New York Magazine 10/30-11/12/17

1 New York’s latest issue—“My New York”—marked the magazine’s 50th anniversary by celebrating the disparate characters and voices that make the city what it is. For the issue’s cover, artist Alex Katz revisited the subway sketches of his youth to create an updated series. “Genius,” Matthew Higgs, director of White Columns, posted on Instagram. “One to keep (along with Barbara Kruger’s still resonating Trump ‘Loser’ cover).” But the artist Aaron Krach lamented the introduction of cell phones in the tableau: “My God this is depressing,” he wrote. Allison Benedikt, Slate’s executive editor, tweeted, “Pretty psyched about this issue. I grew up reading New York in my Youngstown, OH bathtub, dreaming of moving to NYC.” Meanwhile, Cindy Adams, who was featured in the issue (“My Mishpocheh,” October 16–29), wrote, “Standing ovation…

In 1968, Johnny Carson’s politics were limited by his network. “ ‘The show is rigidly formatted, and we have a narrow range to work in. You begin to feel like a hack, writing NBC commissary and peacock jokes or Ed McMahon drinking jokes all day long,’ says a writer. NBC’s Standards and Practices department, network censors, asks that all political candidates be joked about equally. One writer complains bitterly because the show can have no ideologies or political point of view. ‘I’d love to do jokes about birth control and the drug culture and so would Johnny, but people who sell toothpaste have to be kept happy.’ “‘Johnny jokes least about [Eugene] McCarthy, because we can’t bring ourselves to write McCarthy jokes with any bite,’ says a writer. ‘But I…

WE DIDN’T VOTE FOR HIM. We can show you the numbers if you want. We keep explaining to foreigners—meaning anyone who doesn’t live in our city—that we loathe him, that we reject him, that we never liked him, that we were the first to know him and the first to understand who he was. We know, though, when we’re alone with our thoughts, how unconvincing that sounds. We know that, on some level, he is ours. We can’t shake it. This is the quiet mortification of being a New Yorker one year after the election—the confession we don’t make, the guilty dread that shrouds us. The thing that all of America now has to endure came out of our clay. This gold-speckled golem who was slammed and slapped and shoved…

1. “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.” 2. “Listen: If you’re gonna blame society for murder, what we ought to do is turn the killer loose, give him a pension for life, and shoot the rest of the city.” 3. “I do not believe that [President Obama] loves America … He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country.” 4. “I’m probably one of the four or five best-known Americans in the world.” 5. “It’s a proven fact that capital punishment is a well-known detergent to crime.” 6. “I think apologizing’s a great thing, but you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully…

IT WAS FRIDAY, which meant it was Michael Grimm’s cheat day. The muscle mass he carried during his time as a Marine, as an undercover FBI agent, and even as a congressman has, at age 47, become more difficult to preserve on his naturally slight frame. To fight the atrophy—made worse by the strain of an investigation, an indictment, a guilty plea, a felony conviction, seven months in prison, and another month under house arrest—he exercises diligently. On a high-protein, low-carb diet, he ingests a notable quantity of meat, from chicken cutlets he breads and fries, to filet mignon he grills, to his mother’s meatballs, which she also makes in miniature for Sebastian, her son’s not mysteriously fat Yorkie, whom he calls “a bad boy” in a singsong voice. On…

AND THE STORIES keep on coming: about how political pundit Mark Halperin rubbed his erect penis against younger female colleagues (a claim he denies); how Artforum co-publisher Knight Landesman touched young female employees against their will and told one of them that she needed to be “more open to physical contact to succeed”; how Amazon Studios head Roy Price propositioned a producer, assuring her, “You will love my dick”; about New Orleans restaurateur John Besh, whose organization is alleged to have been a hotbed of harassment; about Ben Affleck, who groped women in public; about New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier, who’s reported to have thanked a young colleague for wearing a miniskirt to work. All these variations, all these stories … I’m so tired. Tired of getting—or hearing about…