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The New Yorker needs a Boston intervention

A few days ago, the New Yorker reviewed SMILF, a new comedy about a single Southie mom, and referred to the neighborhood as:

A tough, lower-middle-class Irish-American neighborhood that borders the yuppified South End, to the north, and the working-class and predominately African-American Dorchester, to the south.

Today, David Bernstein noticed a New Yorker piece about Cousin Stizz, a rapper from Dorchester, which the New Yorker called a Boston suburb.

Have they cut their fact-checking budget recently?

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Comments

Here's another quote:

This is a place where old gender roles and class divisions remain stubbornly entrenched.

WTF, was the writer last here 15 years ago? The New Yorker is trying to get hipper and more media savvy but they're def losing some credibility with poorly written reviews like this.

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Seriously. This is no longer a world where people marry a network channel and "discover" series by hanging on after the nightly news. Not even my 90yo grandma does that anymore. She's annoyed by the lack of correlation between printed TV guides and actual programming, but she sure DGAF about which station anything is on.

And me, I'm purely a leech with access to Hulu/Netflix logins who otherwise wouldn't watch current TV if they paid me, so... mehhh?

I feel the same way about the New Yorker's TV opinions as I do about their "shouts and murmurs." The target audience is about 80 years my senior, and I am 32, so that audience is approximately zero living people.

Stick to longform embedded journalism or GTFO. The New Yorker used to be part of my regular rotation but eventually it was like, when's the last time they had more than 4 articles worth reading in a month? Oh, before I was born? OK then, bye.

I'd pay for good journalism but the current model expects me to pay for BAD journalism and I'm not here for it. If you don't employ one single copy editor, boy bye.

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(Posted in lieu of a thumb up)

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I clicked the review to see who the author was, because I thought the TV writer was mainly Emily Nussbaum, only to find it wasn't her. I read her reviews here and there but don't really have the same eyes and ears as she does, so to speak. If you're familiar with her, I wondered if this is where you gather your opinion from or if it's from a collection of TNY writers.

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Frankie Shaw has done a great job leading, directing, and writing the show despite low expectations given a Southie setting. I found the setting just a minor component. Rosie O'Donnell was good as her mother, and big thumbs up for the DIGITAL CSS sweatshirt!

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I watched the pilot episode when Showtime had it on free preview (no longer available). Frankie Shaw definitely pushes the boundaries of a sympathetic central character, especially expectations for a young mother, but her combination of gritty perseverance and borderline insanity really engaged me. Outrageous and hilarious. And Rosie O'Donnell is very believable and surprisingly low key as another far less than perfect mom.

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So is Harlem and Park Slope.

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Shaw, whose family is from South Boston but who was raised in the suburb of Brookline and attended a prestigious private school, has straddled social realms

Figures

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She did not write the New Yorker review.

And what "figures" about her background? I don't see anything inherently embarrassing about growing up in Brookline.

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My guess is that she never actually visited Southie or Dorchester growing up. Have you ever heard the phrase "Not Our Kind, Dear?" That's the vibe I'm getting from this show and by extension, her.

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I grew up in Brookline, and I never visited Southie or Dot growing up.

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But did you use it as a setting for something you wrote, as though you knew the place, the people and the culture? No? Then you're fine.

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Most of Brookline really doesn't feel suburban, at all, really, either.

If Shaw has roots in South Boston, then what's wrong with her being in the show?

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I don't know who's worse with their "knowledge" about the reality and geographic data about Boston and its neighborhoods - the NY and CA writers of movies and TV series which are about us, or the advertisements and marketing strategies of developers in NYC and their real estate agents trying to market their luxury housing in Boston and its neighborhoods. Or EaBo and SoBo and SoWa. I think we are way too smart to give in to their stereotyping.

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...who think Downtown Crossing is the "SoWa Art & Design District". I threw up in my mouth a little when I heard that. I guess the previous "Ladder District" nonsense never took off.

http://www.sowaboston.com/

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I don't know how anyone would confuse them. To get from Downtown Crossing to SoWa you have to walk through the Theatre District and Chinatown, cross the Mass Pike, and walk some more through or alongside the Ink Block.

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Out of idle curiosity...

Did they finish location shooting before the ads starting appearing on bus stop shelters?

It would be a little funny if that slipped into the background of a shot.

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Probably Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, too!

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