Hating Katie Lee

Oh, Jesus! Must everything be dumbed down? And down and down? It’s bad enough when Hollywood changes its Demi Moore screen version of The Scarlet Letter to have a happy ending. (Moore claimed, “It’s OK. Not that many people have read the book.” So noted.) But when food gets messed with, specifically by “celebrity chefs,” it’s time to man (or “to person”) the battle stations.

Our petitioner this time around singles out one Katie Lee, though any number of eligible candidates leap to mind. Ms. Lee, the former child bride of singer Billy Joel, has parlayed her photogenic face, figure and Greenwich Village townhouse into instant entrée to the ever-increasing ranks of food wannabes. Rachael Ray, Paula Deen, Katie Lee, the list goes on. Who are these people? Where did they suddenly come from? And how can we send them back pronto? Enough!

Lee’s claim to fame, it seems, aside from her five-minute marriage and her former hosting duties on Top Chef, is a deft hand at making cheeseburgers, an award-winning skill she proudly displays online, on TV and at celebrity events. (A recent New York Times profile with accompanying online video had its tongue planted comfortably in its cheek as it ooohed and ahhhed over Lee and her oeuvre.) Sounds like something we should be laughing at on community access TV, not reading about in the newspaper of record.

Julia Child and James Beard were the first to bring the art of preparing fine cuisine to the masses via television, and through it all they remained dignified, respectable, entertaining and true to the art they espoused. This new crew of backwoods experts seems happy as all get-out just to be on TV…and so what if they use canned frosting, garlic powder and processed cheese-food? (Though not all in the same recipe. Not yet anyway.)

Kiss of Death: Katie the L (along with her ex, “William”) is extolled in the pages of Gwyneth the P’s unctuous newsletter, Goop.

Ms. Lee, you seem like a sweet young lady with a lovely family, you really do. Why not just shut up and go home? Thanks.

Katie Lee:
Officially registered at Hate for Hire, May 13, 2010.

Amusing if amateur

Doesn’t anyone listen? We’ve already gone over the fine points that distinguish real hate from plain ol’ whining.

Landing squarely within the second category, the insipid caviling found on this upstart website. Claiming to be the latest in a long and respected line of public shaming vehicles (from Puritan pillories to Hollywood studio PR execs), the Thriillist.com Violation Report brings “disgrace mongering to the everyman,” urging users to submit phone photos of routine offenders whose individual behaviors might be considered rude. Whatever.

We’ll assume their hearts are in the right place…and move on.

Role model 2

We just couldn't resist posting this photo of an ardent H4H fan, so totally does he embody the high moral standards that we hold dear. And while we're a bit more focused in how we direct our hate, this guy takes an admirable, broader view that could accurately be described as "world class." Onward.

Hating the Nike Tiger ad

Swoosh!

OK, everybody, had enough time to let "last week's" TV spot simmer for awhile?

Embodying the high moral standards that American advertising has come to represent (“Sincerity and honesty, back seat please”), this tumor recently appeared on-air and fired-up several petitioners enough to make almost-instant submissions to H4H. (At least two of them, alas, have labored long in the service of marketing communications, so they well know whereof they speak.)

To wit: “That Nike commercial was so ridiculous. It's a piece o' shit as an ad and it's also laughable: Like his horndog father is his moral compass? The old man was a notorious womanizer and now he's Yoda?

“It's just more of the same ('I can screw everybody…without penalty') from the whole entitled crew: political, corporate, Wall Street, banking, sports, celebs, clergy, not to mention the media machine that keeps enabling this behavior while piously decrying it. Worst of all, it forces me, once again, to face my shaudenfreude habit. I HATE that!”

Another ad veteran laments: “I wasn't sure it was possible to dislike Nike anymore than I did, but the Tiger commercial might be the creepiest thing I've ever seen.

“As if it weren't bad enough that Nike pays some kid who can play great basketball $90 million to be its public face while it pays the kids who stitch together the shoes 90 cents a day, now they've really outdone themselves with the newest commercial starring a dead guy and his philandering son.”

Wait, folks. She’s just warming up. “Everyone should stop pretending he's coming back from battle, or that he's overcome some life-threatening illness. He's been caught up in a completely self-inflicted nightmare brought on by his own selfishness…made even creepier by bringing back his dead father to lecture him -- and pretending it's some touching father-son moment. It's gross!”

The wrap-up: “Tiger, if you wanted to impress people on the father-son front, you should have kept it in your pants and stayed home with your actual son once in awhile.”

Sing it, sister! (And this bride-to-be is from Maine, well-versed in “the way life should be.”)

On top of it all (shudder!), we don’t even think the spot is “world class.” So, if the many spoofs of the Nike ad don't do it for you, we offer for your palate-cleansing refreshment this agenda-free classic from the H4H archives. Forty years old and still as fresh as ever. With none of that icky moral aftertaste.



Nike Tiger ad:
Officially registered at Hate for Hire, April 18, 2010.

Role model

This inspiring young individual was recently brought to our attention, probably because his sensibilities align so nicely with ours.

On his YouTube profile page, ItsKingsleyBitch (alternately known as You Can Sit The Hell Down), he entreats us to think of him as Beyoncé...except when he posts a video, on which occasions we are to think of him as Sasha Fierce. Whatever.

All we know is that he is an inspiration to us here at H4H, so straightforward and unfettered is his ability to articulate his "pet peeves."

Unfortunate 8.26.10 update:
Kingsley has decided to become more "positive" and has removed his now-classic video. Instead, he gives us this:



Yawn.

He'll be back.

So while we're waiting, two related items to amuse you. It seems that Kingsley has become something of a small-time cult figure, so much so that remixes of his "Things I Hate" video have popped up all over you-know-where. We'll add one below...followed by a fan's re-posting of the Ur-video that originally enshrined Kingsley here on H4H, albeit with a new title.

Hating eBooks

Ain’t nobody better call us a fuddy-duddy. But we can’t quite cotton to the idea of eBooks, even the name seems self-contradictory. So we were not surprised when two (count ‘em!) petitioners contacted us here in our New England offices to request that the newfangled gizmos be added to our growing roster. No problem. (Especially no problem as each of the petitioners is an international author, he from Hamburg, she from Milan. Were we impressed! Hate knows no boundaries, it seems, something that came as no surprise to us.)

From Hamburg: “I love books. And part of that love is physical. I love the feel of a book in my hands.” And reading about the “inevitable” invasion of eBooks around the globe? “I already miss the tactile qualities of books,” he tells us. “The weight in the hand, the cover design, the scent of glue and paper. We are losing a tactile experience.

“I feel like an ancient scribe, many centuries ago, who has only ever known parchment scrolls and who is being shown one of these newfangled 'book' things for the first time. He sits there with this block of bound paper in front of him, not knowing even how to open it.

"A novice priest impatiently shows how one proceeds, page-by-page, without the tedious rewinding involved with scrolls. And the older priest, knowing he is defeated, fondles a scroll and says, 'But it's just not the same, is it?' "

From Milan, our second petitioner notes, “The book in itself, as object, cannot be substituted in my mind by an e-version, albeit a portable one. I still like pages, fonts, colophons, covers, blurbs, forewords and post scripta, lists of characters and glossaries -- even maps and illustrations where needed. The tactile quality of paper has nothing to do with virtuality, and everything to do with virtù (‘good quality’ in Italian).”

Stone tablets to papyrus, parchment to paper, now this. Our Milanese scribe continues, “We were already asked in our lifetime to go from fountain pen to ballpoint to felt-tip to keyboards of all kinds, and without taking anything away from the wonders of the Web, which include so many scholarly and cultivated sites in addition to online banality and trash, I'll go as far as saying that I even like old-fashioned encyclopaedias, dictionaries and thesauruses. Call me a fuddy-duddy, I can take it.”

The demise of small bookshops. The fact that Kindles hate sand and water, not to mention magnets, hot coffee, iced tea and a whole lot of other things. And can you really in good conscience read an eBook on Shabbat? The list of infractions goes on and on. Here’s one of our favorites:

Have you ever seen a book someone was reading on the subway…and then made a satisfyingly self-righteous snap judgment about that person? With a growing number of people turning to Kindles, iPads and other electronic readers, it’s not always possible to see what others are reading. (As recently reported in the New York Times, “Some digital publishers suspect that one of the reasons romance and erotica titles are so popular in electronic editions is because e-readers are discreet.”) Instead, we form our opinion based on the very fact that the person has chosen the eBook format. So there.

After all, you can’t tell a book by its cover if it doesn’t have one.

eBooks:
Officially registered at Hate for Hire, April 5, 2010.

Hating Windchimes

“A dangling instrument of sonic miasma”? “Dreaded and offensive melodic doodling”? “Evil noise polluters”?

Just some of many complaints on the web about the invasive and spreading menace known as windchimes. Available in all shapes and sizes, these New Age versions of the BoomBox are no less pernicious or obnoxious than their electronic, amplified forebears. (Or than Tony Soprano’s blasting the Rat Pack from massive speakers on his boat -- the beloved Stugots II -- into the beachfront home of an uncooperative neighbor.)

From the cheap, tinny, lamentably mass-produced metal variety to the more quiet bamboo to the almost-silent (but visually loathsome) compact-disc danglers, they seem to be popping up just about everywhere. A quick Google scan reveals that men tend to hate them, women less so. Our petitioner this time is decidedly a man.

He writes: “I hate these f*cking things. They keep me awake. They pollute the area with noise. Who gives anyone the right to decide what others should hear, day and night? Who thinks they sound good anyway? My neighbors across the street just put up some and they are irritating and they are constant. Their sound penetrates my home even when my windows are closed. I HATE them!!!!”

Sing it!

We here at Hate for Hire completely agree with you. They drive us nuts and persist as a grating symbol of utter selfishness. Live in an isolated area where no one else can hear them? Fine, hang ‘em high. But if you live in a neighborhood (like ours) where homes are within earshot of one another, hang those miserable and miserable-making things indoors so you can enjoy them and others (we) won’t have to.

A member of the H4H core team routinely passes a home in his neighborhood whose front porch sports SIX sets of these raucous noisemakers. Wirecutters at the ready some night soon, we don’t care about “the natural flow of chi”…those mothers are coming down!

Windchimes:
Officially registered at Hate for Hire, March 28, 2010.