Jezebel
Yesterday a brand-new sex advice column debuted in the New York Press, and an editor at the paper sent me a pitch, wondering if I would link to it. And because it not only featured answers to questions about the sanitary properties of urine and whether it's "gay" to fuck a tranny, but "I came home to find my live-in girlfriend GIVING HER BROTHER A GIANT BONER", I wrote a post wondering just how Claudia Lonow, a former child star best known for her work in Knots Landing, went about the process of finding such shocking, edgy questions without, you know, having an established stream of pervs like Dan Savage. Well, it turned out she just stole them from Dan Savage. After the jump, the evidence — and my rant about what this means.
Here's Lonow's column:
Yo, Lonow:
My girlfriend and I have been living together for two years, and we're beginning to talk about marriage and kids. I love her, but I'm beginning to be weirded out by her relationship with her brother. They're always touching in each other. Then, one day, I come home and my girlfriend is in her brother's arms on the couch. As soon as I walked in the door, they jumped up, and I saw a clear view of the outline of his boner. They both looked guilty. After he left I demanded to know what was going on. She confessed that they had been having incestuous relations since they were teenagers—and didn't think it was a big deal!
I asked her to move out. Of course everyone—family, friends, neighbors—is asking what happened. And I'm missing her. Am I forcing my morality on her, as she insists?
DUMP HER! Dump her and wash your body with that shit they washed Meryl Streep with in Silkwood! Oh, and, by the way... is there statutory rape involved? I bet Elliot Stabler would say, "yes" and punch a cement wall and Mariska Hargitay's eyes would well up and Ice-T would be all, "Damn! White people are crazy, yo."
Seriously people... there is a thing as too much tolerance of other people's perversions. Let's all make an agreement: we don't fuck our dogs, we don't fuck babies, (Africa, I'm talking to you), and we don't fuck our BROTHER! Is that really so difficult?
And here's a Dan Savage column from 2006:
Here's one for you: My girlfriend and I have been living together for two years, and we've talked about marriage and kids. Like all relationships, ours wasn't perfect. But what really bothered me was my girlfriend's relationship with her brother. They were touchy-feely in a way that felt inappropriate. Two weeks ago I came home and found my girlfriend in her brother's arms on the couch. They freaked at my sudden arrival and jumped up, providing me with a clear view of the outline of the boner in his pants. Guilt was on their faces. After he left I demanded to know what was going on. At first my girlfriend insisted that I had a dirty mind. I told her that I recognized a boner when I see one, and she confessed that they had been having incestuous relations since they were teenagers - and didn't think it was a big deal! I told her it was a huge deal to me because (A) she's cheating on me, (B) she's cheating on me with her brother, and (C) EWWW.
I asked her to move out, which she took very badly. Of course everyone - family, friends, neighbors - is asking what happened. I'm also seriously missing the woman I thought would be my wife. Am I forcing my morality on her, as she insists? Or is ditching her a no-brainer? I can't even think clearly anymore. Is this a case of DTBFA - dump the brotherfucker already?
- Serious Incest Since Teens Appalled Him
What is with the incest letters lately? Was the incest taboo rescinded, and only SISTAH and I failed to get the memo? Motherfuckers, brotherfuckers, fatherfuckers - just reading the subject lines on my e-mails is giving me screaming nightmares. Eesh.
Listen, SISTAH: Dumping the brotherfucker was the right thing to do - a no-brainer, a definite case of DTBFA. Would you want the future mother of your children to regard incest as anything other than the taboo-to-the-tenth-power that it is and, if I have anything to say about it, always will be? And don't worry about your ex-girlfriend's future prospects - there's a guy besides her brother out there for her somewhere. Google can help her find a guy who has both a cuckold and an incest fetish, i.e., the kind of guy who is not only turned on by the thought of his mate being unfaithful, but would find it extra-special nifty if his wife was cheating on him with her own brother. That guy ain't you.
As for your family, friends, and neighbors, refrain from telling them the whole truth - your ex has enough problems without everyone knowing she's a brotherfucker. But when you're asked why the two of you broke up, SISTAH, you have every right to say that she was cheating on you with another man.
Kinda kills her credibility as to the origin of queries like this doesn't it?
Every time I watch ESPN or Spike TV I see these commercials for Enzyte "natural male enhancement." Does that shit actually work? Not that I'm small or anything, but I'm a divorced, middle-aged, chain-smoking, overweight single guy that lives in a trailer park. The only things I've got going are a steady job and a car that runs (most guys in this park don't have either). The only girls I can get are the crack whores that live here (of which there are tons). I'd love to land a normal woman but don't know what to do. I figure a few more inches downstairs wouldn't hurt, especially if all I have to do is take a pill every day.I'll spare you her sage counsel.
This is pitiful and ridiculous and makes me wish I didn't even have to pay attention to this shit for a bunch of reasons, namely that when I emailed New York Press editor David Blum about this yesterday he got all up on his high horse, initially responding:
re your "ick" and "ew" comment: i'd say the q's are actually pretty standard for sex-advice columns these days.Not arguing with that! And then going so far as to respond with a lengthy defense of the First Amendment and the legitimacy of the topic of incest or something like that: I'll print here:
i don't plan to be censoring questions just because i don't happen to like the question.
Ugh. You know what? You guys are idiots. I don't spend a lot of time critiquing the alternative newsweekly industry, which like the rest of the print industry is dying a slow death, namely because I grew up thinking alt-weeklies were some sort of salvation or anyway they got all the concert listings first but whatevs, and yet. And yet it is shit like this that is why they are so fucking irreversibly irrelevant. Editors who will spend fifteen minutes crafting a self-righteous response tailored to making a critic feel like a prudish Christian Coalition sex-negative asshole or whatever will fail to spend .23 seconds googling their fucking sex columns, or a minute and a half inquiring about the origin of their shocking, too taboo for the glossies! subject material. You know what, dude? I used to work at one of those phone sex call center whose pervy ads found a refuge in your pages/pay your bills. I would say I've heard it all, but on the basis of the wild spectrum of crazyass fantasies and batshit scenarios I know for a fact that I have not heard it all. There is always something weirder, sicker, more hilarious, more disturbing. But disturbing/sick/seamy/shocking/outrageous ≠ interesting. I encourage you to check out porneskimo to corroborate this fact.
At this point I'd rather read your answers to Ann Landers. That, at least, might be useful.
Comments
I knew I had read that question in Dan Savage a couple years ago! Just yesterday I read this new sex column, and I read that one and wa like damn, thats familiar. You dont forget a question like that.
see, i thought the *enzyte* question sounded familiar too. i'm currently searching savage loves to see if it's on there.
So let me get this straight: you write to tell him that the column was a carbon copy of one already answered by DS, and his response was "we don't censor on the basis of what may be shocking to you?" That just = you busted us and all I can do is answer a different question entirely.
anyone know what Dan Savage has to say about this yet? mostly i'm curious b/c i know it will be something pithy scathing & good.
Laaaaaaaaaa-haaame.
Somehow I suspect she is totally the same girl who plagiarized an entire page of our high school yearbook from some other school. The best part was that she cited things like a dance held by student council, which, uh, never happened at our school but apparently had at the one she lifted the stuff from.
Oh wait, can't be the same person. That girl is now a news anchorette in Indiana. Now I'm even more depressed thinking that there are two such dishonest morons in the world.
[www.avclub.com]
BAM. that took all of 2.5 seconds (google "savage love enzyte") and it's the first couple hits.
Y'all called it yesterday. So the editor is the Jessica Seinfeld in this scenario, yes? Hardly changed the details at all-- it's like a high school student altering the Wiki entry to sound like their own work.
Besides, I already have Dan Savage, so I don't need a retread.
The only redeemable thing in that whole post was the Silkwood reference.
I took most offense to the "...Africa, I'm talking about you..." comment. I mean she must have been living under a rock to not know that there are a lot of sexual offenders doing a lot of disgusting things to very young children here in the United States. Claudia Lonlow, I'm talking to you.
I wish the link to the column worked.
When I had an advice gig a couple of years back I was asked about the sanitary properties of urine.
I'm curious if she cribbed my question and answer.
@onthecornerofparkerandwoolf: Holy shit.
I don't understand plagiarizing the letters anyway. I could probably make up a bunch, and it would be about as easy and I wouldn't get caught.
um, whoa. apalling! also: if you're going to plagiarize, don't pick the most well-known sex columnist out there right now! also, i think i've read the second question in savage love, also.
Someone better call the ambulance, because Dan Blum and his stupid columnist just got crushed (and totally deserved it). Mostly this makes me wish Dan Savage was running for president, though.
@TruculentandUnreliable: Also there is no need to make up letters. There are large numbers of people out there who send weird letters in looking for "advice" as a personal hobby.
The website I was at was fairly small but we got 50 letters worth responding to within a week of asking people to send us their questions.
@Nellicat: Which is a government tactic, is it not?
Okay, I was typing so fast, that my comment came out sounding stupid. I've been reading DS regularly and obsessively since I was 13. And I knew as soon as I read the NYP column yesterday that I had read that question before.
The NYP sucks anyways, they always reprint the same crossword puzzle three weeks in a row, or have one that doesn't match the clues. I know, I'm lame, but it's really frustrating...
It just goes to show that some people are attarcted by the allure of the bright, shiny lights, but have nothing to bring to the table. That, and in the Internet Age, you can't hope to get away with something like that because you will be found out.
@NefariousNewt: Bake for 35 minutes at 425 degrees until crust is brown and bubbly.
@drunkexpatwriter: I know, I don't understand this at all. The only reason I could think of is that they were lacking letters. But why rip them off from Savage?
"There's always someone, somewhere with a big nose who knows/who will trip you up and laugh when you fall"
I'm depressed. Is nothing sacred? Alas for the degenerating condition of mankind.
TGY, Needs Day Off + Booze to Cheer Up
Jezebel at its best!
Hey Moe, she stole she one about tranny hookers too.
[thestranger.com]
Savage Love column from April 6 of 2006, 4th letter down.
We don't fuck babies -- Africa, I'm talking to you?
What the FUCK? Fuck you, Claudia, you racist piece of shit.
Did someone e-mail Savage about this yet?
Has anyone emailed him about this? I want him to start a big fucking fight with these assholes.
@Smackdown: I just did!
@onthecornerofparkerandwoolf: Damn, nice googling skills there, my friend.
Seriously, how stupid/arrogant do you have to be to plagarize Savage Love?
Sorry but you have to be a complete loser to steal advice column questions. Period. Talk about one of the easiest things on the planet to find. This chick and her editor suck. hard.
@bananaballs: You would hope that would be obvioius, but I used to work as an English tutor, and plagiarists are often really stupid. One woman didn't even bother changing the font on the passage she had copied and pasted from the internet to match with the rest of her paper. And friends of mine who taught English classes said that students would often just copy the first Google entry for their topic. And two students in a friend's class teamed up to plagiarize the exact same essay...for a class they had together.
I hope Dan Savage rips 'em a new one. I'm not from NYC, but how does this paper, as an alt-weekly NOT have DS as their sex columnist? I know the Voice does.
let's hope the plagiarist won't be writing this column much longer. And I'm still pissed about the "I'm talking to you Africa!" thing.
@svreader: Friends of mine who are teachers have told me they've had papers turned in that were copies of Wikipedia entries - complete with the links still in the copy.
@funnyface: Me too. That alone was enough to make me hate her.
I think it's appropriate that there's an American Apparel ad at the bottom of the page.
Sure there's plenty of room for new voices (even hackneyed, unoriginal, possibly mildly retarded voices like Lonow's), but there will never be anyone like Dan Savage.
It dates me, but I gotta admit that I loved Anka Radakovich's run at Details.
@svreader: Very, very stupid. I taught a class that included two roommates, and they both turned in the SAME paper, even knowing that I graded all the papers myself. I mean, literally, every word was the same.
This is disgusting. Just when I thought that paper couldn't fall any lower, bam.
What a fucking cunthair. Tsk, tsk.
@Nellicat: OMG, I fucking hate it when people do that SO MUCH. So much.
Alright, I'm going to be checking Slog religiously until Dan Savage responds to this. I cannot wait to see what he'll have to say.
My first reaction to Moe's post yesterday was "Sheesh, why is she so shocked by the topics covered? I read about that shit in Savage Love years ago!" But wow, what an asshole. Not just a plagirist, but a racist, to boot.
The power of Jezebel. Frightening, yet so much fun. Busting balls like only a jezzie can.
I had a final year University student submit a paper completey cut and paste from an obscure website. It took me a week to find it but when I did, wow the satisfaction. BUSTED.
Ha ha! This is awesome. I remember on the previous thread, someone pointed out that "I saw the outline of his boner" was a weird, fakey-sounding thing to say. And here it's "I saw the outline of the boner in his pants." Which actually sounds real.
Poor fucking New York Press. That thing's been dying a slow and painful death forever. And when you have editors who support the blatant plagiarists in their midsts, you wonder why that death hasn't been faster.
Like when the Weekly Dig laid off Michael Brodeur. It's as if there is some great conspiracy to rub out alt weeklies completely, wherein all of the actual talent is fired and all of the crazy, child-star plagiarists are hired.
And then people worry/complain about the death of the alt weekly. WTF.