Gossip Girl = Death

“Is Gossip Girl Dangerous?” queried the New York Observer’s Tom Acitelli of the CW television program, a mere nano-second before supplying his own foam-flecked “Yes” to the deceptively rhetorical-appearing question.

I didn't want to write this about the CW show Gossip Girl, but I feel I have to before it's too late.

Yikes! Does it preach hatred and intolerance? Does it encourage violence, drug use, and promiscuity? Well, yes, but none of those are the insidious threat that keeps Mr. Acitelli’s duvet pulled up over his head at night.

…Gossip Girl is giving the impression to Suzy in Nebraska and Mandy in Alabama that real estate in New York is as affordable as anywhere and that poor in New York means living in a $2 million Williamsburg loft.

Wait, he thinks that’s not “poor in New York”?

We must dash these notions quickly, lest a fresh wave of flyover country folk flock to neighborhoods like Williamsburg (just like they did in the 1990's) to waste some of the choicest years of their life coming to grips with the reality that $1,000 in this city is like $100 elsewhere.

Mr. Acitelli would see those dashed notions replaced with more attainable goals for feeble-minded flocks of flyover folk. The humane Mr. Acitelli laments:

The television networks long ago did away with most vestiges of working-class reality in their prime-time programming…

Wouldn’t they would be so much more contented if only they knew their place wasn’t here?

...Gossip Girl seems silly and trite and stupid in places. You get the joke. Others may not. They're banking on that $2 million loft and they'll take the mortgage to get it.

It’s all fun and games until the flyover folk flock! Then they’ll brazenly walk among us undetected—riding our L train, eating our Batali-franchise food, maybe even mingling their flyover bloodlines with our own!—don’t say Mr. Acitelli didn’t warn you.

Don't sweat it, FFFs, real NY loves you.