Spy Magazine

Graydon Carter

Vanity Fair

• One media columnist who had been targeted for ridicule by Spy, Lewis Grossberger, derided the magazine as a “mean-spirited” “swaggering frat house bulletin.” “Finally, a media columnist for a 7-month-old New York weekly has declared hostilities on Spy after being scalded in the magazine's Review of Reviewers column. Lewis Grossberger, whose column appears in 7 Days, mentioned Spy unfavorably ‘four or five times’ in his column since Spy labeled him ‘irrepressibly tiresome’ last month. Grossberger, once a fan of the magazine, said he has called Spy ‘mean-spirited’ and a ‘swaggering frat house bulletin.’” (Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1988)
• Spy Magazine regularly dubbed Trump a “short-fingered vulgarian.” “In many ways, Spy is like a college humor magazine that graduated and settled in Manhattan, where it keeps the village gliterati shaking and quaking with laughter or rage, depending on whose superego is being lanced and deflated. To the delight of many, Spy regularly eviscerates such high-profiled New Yorkers as Donald Trump, who is perennially described in Spyese as a ‘short-fingered vulgarian’; Mayor Ed Koch, the ‘freelance racist’; and ‘bosomy dirty book writer’ Shirley Lord, who is the wife of Abe Rosenthal, formerly executive editor of the New York Times.” (Chicago Tribune, October 25, 1988)
• Spy Magazine’s founder, Kurt Andersen, declared the publication’s mission was to apply “great objective journalistic resources to ultimately trivial and inconsequential things. “Occasionally reckless but never careless, Andersen maintains, the top echelon at Spy ‘applies great objective journalistic resources to ultimately trivial and inconsequential things. The material has to be not only well written and edited but funny. But when it works, it's very entertaining. And people respond because the magazine assumes a degree of intelligence and commitment.’” (Chicago Tribune, October 25, 1988)