Esquire editor David Granger has some major apologizing to do, and not just for that digital cover. In the magazine’s current “How To Be a Man” issue, editors recommend learning how to calm a crying baby, wire a ceiling fixture, and throw around phrases like “shit-sniffing faggot.” Yes, Esquire‘s service journalism includes advocating the use of homophobic slurs. HA HA, everyone.
Except this isn’t funny. It’s not cute or irreverent. It’s an ASME Award-winning magazine supporting hatred. As Michelangelo Signorile points out, it would’ve been absolutely un-kosher to recommend using the N-word, so why is the F-word okay?
You wouldn’t see this in GQ, where editor Jim Nelson is a big ‘mo. And even Details, the glossy helmed by Dan Peres and noted for the fine line it walks between joking with gays and actual homophobia, wouldn’t print something like this. But Esquire is MORE MANLY than they! Which is why they’re so supportive of the type of harassment that PEOPLE KILL THEMSELVES OVER.
Editor-in-chief David Granger can be reached at [email protected]. You can reach Hearst public relations by contacting Letena Lindsay at (212) 649-2577 or [email protected]. Please feel free to reprint your notes to the magazine in the comments.
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alan brickman
Curses are still freedom of speech….lighten up!!
james ii
so esquire’s way to become ‘a man’ is to encourage guys to become loudmouth douchebags?
classy, real classy.
their magazine is irrelevant, anyhow.
Dabq
Ugh this in 2009, glad I didn’t reply to that $7 for a year subscription they sent me.
CONFESSIONS OF A BAD BOY
Was this supposed to be funny?
TikiHead
It’s lovely that he’s recommending you say that to a nine year old! Wow. I had a custodian at my high school who called me a fucking faggot constantly. For some reason I never complained, I should have gotten his drunk ass fired.
PJ
I believe that as we get more and more offended by the words we are only offering the words more power. While I think it may be bad form for Esquire to use the phrase, it is not a crime. I honestly believe they have a First Amendment right to use the word if they want to. It’s like Voltaire said; “I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
I have a friend how is black. We both use derogatory pejoratives toward one another. We do it because it is funny, not because we feel that we are harming one another. Further, we both feel that by using the words which offend us, we take the power away from the words by owning the words. The word only has as much power as we choose to give it.
Rich
@PJ: All this talk of First Amendment rights completely ignores the concept of actually taking responsibility for the words you say.
Time for this asshole to take some responsibility.
Oh, and to all the self-hating apologists out there, you can go ahead and let your straight friends call you faggot all you want, but to gay men in the real world, that word still has some fucking meaning.
BrianZ
@PJ: Yea, that’s cute and all that you and your friend affirm your affection for one another by using a derogatory terms. However, I’d love to hear your stories of walking down the street referring to random black men with those same terms. I’m sure they will find it just as funny, yes? I’m sure they would be 100% open to listening to your reasoning behind your choice of vocabulary.
The latter would be a more accurate corollary to the Esquire issue at hand. This was not an over-heard conversation between two friends rather an open encouragement to use a word filled with hate.
I don’t think the response to Esquire needs to be overly dramatic or even verbose: A simple cancellation of a subscription and simply stated reason as to why the cancellation is being requested is sufficient: It was for me.
Just because you have the right to be a fucktard does not mean you should be a one.
Mike
I sent a note (btw, the pr lady’s address bounced back), but that magazine will be dead in a year anyway. Heart is doing terribly overall, and the fact that I keep getting subscription offers in the mail to get Esquire for two years for about $20 total indicates that they are no exception.
hardmannyc
Didn’t anybody notice that he did this TO MAKE FUN OF ASSHOLES WHO CURSE LIKE THIS? I say, again, when did gay men lose the irony gene? I think I’m going straight — they’re the only ones with a sense of humor these days.
33mhz
First amendment concerns are irrelevant, at least as long as nobody’s talking about legal penalties for this.
Exerting social and economic pressure on a magazine is entirely fair game. Lad mag lifestyle magazines like this are cultural vestigial organs anyway. The more of these you kill off with your indifference and antipathy, the more room there is on the news racks for magazines which can justify their own existence.
HayYall
For a Friday you shit-sniffing faggots sure are bitchy.
Michael
@HayYall: Maybe in the trailer park you obviously come from you like your cousins to eat a meal about 3 hours before you bury your white trash face in their asses. But in the world I live in, far from where people use old Trans Ams up on blocks as landscape accents, we practice good hygiene. Now go make sure the air pressure in the tires that hold up your house is adequate to carry your fat ass friends who are coming over to watch the wrestling match this weekend.
HayYall
Thanks for proving my point Michael.
Mattbydesign
I am surprised more people didn’t see the irony in the GQ article. It was a piece of humor people, a joke, if you will.
Stop! Or My Daddy Will Shoot!
Funny only because most of the faggots I know behave as though the male anus existed only as a center for sexual pleasure, and nothing else.
Let’s allow the context to do the work, as suggested. Based on his perhaps-involuntary disclosure of what kind of a faggot he is, the faggot author of the piece has never met a shitty asshole he didn’t like, which makes sense because he writes for Esquire.
sal
@PJ: that’s what u say to your “friend”?????kinda reminds me of that sayin “with friends like u who need enem…..”u know how that goes
sal
@BrianZ: lol,thats some good advice for PJ LOL
Colin
Lighten up, everything’s fair game. Getting preemptively offended about something is about a stupid as being offended by it.
hardmannyc
When did we shit-sniffing faggots lose our sense of humor?
BrianZ
@hardmannyc: I have the issue sitting right in front of me. Where, exactly, did you get that it was a humor piece? Was it the bit just above on how to calm a crying baby or the bit just below about how to install a ceiling light fixture? Hmm, maybe it was the instructions on how to sew a button on the opposite page that gave it away as a joke? Ohhh I know it was how to console a crying woman: That has to be it!
I’m entitled to my opinion of the piece and you are entitled to be wrong: That’s just how I roll. 🙂
Brad
The author also recommends calling female police officers ‘sugar tits’. This article is not supposed to be taken seriously.
Johan
Just wanted to let you know that the email address for Ms. Lindsay is broken. I got a delivery failure notice immediately upon attempting to use it.
The one for Mr. Granger, however, seems to work just fine. =)
hardmannyc
@BrianZ: Let me put it this way: I’m assuming that Esquire is sophisticated enough — and assumes enough sophistication in its readers — so that they can know a service piece on installing appliances is different from one on “how to curse,” which I’d put in the category of “how to take a crap” or “how to spit.” Maybe I’m assuming too much, but so it goes.
afrolito
@PJ:
“I have a friend how is black. We both use derogatory pejoratives toward one another. We do it because it is funny, not because we feel that we are harming one another. Further, we both feel that by using the words which offend us, we take the power away from the words by owning the words. The word only has as much power as we choose to give it.”
You and your “black friend” (if this loser even exists) are both morons.
Gggg
afrolito, YOU are a moron. I partly agree with PJ, it does make sense to me.
Roger
I’m a teacher and have to reprimand students all the time for using the F-word like it’s nothing. What am I doing all that work for if the media says it’s acceptable? Replace the F-word with the N-word. NOW does anything think it’s funny? It’s the same thing! It’s NOT funny, even if it is meant to be sarcastic, witty, whatever. By the way, our first amendment freedom of speech is not absolute. The US Supreme Court ruled in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire that profanity, insults, fighting words, threats, etc. are not protected speech.
Brandon
Ummm.. it’s sarcastic. Read it and pretend Amy Sedaris wrote it. You will get it.
Brad
Maybe all people without a sense of irony should be executed.
Brandon
@Brad: That would be fair
ousslander
@Michael: You sound like a self hateing caucasian to use such a rascist term as white trash and snob who looks down on people who don’t live in your economic circles.
afrolito
@Gggg:
“afrolito, YOU are a moron. I partly agree with PJ, it does make sense to me.”
No, you’re a MORON, and anyone with half a brain can see that. In fact, i’d love for you and this PJ loser to go outside and practice what you preach to every black person you meet. Good luck with that dumbass.
Sniffy McSnifferson
They have the right of free speech… So lay of you shit-sniffing fagg0+s!! I take no offense to it, and I’m a big old ‘mo…
scott ny'er
To me, it definitely screams humorous. It’s Esquire. I’m sure they wouldn’t have wrote this as a serious piece. It’s not Jerry Springer Magazine for Men. Esquire and Playboy have been doing this type of “funny” pieces for a loooooong time now.
That said, it wasn’t really funny. But, I have a weird sense of humour. Kathy Griffin = funny. This? Not so much.
Now, the use of derogatory terms at your friend and back at you? Well, that’s your business but seriously, do it on the street and people will not find it funny. And that’s proof enough that that type of terminology is still unacceptable.
Btw, is Esquire even relevant anymore? What is their circ #s and ad #s? I’m can’t imagine it being very high, no?
nature boy
Cocksucker was my Dad’s favorite curse word. It helped keep me from coming out (even to myself) until I was 23. I remember almost throwing up with shame the first time I got off fantasizing about another man. (Does that still happen to guys these days ???) Sometimes some stuff is just too painful to joke about. Like the asshole who cuts people down and then says “I was only kidding…” it doesn’t make it right.
Brandon
You girls all need to grow up and smell the irony. I found it hilarious
mb00
hmm,I just received and it was my last issue, along came a page begging me to subscribe again.
Reading this, I’ve chosen to move on. It’s honestly too bad, since I really enjoyed reading Esquire.
BrianZ
@hardmannyc: Taking a day to step back from the terminology used in the piece, I can see your point, and where they were likely intending to go with it.
I still don’t find it funny or appropriate.
Mark in Indiana
nothing funny, no irony, and I don’t lack a sense of humor. What I lack is a dead sense of outrage. I still have one, it’s kicking. If you don’t mind being labeled a shit sniffing faggot–something I wouldn’t stand for from anyone at anytime–that’s ok. Me, I write to my Congressman asking him who regulates this sort of trash.
That’s how I roll.
Brandon
Wow guys, thanks for setting us back 50 years. Since when do we have to take things so damn seriously.