Monday, August 03, 2009

Steve Friess freaks out!


How would you expect a New York Times writer to respond to a Chicago Sun-Times writer whose column he or she doesn't agree with? In the case of Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd or Bob Herbert, one might expect a pithy putdown, some clever bon mots and a clearly-reasoned rebuttal that shoots down the offending columnist's views while giving him the respect he deserves as fellow journo.

Then again, if you're the New York Times Las Vegas stringer Steve Friess and you disagree with a respected Chicago Sun-Times columnist, you attack him personally, in a column titled:

"From The Files of: BLOW ME"

If you're Steve Friess, you call the columnist an "asshole," and a "stingy old man," use the f-word and compare the popular Las Vegas Excalibur resort to a "bullet-riddled crackhouse-in-training."


We're not making this up, folks. That's what the Las Vegas journalistic ambassador is offering up on his Vegas Happens Here website tonight. And we're just bystanders.


We've been checking in periodically with Friess, the Las Vegas freelancer for many national publications, Gay Vegas author, comp queen and producer of the "Michael Jackson's untimely death is the best thing that could ever have happened to Michael Jackson's music" tribute show at the Palms on August 29th, ever since he attacked us in print.

That was in May. We'd simply sent him a collegial email asking why he and his fellow Las Vegas journalists were not covering the unexplained sudden death of Strip headliner Danny Gans.

Steve Friess called us "asshole" and many other choice words on his website-- just as he does today with Neil Steinberg, who wrote a Sun-Times column abotu a recent trip to Las Vegas, and his annoyance of being harassed by "time share shills" and "real estate hustles" in the lobby of the Excalibur.

Friess refers to Steinberg as an "Asshole Parachuting Columnist," attacks him for his choice of hotels and insists that Cirque du Soleil shows "make the Hoover Dam look like Lincoln Logs."


Poor Steve Friess. While we were taken aback by the column's strident, obscene tone, we can also see that Friess has been under tremendous pressure with criticism of his high-priced tribute to Jacko's music, as well as his admission on Twitter this weekend that although he critiques music on a regular basis-- he cannot hear well at all:

"Tis true. Have worn 2 hearing aids since I was 6."

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