Duane Reade

I stopped in my friendly neighborhood Duane Reade drug emporium this morning to pick up a big-ass bag of Dove miniatures. I leave them out on my desk so that officemates can grab a quick pick-me-up by day, and mice can do the same at night. There are always four or five people in line there, because five of the six registers are evidently decorative like the cardboard computers in the IKEA rolltop desk displays.

I was attempting to avert my eyes from the guy in the billowing pants who was buying a package of Duane Reade hemmorhoid wipes ("compare with Preparation H wipes and save!") when I noticed a sign that was hanging above each register. "Vote here in the 1010 WINS Top 40 Newsmakers!" The sign helpfully gave a list of what can only be described as human trash. There was Jean Harris, Daniel Rackowicz, David Berkowitz, Sol Wachtler, Lemrick Nelson, Robert Chambers, Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco, and so on.

I went up to the 1010 WINS site just to find out what was going on, and it turns out that this was the week you could vote for the most "notorious" newsmakers. The winners were:

1 David Berkowitz 2 John Gotti, Sr. 3 Joel Steinberg 4 Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco 5 Bernie Goetz 6. Robert Chambers 7 Tawana Brawley 8 Colin Ferguson 9 Leona Helmsley 10 Lyndon LaRouche.

My question is who would actually go online and cast a vote in favor of these people for ANYTHING? Someone actually decided that they should favor Joel Steinberg with a vote? Even for a contest like this, it just feels repellent.