Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Cheaters never win, my mom said. And it looks like she was right.

This week the fur flew when senior associate editor Nick Sylvester was suspended from his gig at the Village Voice. Turns out the boy wonder/music critic had fabricated reporting for his cover story "Do You Wanna Kiss Me?" on the pick-up artist's guide The Game by Neil Strauss. (You might remember Strauss from other literary merits such as ghost-writing porn star Jenna Jameson's memoir.)

The story's been pulled from the site, but it's not really worth reading, anyway. It's a pretty thin piece of trend-reporting that doesn't hold much water. Basically, Sylvester interviews a few women who have read The Game and can use it against the would-be players who try to pick them up. He then attempts to extrapolate that into something--it's not clear what--about the state of dating in New York. He interviews Strauss and uncritically swallows a lot of his garbage about picking up women--for one, he fails to be very critical of the whole "art" of picking up women at all, let alone Strauss's basic assumption that social success is measured by belt notches.

Given how flimsy the journalism is, one can't help but wonder why the whole piece wasn't cast as a short diary from a woman's perspective--but wait, guess what? Dolly, a New Yorker who writes a blog about her love life, and had recognized men running The Game on her, did pitch the Voice, in January, and never heard back. Then Sylvester was assigned the story.

Golden boy Sylvester has nothing to worry about. "I just adore that kid," acting Voice Editor Doug Simmons told Gawker . "The thought of firing him is a painful one for me. I hope this review can bring an understanding to the paper -- and to Nick -- about the boundaries of journalism."

Yes, cause the boundaries of journalism were so unclear before. Thank goodness Simmons cleared that one up!

What happened here doesn't quite add up. First, Sylvester's lie was painfully obvious, violating the cardinal rule of fake journalism: Don't quote real people who you've never met. (Make them up!) And stranger still is why he bothered with lying at all. He claims to have met one especially colorful pick-up artist at Bar 151 in New York, but in fact the scene he related was a "composite" of anecdotes told to him by others. So why lie? Why not just quote the people you interviewed in real-life?

Usually Sylvester writes pretentious, garbled, mumbo-jumbo name-dropping music reviews, and some have speculated that the poor kid just got in over his head. It was a Jayson Blair-esque case of too much, too soon. But even that doesn't make sense. It doesn't take genius to know that you don't make up facts in a reported story. Sylvester, who was yanked from the stage at this year's Plug Awards for reading Malcom Gladwell's New Yorker essay on profiling in lieu of presenting the award he was there to give, seems to have a problem with taking anything seriously. Maybe he thought the Voice piece was supposed to be a prank. For now, the joke's on him. He's not only been suspended from the Voice, but yesterday he was fired from his gig as an editor at indie rock go-to site Pitchfork .

But the really outrage-inducing part of all this is that Sylvester won't be up at night sweating out the difference between "fact" and "fiction" in our topsy-turvy, no-holds-barred post-modern world where right is left and up is down. He's more famous than he was before, and in the long-run, his career will be just fine. He has Simmons. He's young. He'll still get a book deal.

Comments (13)

1. maybe he should get a job with rupert murdoch - plenty of room for trivial lying crap there. kid's got a great future in sillyninnyland.

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 03/03/2006 @ 1:15pm

2. I am not certain what it takes to get a column on this site. If there is money involved, I will happily offer my services. I can write about sports or television or Hollywood fashion or recipes from former First Ladies.

   Posted by tjbehrens1 at 03/03/2006 @ 1:30pm

3. Gotta agree with you there, TJ....

   This is more esoteric than Ms vanden Heuval writing on the Presidency of Harvard?

   An editor got fired from "The Village Voice"?....wow...alert MSNBC, we may have to cut away!

   Posted by Mask at 03/03/2006 @ 1:35pm

4. Has Christine Smallwood read The Game, or even looked at the cover blurbs? It's not a "pickup artist's guide," it's a solidly reported (and often quite funny) look at the subculture of pickup artists. You may not like this subculture, but it exists, and Strauss is as good a person as any to write about it, as evidenced by the fact that it ends with him quite effectively challenging the pickup artists' "basic assumption that social success is measured by belt notches."

   Posted by dradosh at 03/03/2006 @ 3:03pm

5. My goodness! First Harpers and now the VV. Ah well. What else is there to do between bouts of ABB hysteria and pimping faux-liberal dems? Might as well take a few potshots at the competition.

   Posted by AlanSmithee at 03/03/2006 @ 3:15pm

6. TJ/MASK--Are you saying that there's nothing interesting about sports, TV or Hollywood fashion? You must live very serious lives, but The Nation has always taken an interest in the literary life. Sometimes culture can actually help illuminate something important about the way we live and relate to each other. But don't worry, we'll have lots more upcoming about Bush and Iraq for you to sink your manly teeth into soon!

   Posted by Peter Rothberg at 03/03/2006 @ 3:50pm

7. If you're going to use your column space in the Nation to write borderline ad hominem attacks on someone's writing style, you should also be sure that you're not using this forum to advance your own career interests, or those of your co-blogger Mark Hatch-Miller. On your blog - The Junk Blog (www.thejunkblog.com) - Hatch-Miller posted at 2:18pm on March 2 on this subject, taking care to lambaste Sylvester's writing. It's his blog and his entry; it's fine. However, now it seems you've parroted that posting for your Nation column, which is by no means a narrowly-read blog. I'm concerned about a conflict of interest - are you using your column space to explore the interesting details and implications of this Village Voice "Sylvestergate" issue, or are you using this space inappropriately, to capitalize on another writer's mistakes and to advance your and Hatch-Miller's interests? I ask because of the undercurrent of jealousy in this piece. Is it a coincidince that your posting is a thinly-veiled attack on another young, Brooklyn-based writer, one who happens to be a little more successful than you and Hatch-Miller? I'm disappointed that you trumpet high journ­al­ist­ic standards but don't seem to find anything wrong with self-serving gloating.

   Posted by haveblue at 03/03/2006 @ 4:04pm

8. Peter,

   I do think there are interesting and important stories to be told about high and low culture of all forms. But this essay isn't it. If Ms. Smallwood tackled the issue of the "pick-up artists" head on, maybe something could come from it. But it reads very much to me like a story about nothing. Coincidentally, I am fighting my own battle at my local paper involving a reporter who repeatedly "quotes" people when she is doing nothing of the sort. On three occasions, I have been quoted--at length--as saying things that could not possibly come from my mouth or fingertips. I don't understand this anymore than I do Sylvester's lies. But it isn't interesting to many other people beyond my co-workers and little clique of friends. And so it is with Ms. Smallwood's story.

   Perhaps she can be granted a column that discusses the media errors too insignificant for Eric Alterman. It wouldn't necessarily be a good read, but at least her aims would be clear.

   Posted by tjbehrens1 at 03/03/2006 @ 4:10pm

9. So, obviously literary culture and the left have a long intertwined history, and to ask The Nation to ignore its fiery birth among New York's most literary abolitionists. But commenting on Sylvester's behavior at the Plug Awards is hardly the sort of high cultural critique worthy of The Nation. "The Notion" was supposed to liven up The Nation odt, but I fail to see what this jealous snarkfest has to do with anything. Vide guys - a former Lampoon staffer, known for writing parodies that infuriate other music journalists (like said blogger and her co-blogger), errs big time and an editorial staff depleted Village Voice lets a parodic article in the style of his earlier pieces run as a feature cover story. The Voice story, for anyone familiar with the risible book The Game, is obviously a send-up of the pop-sociology article making the rounds of the New York Press (although ironically, never in The New York Press. It's not outrage inducing that a young music reviewer whose background is in humor writing doesn't have their whole career ruined for what is certainly not the next Stephen Glass. It is outrage inducing that this blog is abusing the mantle of The Nation to score one for personal careerism.

   Posted by Jeremy Reff at 03/03/2006 @ 4:11pm

10. TJ--Well, I guess interest is in the eye of the beholder. I'm in the media so maybe that's why I liked this post. Or maybe I'm just a geek...I think your own story involing your local paper sounds kind of interesting too. I just don't understand the big deal. And speaking as someone who has worked at The Nation for some time, I can assure REEF that, while we do appreciate the concern for our good name, you should chill w/your strident outrage. No mantle has been abused, our rep. is intact, Bush is still in office and war rages on.

    Posted by Peter Rothberg at 03/03/2006 @ 4:33pm

11. Peter - I appreciate your candor, if not your mispelling of my last name (wouldn't Jeremy have worked)? And I'm not saying that you should return to the regularly scheduled broadcast of anti-Bush, anti-war commonplaces. I'm more of a New Criterion guy myself, and a big media geek, so of course I think Sylvestergate (as Gawker plays it up) is interesting. To me. On Gothamist. But a) Ms. Smallwood misses the huge irony behind Sylvester's piece, embracing the idea that he somehow "fails to be very critical of... Strauss's basic assumption that social success is measured by belt notches," b) Smallwood has an ax to grind with Sylvester, and c) that this seems off-topic for The Notion, let alone The Nation. Look at the previous two posts: Kim not letting Harper's get away with publishing AIDS denial, and Nichols with an important message on the Patriot Act. Andy Kaufmanning at the Plug Awards is the same thing? Sure - give me a spot at The Notion, and I'll blog about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

    Posted by Jeremy Reff at 03/03/2006 @ 4:43pm

12. Seriously, though, if you're looking for the recipes...

    I think there are certain stories that seem so far inside the world of NYC that those of us a thousand miles or more from that world are willing to embrace them no more snuggly than we would a TV Guide written in Sanskrit.

    Posted by tjbehrens1 at 03/03/2006 @ 4:43pm

13. JEREMY-- a) I read the post as being about Sylvester's mendactity, not his ideas. b) You're wrong about this. How would you know? c) You're wrong again. This post isn't at all off-point. This blog is a real catch-all with a very wide frame.

    Just think, again, you're getting carried away here. Sorry to misspell your name.

    Posted by Peter Rothberg at 03/03/2006 @ 4:51pm