Slagging off the FBFs

[Famous for Being Famous]

Manhattan Mini Storage's latest campaign

relies on mocking public figures:

"Your closets are so shallow

they make Paris Hilton look deep!"

declares one poster showing a pop-eyed

Chihuahua in a party-shop tiara

Kick her while she's down, why not?

Aside from the Paris Hilton spot,

other tag lines include:

"Your closet's scarier than Bush's agenda",

"Your closet's so narrow it makes Cheney look liberal"

and "The Democrats cleaned house, why don't you?"

Civil is a word not often applied to New York. But the clichés about its brash residents are mostly unfair. Gothamites can be mighty helpful to tourists lost on the Number Six line hurtling to the Bronx when they thought they were going to Wall Street.

This spring, however, the city's air is thick with insults. The baseball season has started but it is mud slinging that seems to delight ordinary New Yorkers above all else.

Our taste for it is well understood by the advertising agency for Manhattan Mini Storage - a life-saver for those of us with flats so cramped that finding space for more than three changes of clothes, two pans and a potted plant is impossible.

The company's latest campaign relies on mocking public figures: "Your closets are so shallow they make Paris Hilton look deep!" declares one poster showing a pop-eyed Chihuahua in a party-shop tiara.

Kick her while she's down, why not? (True, the spot was conceived before her sentencing to 90 days in jail.)

The list of celebrities who know that impoliteness can do wonders for a profile is long. Simon Cowell of the television programme American Idol gets it with his eye-rolling meanness to contestants.

So do the country's radio shock-jocks. Don Imus uttered one racial slur too many last month and got fired. So it was open season on him for a while. But plenty more like him are still practising their brand of bigotry - no minority is spared - and the listeners are still tuning in.

Then there is the frequently funny but just as often obnoxious Rosie O'Donnell, the comedian who recently announced her departure from The View, a popular morning television discussion show.

At least she sometimes targets herself. After singer Sheryl Crow proposed that we ration ourselves to one square of toilet paper each, Rosie, who is not a lithe person, was to the point: "Have you seen my ass?"

No one doubts that high ratings for The View have been thanks to Ms O'Donnell's fearless potty mouth.

She used the programme, for instance, to spout bile at Donald Trump, himself a television personality these days, branding him a "snake-oil salesman" and a "pimp".

This was after he said that he would not sack the then Miss America (he owns the pageant) for some feckless nightlife activity. His reply? Spitting out statements one after another, he called her "fat", "a low-life" and a "mental midget".

Talk about enriching public discourse. The pair made Imus look high-minded and Ms Hilton a philosopher.

If we could have ignored their mutual laceration, of course, they wouldn't have bothered. What would they gain if we just yawned?

We were reminded last week that this game is not just the preserve of media personalities.

Intellectuals sometimes can't resist, either. And so we had Camille Paglia, the self-avowed bisexual feminist and writer, taking advantage of a column on the Salon web site to join in the pillorying of Rosie.

"What a crass solipsist, clod and yahoo O'Donnell is - and what a bad advertisement for both liberalism and lesbianism. I thoroughly enjoyed Donald Trump putting the shiv to her with his eye-opening insults of withering accuracy," she wrote.

Could it be that as the lazy days of summer approach, baseball will re-assert itself as the national pastime? The Manhattan Mini Storage campaign suggests not.

Aside from the Paris Hilton spot, other tag lines include: "Your closet's scarier than Bush's agenda", "Your closet's so narrow it makes Cheney look liberal" and "The Democrats cleaned house, why don't you?"

Ah yes, summer will barely be over when the election gets in full swing. And politicians sling mud better than anyone. Let's face it, nasty sells. David Usborne @ Indy