Three Sips of Tepid Iced Tea...

The New York Times did a seminal article in September 2003 on the nature of what it calls 'hipster' culture. They specify the way in which the casual use of racism and bullying has entered the 'hipster' conscience as a way of making a statement in replacement of any statements to actually make. Most shocking perhaps is lead-editor and founder Mr. Gavin McInnes who is well known to be an extreme right-wing supporter. (by the way east-London he means it for real, not just irony.)

"Few of Vice's fans or customers seem to realize just how deeply hostile Mr. McInnes is to the liberal live-and-let-live ethos of traditional bohemian culture. It is a fair bet that a majority of the downtown population opposed the Iraq war and dislikes the policies of George W. Bush. But in an interview Mr. McInnes advocated changing New York license plates to read ''Liberalism Gone Amok.'' Last month, he wrote an article for Patrick Buchanan in The American Conservative boasting of having converted Vice readers to conservatism.

He actually leans much further to the right than the Republican Party. His views are closer to a white supremacist's. ''I love being white and I think it's something to be very proud of,'' he said. ''I don't want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life.''

In an interview in The New York Press last year, Mr. McInnes's views came through in the coarse ethnic expressions he used in saying how pleased he was that most Williamsburg hipsters are white. "

Joe Levy, the music editor of Rolling Stone, said: ''It's always a disappointment when someone whose aesthetics are edgy and inclusive voices their politics and they're exclusionary. But this is not someone who pretended to be anything other than an offensive, opinionated jerk. So when he turned out to be an offensive, opinionated jerk who wasn't kidding, it wasn't entirely shocking.''

It was one particular article that left the media and public reeling; the commentary on an interview with Prussian White available here. One of the guys I work for used to work for the publishing house that VICE kicked off on and used for out sourcing. This publishing house published some of the first socialist work legally published during the Cold War and is responsible for a huge range of erotic and extreme political fiction. They kicked VICE off the house when they realised that there wasn't a single intelligent point to the magazine, that it simply created controversy for controversies sake. Like a teenage girl desperate for attention.

VICE magazines appalling record for exploitation and mock journalism is something I find personally upsetting, more than anything it's a waste of damn trees. Fashion articles such as 'naked girl wearing gold' and the progression of the X Factor/Big Brother culture of anonymous mockery in 'Do's and Dont's'. If you're going to mock someone have the balls to do it to their face. Not via a TV screen or glossy magazine. A girl I have a passive distaste for even got naked and made out with another girl for what appeared to be the purpose of claiming she appeared in the magazine. How little dignity one has to have to indulge this publication I can't even fathom.