‘Pretend Somebodies’

In 2008, the New York Times published a brutal review of a Bravo show about Rachel Zoe, a celebrity stylist. (“She doesn’t merely peddle clothes, she emblazons an image, turning cipher nobodies into pretend somebodies,” the review read; Zoe, it went on, is “a pox on humanity,” and largely to blame for the fact that “the name Nicole Richie is more familiar than the name Nicolas Sarkozy.”) I discovered the review on CJR’s website this morning, thanks to a short article that we published noting that the review had won praise from an unusual source: Hulk Hogan, introduced here as “the now semi-retired professional wrestler and former WWF star.” Apparently, Hogan had declared the Times the winner of Us Weekly’s “Celeb Feud of the Week,” over Zoe. We noted that while John McCain’s presidential campaign had just bashed the Times—calling it “not by any standard a journalistic organization”—Hogan had been kinder; the paper, he said, “has been around a long time,” and “they know their stuff.” The headline on our piece read: “All the News That’s Fit to Headbutt.”