FIGHT!

By Media Farm

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Media Farm has a friend who bought the domain name MediaFightClub.com. It was the highlight of our month, because the Farm is a huge fan of both journalism and craven bloodsport. And, obviously enough, any confluence of the two has our wholehearted support. That's why last week had the Farm worked into a heavy, wild-eyed lather. Boston Magazine's John Gonzalez (aka "Gonzo" ... luchador mask not included) took on Kevin Cullen, the Globe's crusty, coasting, (reportedly!) Irish newspaper columnist, and Cullen obliged everybody by firing a gratuitous return shot in print. For a moment, it was almost like Boston had a vibrant community of journalists in love with the craft and drinking and pugilism and fun. Imagine that.

First, to Gonzalez's attack. In a column in this month's issue of Boston (other highlights include a cover story about places where rich people vacation and a story about the hottest of hot new trends—giving birth to twins), Gonzalez plays Media Farm. Which is to say, he excoriates the Globe's metro columnists for—more often than not—blowing it out their asses. He calls Cullen, Yvonne Abraham and Adrian Walker "more Oprah than Oliphant," and paints the Globe's City & Region section as a sloppy patchwork of "robust reporting abutting frail commentary." Of the three, Cullen offers the fullest defense of himself to the author ("When Howie [Carr] calls you a hack, it doesn't mean anything anymore," and, "Do I need to write a column and say that Tom Menino has been here too long and he needs to go? I don't know. Right now I don't feel the need to do that"), and as a result, takes the brunt of the column's wrath: "Just as Carr's never-ending hack-a-thon wears thin, so, too, do the Kleenex-exhausting Lifetime movies that double as the Globe's metro columns."

Gonzalez also digs up a disgruntled former Globe writer who paints the current troika's toothlessness as a natural continuation of muzzling that Eileen McNamara allegedly encountered late in her tenure: "The paper was changing. They didn't want the brassy, ballsy, in-your-face columnists anymore. They wanted feature stories. Which is crap."

Gonzalez begged the stable of metro columnists to show some fight, and a within days, his wish had been granted: Kevin Cullen knocked him square in the jaw.

You'll have to excuse me today. It is very difficult to type through all these tears. You see, Boston magazine says I'm not tough enough to be a metro columnist ... If you haven't read it—and unless you've gotten your hair cut or gone to the dentist recently, you probably haven't—Boston magazine says neither I nor my colleagues Adrian Walker and Yvonne Abraham have the mettle to be good columnists ... A couple of months ago, I got a phone call from a nice young man who said his name was John Gonzalez. He said he was a senior writer for Boston magazine. I congratulated him on this remarkable achievement ... I can't say I've read Boston magazine very closely in recent years, but they were kind enough to send me a free copy of the current issue, and thumbing through its glossy pages, it seems it is indeed indispensable reading if you're in the market for an overpriced meal or a face lift ... As for Gonzo, we have a word in our business for those of little experience and less accomplishment who sit in smug judgment of their elders. But, frankly, I'm too much of a lady to say it.

Wonderful stuff. Brilliant. BoMag, to its credit, cheered Cullen and begged for more. And he responded ... by saying that Boston is different now than it was 40 years ago. Even if the significance of that difference eludes the author: "It's 40 years since Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated and American cities burned. Today, the Celtics are as black as the Chuck Taylor hightops the great Celtics teams of the 1960s used to wear. I don't know what that means, but, in this town, it means something."

Um, really? That's no good. You're a columnist, Kevin. You're supposed to have, you know, thoughts. Feelings. Opinions worth sharing with the city. "Tom Menino doesn't care that he mumbles. I don't know what that means, but it means something." See? That doesn't say anything—it's just words.

We would've gotten worked into further fury, but the day after Cullen's Celts column, he filed a meditation on Scott McClellan's new book. And Iraq.

Can somebody smack this guy again? He needs it. Already.