Shakeup at the Village Voice
September 1, 2006 | Comments Off
The Village Voice’s new management fired books editor Ed Park by telephone on Wednesday. Longtime rock critic Robert Christgau also got the axe, along with six more senior editors.
It’s about time, don’t you think? Now the New Times, which owns the Voice, can redirect coverage toward truly relevant cultural matters — like how great boob jobs are!
“These Could Be Yours: No surprise when it comes to breasts, Miami is best,” a current New Times feature, crowns my hometown the nation’s silicone capital just in time for a boob job contest sponsored by the paper. Here’s how the article starts:
Breasts. Boobs. Tits. Heaving cleavage. Plunging décolletage. If you think there might be more of this in Miami-Dade than any other place, you might be right. And it’s not because Miamians are naturally endowed.It’s thanks to the genius of saline and silicone.
To be sure, breast implants are on the rise everywhere. In 1992 there were 32,000 breast implants in the United States. Last year that number had soared to more than 300,000. But in beauty-obsessed Miami, the trend is even more pronounced. After all, the place was inspiration for plastic surgery television shows like Nip/Tuck and Miami Slice. Get-a-free-set contests (like one run by this newspaper) are oh-so-ordinary here. And bargain-basement deals and financing plans are pitched used-car style: The average price of an American breast job was $3373 in 2005; in Miami you can find them for $1999!
Pulitzer material, no? When you’ve got such hard-hitting reportage going on, why bother with a books section? And ultimately, why not just follow the lead of Rupert Murdoch and have the titties do the thinking?