reply All" button is nothing but a headache and should be abolished, or at least guarded. "This shouldn't still be happening," the article says. Except maybe it should, to prove that email skills are important. Fighting for the honor of internet and email elitists everywhere, we're willing to argue that the button serves a valuable purpose: it allows amateurs to show their true colors. It's a trap and if you're not alert enough, you're going to get snagged. You probably deserve it. Oh, really, you're a social media expert? Actually, you're a fraud and now your whole office knows because you can't use a simple button. Stop whining, stop acting like an old person and stop letting the machines win.

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​Yes, we're all for excited for the government subsidized handjobs many of us are about to receive courtesy the TSA during our holiday travels. And by excited, we mean: "preemptively traumatized, and preemptively pissed." But do you ever imagine how the TSA screeners themselves feel?

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​Cathie Black, the former chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, was just appointed to one of the most powerful positions in New York City by Mayor Bloomberg. To massively understate the case, this is a big deal. Here's why you should be concerned about it:

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​A Reuters article today entitled "Lee makes himself more enticing for Yankees" notes that Texas Rangers southpaw Cliff Lee -- who delivered the New York Yankees a brutal slaying last night -- is looking more and more enticing to the 2009 World Series Champion Team, and that the Yankees can and will convince anyone to sell their soul to our city. Yes, even Texans.

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​Since it launched last week, People Who Talk About Things on the Internet don't know what to make of writer Alex Blagg's new site, ABajillionHitz.Biz. Is it an actual social media consultancy? Is it all just a joke? Or is it the "Hipster Runoff" of social media: a half-joke that isn't opposed to making money off being taken seriously? This video...

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​The empire state of mind is pretty pissy this week. Empire State Building owner Anthony Malkin of Malkin Holdings says that the enormous new building planned for 15 Penn Plaza, two blocks west of his 80-year-old beauty, would mar the view of New York's iconic skyscraper and change the skyline for the worse. To support his argument, Malkin Holdings released an artistic rendering of the skyline with the new building, conveniently drawn from the perspective where the proposed building overshadows the Empire State Building the most.

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via the Post

​"Lay off me, I'm starving" is essentially what this English professor told an Upper West Side Starbucks barista yesterday when she was refused her requested multigrain bagel until she answered the age-old question, "Do you want butter or cheese?" The unnecessary repetition of asking which spread a "plain bagel" (and linguistically conservative) orderer would prefer ruffled the customer's breakfast-time feathers, and shit went down in a big way, according to the Post.

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Viacom CEO Sumner "Get Off My Lawn" Redstone.

​So, have you heard about that time Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone left a voicemail for Daily Beast reporter Peter Lauria, attempting to bribe Lauria into giving up sources? It was pretty classic. Even better, it ended with another reporter telling Lauria that he'd never have lunch in Manhattan's media commissary, Michael's, ever again. How'd we get here?

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