Reynolds Dodson: We Goofed On You, But We Didn't Want You To Die

Credit: The Southampton Press

Some sad news coming out of the land made of happiness cocktails and bunnies' noses. Columnist for the Southampton Press Reynolds Dodson has died, after battling cancer. He was 74.

Dodson lived in Water Mill with his wife Susan, and contributed a column entitled "The View East," which won six New York Press Awards, according to this obit in the Press.  He also authored a number of books and edited numerous magazines, including Family Weekly and Reader's Digest.

But it was his last book A Cockeyed Guide to the Hamptons that got our attention last year. We goofed on him (here) for the silly press release announcing the book, which was plastered on every free PR distribution site in existence. It spawned a checklist of how you too can be fakin' it till you're makin' it in the Hamptons. The release was clearly written by Dodson himself, and more than likely distributed himself. The book was self-published, self-promoted, and completely not self-aware, as it makes fun of people with pastel-colored shirts who carry dogs. (Umm, see picture above that ran in his obit.)

But...however hard we goof, however strongly we might seem to resent a person or their actions, however badly we may trample them for their seeming self-absorption, incestuous legitimacy, and fakery...we are not so heartless that we can't recognize that a human being who was loved, who was somebody's husband, son, colleague, or maybe even inspiration...has died. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Hamptonyte Blog...the bell tolls for thee.

Except Ramona Singer from Real Housewives of New York. Fuck that bitch.

Inside the Social Life Magazine Kerfuffle

After some follow-up conversations with Christopher London, Hamptonyte blog got a pretty broad picture about the nature of his issue with Social Life Magazine Editor-In-Chief Devorah Rose, who recently landed back on the pages of the NY Post after airing her dirty possibly imaginary relationship with novelist Salman Rushdie.


When the story broke, London issued a formal letter that essentially posed an ultimatum to the magazine's publisher Justin Mitchell: either Devorah goes, or I can no longer contribute to the magazine as its Society Editor. The magazine, along with the people it covers, are in hibernation until Memorial Day, so no word yet from Mitchell how he plans to deal with the friction between the two editors. In an e-mail to Hamptonyte blog, Rose declined to say anything on the record about London's letter. (Incidentally, if Rose was in journalism she'd know that "off the record" is not something you can just say, like Hocus Pocus, or Olly-Olly Oxenfree. Both parties are supposed to agree to it, but we decided to be nice).

Usually when an Editor-in-Chief (see: head honcho) is threatened with resignation from a section editor (see: NOT head honcho), the section editor gets escorted out of the building by security. We found it curious that London's letter didn't lead to an automatic shakeup at the magazine. Then we got some more information about the gist of Social Life's operations.

According to London, Rose is really just an EIC in name only. Like, really just name only, as in: doesn't have much jurisdiction or veto power over editorial content. In a sense, London boiled her responsibilities down to a marketing/PR role, whereby she wines and dines and 69s the subjects the magazine covers and then lets the writers step in. She makes decisions about the cover, and contributes her column "Royal Court," which sounds so completely obnoxious, (without having actually laid eyes on the column) we are currently on e-Bay seeking to purchase a guillotine.

For the most part, all editorial content flows to Mitchell, and everyone who works on the magazine does so as contributors. This includes London, which explains why he's not sitting on the curb at the magazine's NYC office with a box full of his personal items and a sign around his neck. London is one of the older contributors; according to him the magazine has a young staff. We're imagining something along the lines of a journalistic sweatshop. Young, disadvantaged, naive little hopefuls, working for gold stars and what's left in the bottom of a Devorah-ransacked charity-event swag bag.

London said when he was first approached by Mitchell it was a collaborative effort to pool resources and tap into London's knowledge of NYC high society, a knowledge he'd apparently gained while photographing society events for his own website. According to London, Mitchell seemed hungry to get a look into the world of NYC society, and worked overtime to develop his own contacts. Somewhere along the line, and if the NYT article is accurate that "somewhere" was an event at the MoMA, he met Devorah Rose and he had his EIC.

Most journalists will often tell you that when they get invited to attend an event, charity or otherwise, they usually hang back and observe. But according to London, Rose took no such approach to Social Life's coverage, much to the chagrin of some of the charitable organizations that invited Social Life along. London wrote to us:

"Once I started writing for the magazine, certain invitations that came to my attention were swiped by Devorah and they began to ingratiate themselves with people who knew me, including insisting on a table at their gala if they want SL Mag to cover the event. I had certain publicists ask me why they wanted a whole table. Did they not know that this was not proper protocol?"

It gets better:

"Any swag which came to the magazine was often seized by her for use with her friends. Hence most of what Devorah shows up at are nightclub events and commercial charitable vehicles for Reality TV."

Which brought London to his ultimate point: Rose is merely using her position to leverage any opportunity to become a reality TV star, even stooping, according to London, to placing key players in reality television on the cover of Social Life. In essence, the magazine gives her access, and she uses that access to further her less-than journalistic aims. Tsk, tsk, Devorah.

Over the phone, London told Hamptonyte blog that the Rushdie incident was the straw that broke the camel's back because it came off as so inauthentic. In a follow-up e-mail, he added these remarks:

"It is even more clear that Salman Rushdie was a 'mark', a man who was clearly being used to extend DR's Famegame. The fact that she tweeted the pic herself with rather suggestive language for a "do over" with the famous author and then complained he was only after one thing, is interesting...There was a quick effort to cash in on the notoriety of having had any contact with him...Wouldn't she try to persuade him of her sincere interest first before giving him up to the tabloid media? Rushdie served his purpose, the famous ladies man got her two front page appearances in the NY Post, in one week."

Let's put it this way. If London doesn't leave the magazine, and Rose stays put as EIC...this is going to make one hell of an awkward office Christmas party.

Breaking: Social Life Magazine editor threatens to quit

Social Life Magazine's standing Society Editor Chris London drafted an official letter threatening to leave the magazine if Devorah Rose continues on as Editor-In-Chief.

The issue is over Rose's recent public outing of author Salman Rushdie's ill-fated decision to speak to Rose on a personal basis. The two have been involved in a mini-Page 6 battle in the NY Post, spurned on by Rushdie's attempt to deny anything more than a platonic relationship with the EIC of Social Life. After more than 20 years, Rose was able to do what the Ayatollah couldn't: deliver Rushdie's head on the platter of public humiliation, by essentially copy/pasting all of his personal messages to her via e-mail and Facebook.

In the letter, London described Rose as "socially parasitic" and took issue with her description of the Rushdie relationship as "abusive."

"PLEASE NOTE that if Devorah remains on Social Life Magazine's masthead as Editor in Chief in the Summer of 2012, this Society Editor will no longer contribute in any capacity to said publication. The publisher has a decision to make."

London also posted a scathing column as a contributor to Cape Cod Today. We'll keep following this and let you know how it all washes.

Hate Mail, and Devorah Rose's obnoxious post-Times profile reaction

After our take-down of Devorah Rose, the shameless, self-promoting, celebrity-obsessed suck-up who edits a magazine nobody has physically seen editor of Social Life magazine, we'll admit our shock to see in the comments section of the post, one of her satisfied customers, lying in a Bridgehampton motel bed, smoking a cigarette, breathing in the lingering scent of Rose's perfume long after she got dressed and headed out to be seen...somewhere other than, um, editing something. After a long drag on the cig, "CPT" pounded out this missive:

"You're clearly an idiot and clearly unhappy with your own life. Devorah and a lot of other people are out there doing things with their lives. Oh, and besides the libel, you are flat out lying to readers when you claim Devorah is "admittedly...'more interested in Social Life's parties..." - the biased NYT writer said that, it was not a quote from Devorah. Get a clue, you miserable hack."

Oh, little friend...there are quotes and then there are quotes.

“The first event I went to, the paparazzi were there, and I had my photo taken,” she said. “After that, people started sending me clothes.”

"Ms. Rose bubbled with pride as she described the celebrities at the party."

"When Mr. Stern showed up, Ms. Rose said she nearly cried. “It was the highlight of my night,” she said."

The highlight of her night. Not that she'd written a successful piece, or that she'd discovered something about Beth Stern that was unique and difficult to ascertain, or that she'd put together a solid issue of stories with journalistic integrity. No. She met Howard Stern. So, um...yeah, Devorah Rose is admittedly more interested in Social Life's parties than its content. The libel case against Hamptonyte is hereby...dismissed.

But what's more infuriating than this sycophantic dipshit supporter defending her? Her post-NYT profile Q&A with Abe Gurko, that's what. In it she kvetches about how she was duped into believing that the NYT writer was going to put together a glowing, suck-up review of her life and nonaccomplishments. She thought the profile was going to be all hyperbole and promotion, and chock-full of flattering and congratulatory paragraphs. In short, she thought the profile would be like most of the celebrity profiles that get published in Hamptons magazines! Then this horrible NYT writer goes and ruins it with her "agenda." You know, her agenda. Like being objective. Like not taking Rose's word at face-value. Like reporting the truth when Rose tries to sneak some bullshit through. That agenda. In J-school it's not called an agenda, so you might be more familiar with its other name. Reporting.

Some lines from her Q&A:

"DEVORAH: I was hesitant at first but she put on a quite an act. It wasn’t until right before the article came out that I realized she did, in fact, have ulterior motives" (By ulterior motives she means journalism.)

DEVORAH: The tone of the article does not seems fitting for The New York Times
(Devorah wouldn't know what "tone" is anymore than she knows what "ammonia" is; she's not a journalist.)

DEVORAH:Seeing the photos felt great…but then I read the article. I never knew “self-made” could be a pejorative term. (Self made? One of the most irritating descriptions anyone can assign to themselves. From the NYT piece: "her mother, a physician, moved to Newton, a predominately upscale Jewish suburb of Boston"... "She later said [her father] was a businessman who split his time between Bogotá, Colombia, and Boca Raton, Fla"... "Ms. Rose met Mr. Mitchell at a soiree at the Museum of Modern Art in 2001. “If you start a magazine, I will edit and write for it,” Ms. Rose recalled telling him. He agreed."

Ah, that's so self-made!

DEVORAH: Well, let’s focus on the positive – which requires ignoring High Society

(No. You don't get to needle and scratch backs and wheel and deal your way onto reality shows and then turn around and ignore the very vehicle that landed you the notoriety you have.)

But that's Devorah Rose in a nutshell. As opposed to falling to her knees in disbelief at the good fortune she's had, disproportionate to her talent, she besmirches the few venues she's managed to trick into believing she's worth turning the camera toward. Like The New York Times.

NYTimes profiles most transparent fameball in history

You owe it to yourself to welcome Devorah Rose into your life. If you don't know who she is, well...that upsets her greatly. No outfit to date has put together quite the chronology that Gawker has, about this particularly persistent fameball, but to the uninitiated non-Gawker-reading public, The New York Times has kindly profiled her in the June 8 Sound & Fury Fashion & Style section.

Her trajectory that led her to this nearly 2,000-word profile is torn straight out of the "shotgun blast" approach to fame and success: do everything (writer, actress, model, editor, novelist, reality TV star, casting call hound), be everywhere (Upper East Side, openings at the MoMA, Hamptons in summertime), and sooner or later people will notice you. Despite her multiple forays into every form of camera-chasing possible, alas, she's mostly known as the Editor of Social Life magazine, a glossy Hamptons mag that, similar to Loch Ness, I've only heard about...never actually seen. (And I live out here. Very weird.) Aside from that, she enjoyed a brief splash of small-screen notoriety as the girl who ran out on her spindly legs and tossed her drink at another girl at one of her stupid, self-congratulating pool parties on the one-and-done show High Society.

The profile attempts at objectivity and even a little snark. It calls her out for lying about her 100% involvement in all her cover shoots (apparently Beth Ostrovsky Stern supplied Devorah with this month's cover photo for her silly magazine Social Life)

But all the snark in the world can not rescue the Times from the simple fact that the publication of record, The Gray Lady itself, actually went and profiled the worst person alive this phony, fame-starved asswipe.

Nothing about her is impressive, or entrepreneurial, or even interesting. She's the girl we all knew in high school who did two things: 1. found out where the popular kids hung out. 2. her hair. Now she rubs elbows with the beautiful people and pretends that all the hatred and bad karma that continuously befalls her is merely testament to her importance. It's the grossest case of incestuous legitimacy since Julia Allison. From having enough money to attend fiction writing classes in the extremely-difficult-to-get-into Columbia University MFA program, to meeting her publisher at a museum and blowing him promising him to edit his magazine if he launches one, she's nothing short of every other attractive woman who manages to convince guys to give them what they want. If she were reading this blog post (and she's not) she would stop right here to glory in the fact that I called her "attractive." She's Anna Nicole Smith without the stripper pole. Nothing more.

One of the more poignantly obnoxious moments in the NYT piece? When the reporter asks about her family background, she pulls a celebrity diva act and waves the question off with a hand, stating "I think we can move on." Why the reporter didn't get up and say "I think I'll move on too, to someone who's actually done something and wants to share their story" is beyond me.

So thanks, New York Times. Appreciate the legitimacy you just gave a girl who admittedly was "more interested in Social Life's parties than its content," launched by a guy who started the magazine because he also liked going to parties.

Read the profile yourself. Then wonder if the world didn't really end on May 21, 2011 after all.

A Cockeyed Guide To Self Promotion

Reynolds Dodson is winning the press release war. Y'all know who Reynolds Dodson is, don't you? Why he's the five-time NY Press Award-winning columnist for the Southampton Press. That's okay, if you didn't know who he is, you should soon, because a simple Google search of his latest self-published book A Cockeyed Guide To The Hamptons (which is self-published) turns up dozens of hits. Unfortunately those hits are all briefed by the same opening sentence to the same press release about Dodson's self-published book, which is self-published and available at Amazon.com.

You know what else is self-published? Dodson's press release! "A Cockeyed Guide To The Hamptons Offers Amusing Insight," touts the self-published headline about the self-published book by self-publisher Reynolds Dodson. Who thinks this book offers amusing insight? Self-publisher Reynolds Dodson, that's who. And who knows the amusing qualities of Reynolds Dodson's self-published book better than Reynolds Dodson?

Here's a cockeyed guide to Hamptons literary legitimacy:
1. Self-publish book
2. Draft your own press release
3. Distribute said press release on every free PR/press release wire service and local media looking to fill space
4. Draft press release in a tone that seems to imply you did not draft your own press release.
5. Bank on local media outlets being too lazy to ignore the non-story of your self-published book, or at the very least re-word the press release so it maybe seems as though they put thought into filling their editorial space.
6. Pull up a bar stool at 75 Main, order a martini, and casually drop your self-published success to the bombshell next to you.
7. Rinse and repeat

Why We Write

Because literature is the axe that breaks the frozen sea inside us. Because writers hold a mirror to culture and capture all that is beautiful and ugly about the celebration of human existence. Because writers lay down the gauntlet to challenge our preconceived notions of the cultural zeitgeist and body politic.

Or, you can just be Michael Braverman, lunatic at large for Hamptons Magazine, Contributor to Edible East End, and kids-party Ben Kingsley impersonator. He writes because...well...because he's on the east end and he wants to be the 1-millionth person to claim to be an authority on fine living. Visit his blog Hamptons Rich and Pour. Then immediately regret it.

Anatomy of a Phony

If this isn't already a saying, I'm officially entering it into the lexicon: "Hollywood is where you go to become famous. The Hamptons is where you go to pretend you already are."

One doesn't need to spend an incredible amount of time in the Hamptons to realize that everybody out here seems to spend half their life creating their own legends, and the other half convincing others it's true. Here's a test. Drive out to East Hampton. Throw a stick. Whomever it hits, approach. Ask them who they are or what they do. Gauranteed they will tell you they're an "artist" or a "writer" or a "something to the stars." Just check out this article in Hamptons.com, the essentially useless online publication that still tries to pretend real hard that the Hamptons are still teeming with self-importance after Labor Day.

This item takes the cake, though. Meet Hy Abady. Yeah we're not sure how to pronounce that either. Although according to him, we should already know who he is. A former NYC ad man from the 60s and 70s who bounced around from agency to agency, he finally amassed enough upper-middle class wealth to purchase a home on Further Lane in East Hampton, back when houses on Further Lane were called "duck blinds." Once he got there, he went right to the task of pretending he was more important to the world than he was. Crashing parties, oozing his way into peoples' confidences, and in some cases, sleazily eavesdropping from the cozy cushion of a bar stool, he started submitting a column for the East Hampton Star every week. Now he's taken those articles, threw in a few more that never made it to print, and has put together a slim volume of his work he's calling "Are You Gonna Eat That?: How I Scored Billy Joel's Pizza Crust." (It's called something else, but this title is a little more apt.)

The "book" is published by Antinuous Press, and if you've never heard of this imprint, it's because you're straight. The house publishes "art books" and the like, which amount to a catalogue of nothing more than male gay erotica. Just peep the home page's photo montage. With your hands over your eyes. Squinting through your fingers.

Props have to go out to the East Hampton Star reviewer of this nonsense for keeping a straight face and managing to insert a little objective integrity in the review. But the fact that he even got a review for this gives our friend one more card in the house of cards people of his ilk build for themselves in the Hamptons. A perfectly phony life. A life made possible because he met the right people, schmoozed at the right parties, and exagerrated his own importance whenever those people he schmoozed gave him a platform to do so.

Too harsh? Ask yourself: if I wrote this book of gossip about the town I lived in and pitched it to a publishing house, but didn't know anybody who worked there, would it get published? If I didn't contribute to the East Hampton Star would it have gotten reviewed there? If I found a small, obscure publishing house to actually take my book, would I be modest about it? Or would I pretend it was the headlining title at Simon & Schuster?

If you answered no to most of those questions, you're not doing it right, according to the culture of the Hamptons, because Abady is just one of a whole score of folks out there who have drafted up this fake playbook. And by playbook we mean plop yourself down at the bar at the Maidstone Arms, obsessively scan the crowd for celebrities and then eavesdrop on their private conversations so you can write an article about it as though you know them personally.

Particularly galling is the fact that Abady's celebrity-addled brain distinguishes people in categories like "famous" "faux-famous," and "nobodies," considering the smoke and mirrors people like him create to rise themselves above the dreaded "nobody" category. He's perfectly alright with "faux-famous." This is why writing...name-dropping celebrity writing in particular...is often so poorly done. The writer is too soft-headed to realize that all people are interesting.

So look through the Matrix. What you'll see is a guy who worked for an ad agency and made enough money to buy himself geographic proximity to celebrities. The ad agency was run by another guy with connections in the local newspapers of the Hamptons. Because of this, the first guy, for years, uses his proximity to celebrities to publish his dim-witted celebrity musings in the East Hampton Star. Then he takes these musings and, through his gay contacts, places them with an obscure gay erotica publishing house. The book then gets reviewed by the very newspaper that published his column, which he didn't earn in the first place. Call it "incestuous legitimacy." In fact, that's a new Hamptonyte category from now on.