Since taking up her post as Arts and Leisure editor of The New York Times, Jodi Kantor has disappointed us with astonishing regularity. So late last night James and I decided we’d better make the Jodi Kantor watch an Armavirumque ’Sunday special.’ I couldn’t have anticipated a better ’justification for war with Jodi’ than this fawning Times profile of Grayson Perry--a "Trendy Tranny with a New Purse."
Perry is the transvestite potter who won Britain’s Turner Prize last December. "Esteemed transvestite potter" is one of those labels designed to resist any attempt at lampoon--you can’t, as they say, make this stuff up. Perry’s wife insists that Perry’s "Claire" persona "isn’t cynical and isn’t a stunt." Surely she and her husband don’t think anybody would pay "between $14,000 and $36,000" for pottery made by a man dressed as a man! (In fairness--they might if it depicted, as Perry’s does, "scenes of child abuse, pedophilia and masturbation.")
Still, the strangest thing about this profile is that it’s months-old news. I have read and re-read the thing and can’t find anything like a recent accomplishment. The "new purse" of the title is Perry’s $36,000 Turner Prize. Did the check just now clear, four months late--or are we speaking figuratively when we say the British contemporary art scene is "bankrupt"?
By the way, is this the first time the word "tranny" has appeared in a Times headline? Probably not. But for a style guide that insists on "Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani" in place of "Rudy Giuliani," one wonders how "tranny" suits the NYT lexicographers more than "transvestite." This is not the New York Post, after all--even if The Gray Lady is now The Gray "Lady."
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