Wow. Some of the commenters need to get out more or something. How can so many smart people miss a joke like that?

Moxie misses many jokes. She, however, is a joke nonone misses.

second what tanya said. also, she's somehow a republican, which makes her resemble ann coulter far too much for my tastes (such as they are).

I think Moxie might have more insight on L.A as an observer than you Elizabeth, and as far as jokes go, your observations were neither funny nor observant.

"Hey Micky you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, hey Micky..."

Maybe people didn't get the "joke" because it was neither funny nor well told. Why pick on Moxie for pointing that out?

Moxie must have struck a raw nerve to upset you so much. That's the trouble with us Angelenos -- we haven't been properly conditioned to laugh in the right spots. Good thing you got out of here in time. I hope that your IQ points grow back in time...

I have relatives back east, and can see there can be some friction between the yuppies and the stiff necked yanks. Why take it out on Moxie though? She's a perfectly good blogger, in my opinion. By the way, Gawker, love your true blog, you're a good writer. PS If you spend some actual time opening up to people in Los Angeles, things will actually not be so untolerable. The tofu scramble in my taste, may be new agey for vegans, but LA ain't that bad, although I'm dying to get the hell out of here....

What's possibly more embarrasing is the compulsive need to explain and defend your sense of humor. If the authorial voice of Gawker is an *alter-ego* then why do you constantly take offense when people attack it. Whether it be Gawker personals or LA-bashing, there is no need to apologize or explain. Stand firm.

While choosing one person for your post, you neglected all the others who disagreed with your take on LA. Could it be that you have a wee crush on Moxie? I mean, why single her out?

i guess j. got the point

While choosing one person for your post, you neglected all the others who disagreed with your take on LA. Could it be that you have a wee crush on Moxie? I mean, why single her out?

True, this is giving Moxie more attention than she needs or deserves. Lord knows she has an unhealthy ego as it is.

Just give her Denton's fax number and nobody gets hurt.

as to whether or not it was funny--well, i guess that's a matter of opinion, although my email would overwhelmingly indicate that it was, and that most angelenos understood that bashing other cities is gawker's schtick.

so why *not* explain? it saves me from having to wade through a pile of email from people who don't understand it's an alter ego and take it personally.

i'm not offended; i'm just baffled. i *really* can't believe that anyone would possibly think that the gawker LA posts were intended to be a serious critique of the city. as i said in the comments, there are plenty of nice things about LA. but "nice things about LA" don't belong on gawker. if i wanted to bash amy et al personally the way they're bashing me, i'd take the cheap shot about low IQs, but i don't think that's true. i think they just missed the joke. (although it does make me wonder if i need to explicitly explain that i don't really care what anna wintour wears in the conde nast elevator, and whether it would matter if i did.)

gawker's raison d'etre--and maybe this isn't clear; i don't know--is both celebrating and skewering manhattan culture. and part of manhattan culture is that absurd "we're the center of the universe; and no one else is important" mentality. the voice on gawker has to take on that mentality or it doesn't work. it's *supposed* to be obnoxious. if gawker were about my personal interests and sincere opinions, I'd never voluntarily write the words "Paris Hilton," unless referring to a French hotel.

i only picked moxie's comment because i thought it was the best example of not getting the joke (slamming gawker for not being open-minded, when the site is intentionally and purposely *not* open-minded.) i don't know anything about her and i don't read her blog, so there's no conspiratorial reason for singling her out--although i appreciate the sheer originality of the "crush" theory.

Bottom Line: Kick her ass, Elizabeth!

I thought the list and the LA observations were funny, and I love living in LA. Moxie's a inch away from writing a cat blog, anyway. She's sort of out of the loop, while being semi-connected.

"if gawker were about my personal interests and sincere opinions, I'd never voluntarily write the words 'Paris Hilton,' unless referring to a French hotel. "

So, are you admitting that you're a fraud, or just a wanna-be comedian?

BTW, what gives an Alabama hick the authority to comment on New York 'or' L.A.??

Sockpuppet at work. Look no hands, just lame insults.

Sounds a lot like another hack writer we all know.

Moxie doesn't get it. And by it, I mean everything.

"sockpuppet" & "ms. understood"--
better a hack writer than an anonymous coward any day.

Hear hear. Who are you to be calling Elizabeth a "hack", and then cower behind anonymity? Or will they not give you a Blogspot account, Mr. Pynchon?

I'm glad that Elizabeth's not bowing to Moxie; she's a shitty Republican blogger who calls on her shrill troll fans when anyone dares to critique her.

I love Gawker : anyone who doesn't get it is either a Lawrence Welk fan or is in need of a sense of humor.

Sarah - the fact that Moxie is a republican is not relevant. But she is the leader of shrill trolls, and pretends that she is above it all when she is in fact the instigator.

Kind of odd to watch witty, erudite and articulate people slide into alt.flame.tot mode...rather like walking in on a mud wrestling bout between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley. (Memo to self...flag under "unfortunate images to have deleted from cortex")

hey, i'd *pay* to see mud wrestling between gore vidal and william buckley.

Hey, let's all pretend that OUR clique gets the joke, and the OTHER clique is nothing but a bunch of humorless trolls
!

...too late?

Yikes. I've been reading both Dawn Olsen and Moxie for months and while ot enjoying their slide into pro-war ism around April, I hav eenjoyed boith.

Your post here via Jim Teacher and the Veronica saga - and don't ask me how I got here because I can't remember - put me in the completly surreal world of these two as conspirators etc etc.

Twilight Zone time. Just like Mac Diva, really.
For the record. It was a pretty innocous list. I thought LA was laid back. Sheeesh.

OK irony of ironies, I just remembered how I got here. Dawn Olsen pointed me toward sexiest blogger awards. And I saw your name and clicked it.

Interesting...it says she grew up in Manhattan. Perhaps she was demoted. :)

At the risk of stating the obvious, I'd pay to see you mud wrestling Moxie in a heartbeat. Good Lord, Capital Influx was never like this. You're wise not to enable comments on Gawker too often.

BTW, what ever happened to the Iron Blogger idea? Now that is an idea whose time has obviously come.

All right, we seem to have struck gold here. Liz and Moxie mud wrestling Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley...a benefit event for... well, Liz decides. May I book before they hit Ticketmaster?

Throw in a ULA vs. McSweeney's last-man-standing cage match and a Chuck Palahniuk vs. Tyler Durden bare-knuckle brawl, and you've got a guaranteed pay-per-view extravaganza on your hands.

I don't get all the invective directed at Moxie. What's up with that? Are some people jealous of the fact that she's smart, sexy and talented? Or is it that because she has expressed some pro-conservative views that some people here seem to consider her as being a fortiori a lost cause?

Elizabeth,

I liked your list, and I don't even get it. I live in Winnipeg, so I pretty much prefer to remain a simple and naive underachiever.

J. Lo was here making movie, and I was too scared to go anywhere near her beautiful body and razor sharp mind, lest I start becoming obsessed with my own image and status. But I did loan my gerbil to Richard Gere. Still haven't gotten it back.

I've read Moxie's blog, and it's just a mediocre string of ill-conceived musings that is widely read for some reason. More hype than substance, I think.

I found my sister's diary more compelling than Moxie. Mind you, she was 13 and severely dyslexic, so it's hardly a fair comparison.

Keep up the good work.

Cat fight!

I don't think it's fair to critique Moxie as a writer, because her strength is obviously that of a visual artist. Her sense of color, space and composition is quite good. As someone who once worked as an advertising agency producer, I think she has talent. I hope that she publishes a book of her photographic work.

Rex-Pat and Moxie sitting in a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g... first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes... oh how boring and disfunctional can you get.

yes, I know "disfuntional" is spelled with a "y".

And also a double "d", although the first "d" is silent, and thus usually omitted.

So if Moxie's a latent graphic artist, why is she writing a blog? Amateur hour with cat pix. If Kelly Klein can publish, why not Moxie, except for that whole rich faggy ex-hubby thingie. (Or is that Arianna?)

Sorry I got involved. I thought I was among adults.

"BTW, what gives an Alabama hick the authority to comment on New York 'or' L.A.??" About as much authority as a Canadian has to edit Vanity Fair, a Brit to head Vogue, an Australian to run the New York Post -- or an Austrian to run for Governor of California.

Well, since Canada, Britain, Australia, and Austria all have very well known pedegrees of culture, academia, and refinement, there's no surprises there. But Alabama hick, as well as hack writer, in this case, seems to ring very true. Sorry, truth hurts mate.

Yes, how dare this hick make a name for herself so quickly.

Truth hurts, jealousy just sort of sits there, smelling funny.

I wanna see Moxie and Elizabeth in Playboy.
they'd be so hot together all naked and stuff.

Lots of things are complex and mysterious to poor old Moxie. As a case in point, she was once very proud to have been told the traffic stats of a Salon blogger by a "friend" who apparently judged Moxie unable to type http://blogs.salon.com/rankings.html by herself. Not getting a, perhaps even the, joke behind Gawker is par for the course.

hedge funds and liberals... not an empty set...

james cramer, marty peretz, liz spiers

makes no sense.. but...

and hey, moxie is republican and damn hot... what's not to like? plus with ironic cat blog... who doesn't get irony??

Liz,

Sorry for the late reply but wow talk about misconstruing a comment. For the record, in my lone comment back on LAObserved the "embarrassing" is in reference to your attempt at Los Angeles humor. It's not that I didn’t get "it" -- it’s just that "it" was outdated, and this is coming from someone born and raised in NYC (upper west side), Ivy League educated, and a comedy writer living in California for the last 9 years. There are *tons* of things to pick on about Los Angeles, you just picked a set of things that were very 1980.

It wasn't a personal attack, just a comment about how it failed. Being embarrassed for you is not an attack and I apologize if it was taken as such. But my comment was one of many on LA Observed, most of which were FAR more offensive than mine.

I'm NOT interested in catfights. If you have a problem or experience confusion over anything I say in the future, feel free to email me directly. But don’t expect me to participate in back and forth in comment flame-wars.

Really people, this kind of trash talking is beneath us all. At least, I hope.

Cornell and Comedy--not working too well for her, are they? I think the main problem is that Elizabeth has a real career and Moxie is still sort of working on spec.