Do Not Mess With HargitayEvery Monday through Thursday, Daily Intel ends its day with Party Town, a feature that identifies a few of the charity galas or premieres happening that evening and then lists the celebrities who are scheduled to appear. Invariably, that list includes Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay. So when she got her own event last week for making the cover of Gotham, we declared Hargitay the “patron saint” of Party Town. And we (sarcastically) chided the Gotham article for mentioning all of Hargitay’s fine qualities but “shamefully failing to note her fetching singing voice and kindness to disabled puppies.” Though we have never heard from Hargitay, her fans came in her defense. After the jump, three outraged e-mails.
the in-box
We’ve Angered the Vegans
As any competent blogtrepreneur knows, the best way to get some attention is to piss people off. And you get the best returns, of course, by pissing off the professionally self-righteous. (Witness, say, Gawker’s baiting of George Clooney last year.) So imagine our delight to discover that we’d, off-handedly and without any calculation, managed to offend some of the most professionally self-righteous out there: the vegans. “We gently avoided last week’s Times article about the amazing strides being made in the cruelty-free fashion world,” we wrote yesterday, without thinking much about it, “because, well, we think vegans are kind of stupid.” And then the e-mail began arriving. Hell hath no fury like the morally superior mocked.
in other news
Vegans Want to Save the World, Your ClothesWe gently avoided last week’s Times article about the amazing strides being made in the cruelty-free fashion world because, well, we think vegans are kind of stupid. The article’s claims were sweeping and decisive: Animal-free fabrics were finally striking a blow against leather, wool, and silk (wait — worms are animals?), allowing activists like Natalie Portman and Stella McCartney to finally get ecologically sound “What Was She Thinking?” spreads in Us Weekly, too. You’d think this glowing “Styles” piece would make tofu-lovers happy, right? Wrong. In today’s letters section, a reader strikes back against the nonexistent enemy:
Some day it will be the ultimate in chic to be a compassionate consumer. Those who continue to abuse every animal and natural resource for their own pleasures will come to represent the ugly.
Yeah, maybe. Except that those vegan shoes will still be really ugly.
Letters: Compassionate Chic [NYT]
Uncruel Beauty [NYT]
