Allen Salkin Sacrifices Himself for the Greater Good of Journalism (Again)
A friend of mine likes to say that he reads the Sunday Styles section before he reads everything else, so that he can get good and angry in the morning. Today is no exception.
Pre-economic collapse, the Styles section featured infuriating coverage of the blithely upwardly mobile citizens of Park Slope and the Upper West Side that made you want to set fire to the neighborhood. But in today's recession-weary economy, the Sunday Styles has—as we noted—has taken the opposite tack: going low, very, very low.
Just how low? Well, today's Style section includes a piece by the hard-hitting reporter, Allen Salkin, he of Festivus and bad trend pieces fame. Not to worry, he doesn't disappoint. "Snuggie on the Street: Watch Your Back," is investigative journalism at its finest, and features our fearless reporter taking one of the most ludicrous inventions to hit TV advertising, the Snuggie—essentially a wearable blanket—to the streets.
Writes Salkin: "But there is one aspect of Snuggie that has been little explored: its use in public…. I took an electric-blue Snuggie (the makers call it "royal blue") for a Manhattan field test."
This is sort like of like when Christopher Hitchens got waterboarded for Vanity Fair, except not. You could call it stunt journalism….for pussies.
Writes the fearless NYT reporter: "My biggest fear was that I would be treated as some kind of doomsday zealot when I donned my Snuggie in Times Square."
Really? We can't believe that was his biggest fear. We would think getting beaten up for looking like a cross between a lame wizard at a Renaissance Fair, Barney the dinosaur, and a full-retard in public would be a far bigger fear.