Since its début a mere twelve years ago, Entertainment Weekly has justly earned a reputation as the single greatest consumer entertainment magazine on the market. Its deceptively simple format -- half traditional editorial (celebrity profiles, industry news, and the like), half reviews -- makes each issue indispensible to the serious entertainment consumer. The clearest indicator of EW's success, however, is the way it's forced other (lesser) entertainment rags to change. EW put monthly US -- its most similar antecedent -- effectively out of business; its art directors defected to other publications, and US Weekly rose from the ashes, a glorified tabloid. Premiere, evidently, figuring out that it couldn't compete with EW on the dish front (since Premiere's monthly format means that EW gets to all that stuff first), cut back on its news and put more resources into high-concept package stories (i.e. a roundup of first-person celebrity accounts of "The Movie That Changed My Life"), think pieces, and traditional reportage (like a long story in the past year about a young, aspiring actor in Los Angeles murdered by another young, aspiring actor after a chance encounter). Film Threat and Movieline have been shoved into irrelevance. Rolling Stone and Spin exist primarily to satisfy customers interested in Steely Dan profiles and/or Britney Spears's nipples. There's just no way to compete with The Bible. (And no, we are not affiliated with EW in any way, except as fans.)

Our abiding love and affection for EW -- this commentator has been a devoted subscriber since she was a nearly penniless university student, back in 1994 -- has meant that it has remained almost entirely unscrutinized in The Mediator since this site's inception. But just because EW is a very, very good magazine doesn't mean it's perfect. Until recently, EW had room for improvement in two areas; now, they have (unfortunately) added a third. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. Jim Mullen

"Jim Mullen's Hot Sheet" is the Family Circus of EW. Just as the Family Circus is set apart from all the other comic strips on the page due to its single-frame square format, so is the "Hot Sheet" distinguished from the rest of the front-of-book section due to its location: always occupying the same left-hand vertical half-page slot on the third page of "News & Notes." One could also argue that the "Hot Sheet" is the Lewis Black to EW's Daily Show, but that analogy would only scan if we were assaulted by Black's tired-ass, post-Kinisonian fulminations in every single episode of The Daily Show, and we are not. Mullen, however, is in every single issue of EW. Doesn't he ever take a vacation? Or is Jim Mullen, in fact, not a real person but a pseudonym representing a collective of unfunny "comedy" "writers" whose real dream in life is to craft one-liners for the fetid corpse of Henny Youngman (may he rest in peace)? Witness this gem from the January 11, 2002 issue: "Elvis' birthday Some say he's still alive. If fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches didn't kill him, nothing would." A crack about Elvis Presley's diet?! Man, he just doesn't care who he pisses off! The only excuse I can come up with to explain signing one's name to such a hacky joke in a national magazine is that the Guinness people have been keeping track of every "Elvis Is Fat" joke since 1997, and Mullen was hoping to get in the book for writing the one-billionth. And then there's the icky conservative streak that occasionally shows up in Mullen's column. Take this one, from the November 2, 2001 issue: "Andre Agassi & Steffi Graf They just got married and are expecting their first child in December. They didn't want labor to interrupt the honeymoon." Oh my God, a couple in 2001 had sex before they got married, resulting in the woman's impregnation?! Do the village elders know about this, and will that scarlet "A" clash with Graf's tennis whites? Similarly, there's this, from last week's issue (December 13, 2002): "Rosie The ex-talk-show host and her partner have a new baby girl. The shower will be at Home Depot." BECAUSE THEY'RE LESBIANS!!!! HA HA HA HA! And you know how lesbians love home improvement stores, right? It's funny because it's true. (Making that "joke" even weaker is the fact that O'Donnell herself already used "Home Depot" as a lesbian punchline when she guest-starred on Will and Grace almost a year ago.) In the end, though, it's not his right-wing politics that make Mullen's column so objectionable; it's the fact that it's not funny. It isn't now, and it never has been. I think The Man from F.U.N.K.L.E. said it best: "I'd like to know how much he gets paid. Actually, I probably wouldn't."

2. Joel Stein

Up until two weeks ago, the back page of EW was occupied by "Encore," a short article outlining what was going on in the world of entertainment on the issue's date, several years earlier. So, for instance, in the EW issue published the week of December 14 last year, the "Encore" told the story of Cindy Crawford's marriage to Richard Gere, which had taken place ten years before the article's publication. "Encore" was accompanied by a "Time Capsule" -- a box listing the given week's showbiz headlines in the main story's chosen year. Maybe "Encore" wasn't groundbreakingly original journalism -- every magazine from Time to People has some variation on the "Where Are They Now?" column -- but it was always well written, informative, and a fitting placeholder for the back page of a magazine like Entertainment Weekly. If you're the kind of person who starts at the end of a magazine and pages her way to the beginning (and many do), "Encore" is a fine place to start, and puts you in the mood for the rest of the issue. But "Encore" is no more. This month, "Encore" was replaced by "The Joel Stein Show," allegedly a humour column. While I liked "Encore" okay and read it every month (even if it happened to be about someone or something I didn't really care about), I wasn't so enamoured of it that I resented Stein's new column on sight; I like humour, and I was prepared to be amused. But I was not amused. Stein's first column, in the December 6 issue, told the story of Stein accompanying a "Girls Gone Wild" film crew on their search for strangers' titties in Florida. Obviously, I was not expecting trenchant feminist analysis of the subject -- and hey, I might even think drunk girls flashing their breasts at videocameras was kind of funny if he'd come at the subject (as it were) from a more satiric perspective. But the column wasn't funny. Its jokes were crammed in so haphazardly, I don't even know why they bothered hiring a new guy to write it when they could have just given the job to Jim Mullen. For God's sake, Stein admits as much in his first (unfortunately Esquire-esque) paragraph: "These ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY guys take themselves a little too seriously. They suggested my column involve a 'keen analysis of popular culture.' I'm pretty sure my column should be an investigation into the mores of culture's everchanging semiotics, such as having me spend two days as a member of the Girls Gone Wild camera crew. The keen analysis stuff can stay where it belongs, in Jim Mullen's Hot Sheet." Furthermore, the meta-pose of writing about "Girls Gone Wild" in a detached, analytical way is so transparent, and so Maxim. Stein's second column for EW covers the issue of stars from other media reinventing themselves as actors. Don't worry: there's a Madonna joke right there in the dek. Heaven forbid anything about Stein's column be unpredictable.

3. Jessica Shaw

Who? You know very well who. Jessica "The Shaw Report" Shaw. "The Shaw Report" is a couple of years older than "The Joel Stein Show," and far, far younger than "Jim Mullen's Hot Sheet." "The Shaw Report" came into being at the same time as "The Scout," that subsection of "News & Notes" that is, apparently, the magazine's "field guide to the next new things." It's where you'd tend to find "Gimme Shelter," the box about celebrity real estate, as well as InStyle-ish boxes about the hobbies, products, and clothes celebrities like. Then, there's "The Shaw Report." In case you are not an EW reader (and good lord, why aren't you, if you're reading this site?), let me give you a taste: in the October 26, 2001 issue, the following were, according to Shaw, "In," "Five Minutes Ago," and "Out," respectively: "Adopting a puppy/ Ferrets/ Home aquariums." From the October 19, 2001 issue: "Your 40s/ Your 30s/ Your 20s." From the November 30, 2001 issue: "Flossing/ Electric toothbrushes/ Water Piks." Yes, you read right: Flossing. Is in. Flossing. I realize that Shaw must pull this stuff out of her ass most of the time -- or, excuse me, per her latest "Report," from her "arse" (with "booty" Five Minutes Ago, and "Butt" Out) -- but flossing? Flossing. Honestly. We're supposed to guess that Shaw asked a bunch of celebrities about their oral hygiene regimen, and decided that if Leah Remini has thrown away her Water Pik, the rest of us should follow suit? And in any case, we're supposed to take dental advice from Jessica Shaw? And if we're not -- if we're just supposed to scan over it and think how absurd it would be to alter one's oral health practices based on a couple of sentence fragments in a showbiz column -- then either the entries in "The Shaw Report" should be a lot funnier and more absurd, or else "The Shaw Report" should be retired. (The worst thing about it is that it's not always in the same spot within "The Scout," and every time it doesn't make it onto the first page of the section, I always think they've ditched it, and then I turn the page, and there it fucking is. Thanks a lot, bitches!) EW already does de facto "In"s and "Out"s in each section of its reviews in the back -- "Winner of the Week," "History Makers of the Week," etc. -- that are actually based on actual events and verifiable facts; "The Shaw Report," resting as it does on Shaw's whims of the week, is pointless and redundant.

Furthermore, Jessica Shaw's writing for EW outside the boundaries of "The Shaw Report"? Also sucks. This summer, she wrote short, next-day mini-recaps of the previous night's episode of American Idol for EW's website. They would either be way too earnest (given that it was American Freakin' Idol), or she'd aim for snark and miss pitifully: "Of course, now that we know who's going to win, why bother watching? So we can see Paula's sartorial disasters? (What was up with that sideways leopard hat? Did she raid her 'Straight Up' video wardrobe?)" Yes, Paula Abdul always looked awful on AI, but mocking her clothes is like mocking Elvis's diet: too easy. Jessica Shaw is also the designated hitter for the "What to Watch" section, subbing for regular columnist Dalton Ross whenever he takes a holiday. While we do not begrudge Ross his free time -- certainly, he needs to stay rested up in order to keep cracking our shit up week after week -- Jessica Shaw is about the worst replacement imaginable for him. You see, Dalton Ross is hilarious. He's effortlessly funny. He's funny in twenty syllables or less. He's a riot. We love Dalton Ross. Dalton Ross deserves better, when he takes a week off, than to see his space taken over by Jessica "No-Talent" Shaw. It's gotten to the point where I always have to check whether he's the one who's written it before I start to read, rather than get a nasty, Shaw-scented surprise from her shitty writing. (Or maybe, when he goes on vacation, Dalton Ross demands that Jessica Shaw cover for him -- you know, as insurance that no one will show him up in his absence. Nah, that can't be it. Or can it?)

So, here's the thing. Joel Stein and Jim Mullen are easy to avoid. Their places in the magazine are fixed and stable; they're easy enough to avoid. But Jessica Shaw is insidious. You can be halfway through one of her stories before you realize what you've done, and then try to shake it out of your head, like it never happened. "The Shaw Report" is so short -- you can practically take in the entire text at a glance -- that you can't avoid it. Jessica Shaw must be stopped. We call on you, gentle readers to write to EW's editors and express your disillusionment with Jessica Shaw. Make them give all her columns to Dalton Ross! And if you want to throw in a few choice words about Jim Mullen and Joel Stein while you're at it, you might as well. If we each wrote a letter a week, we could get her bounced down to People, where she rightly belongs. You have the power to make a positive change. Use it! Use it to tell Jessica Shaw she, in fact, is out -- as "out" as a Water Pik.