By David Topping

Rosie DiManno sucks. Every day (or so), poor Toronto Star readers are subjected to another over-the-top, awkwardly-written, occasionally-insulting column about the day’s top depressing story from the purple-streaked purveyor of pulp. It’s about time someone took out the trash.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “busy” as “occupied with constant attention; actively engaged; doing something that engrosses the attention.”
We’ve been that recently, too engrossed with things like the ROM bomb scare to think too much about Rosie DiManno, while DiManno’s been engrossed in covering the Robert Pickton trial. And hey! She hasn’t done an absolutely horrible job of it (save one extremely notable exception), which means one of two things: either we’re getting numb to her verbal atrocities, or maybe––just maybe––she’s actually getting better. Is this the end of DiManno Watch?
Well, not quite. Over the past week and a half, she’s still managed to squeeze out her fair share of stinkers. Torontoist––out of a sense of obligation, of duty, of necessity––reluctantly presents the first (and hopefully the last) DiManno Watch triple-header.

I Like Big Butts And I Cannot Write Edition

The Evidence

The––fuck it––first five paragraphs of “Counting butts and staring at stripes,” about the jurors at the Robert Pickton trial and how much they smoke (no, really):

By my conservative estimate, the Robert Pickton jury has spent at least 10 hours smoking since deliberations began.
Sheesh, they smoke more than I do.
Not all of them, of course. Just that rump of five, I believe, who frequently huddle for their nicotine fix at the eastern side of the courthouse, portal to the underground garage. This is a shocking ratio of fag-draggers – excluding the brace of non-smokers who usually hang with ‘em, no doubt for the contact cool – especially in a province so health conscious and censorious.
(In the media room, I have been admonished repeatedly by colleagues for dumping empty pop cans into the wastebasket rather than the blue recycling bin. “But you’ll feel so much better about yourself,” assures one environmentally lobotomized scribe. No, I’ll feel browbeaten by tree-huggers.)
Anyway, an intrepid – to say nothing of content-desperate columnist – yesterday actually counted cigarette butts strewn about the jury’s 10-foot-square puffing apron: 76. Perhaps it’s time to take away the tobacco and the coffee breaks, maybe even the catered lunch. Much the same thing was tried, back in the Middle Ages, during a conclave to select a new pope. Those cardinals were denied food and water; such was the emperor’s exasperation with their protracted deliberations.
But, not surprisingly, I digress.

The Verdict

5/6 DIMANNOS
Who the fuck cares? Who the fuck cares about “fag-draggers,” about “contact cool,” about how much you smoke, about how much you do or don’t recycle your cans, about how many individual cigarette butts there are? This is a murder trial for Canada’s worst serial killer, not rosiedimanno.blogspot.com. When your digressions count as half of what you’re talking about, they’re no longer digressions––they’re what you’re talking about. Hell, the last paragraph needs only carefully-selected line breaks to turn it into abysmal observational modernist poetry:
an intrepid –
to say nothing of content-desperate
columnist –
yesterday actually counted cigarette butts
strewn about the jury’s 10-foot-square puffing apron:
76.
Perhaps it’s time
to take away the tobacco
and the coffee breaks,
maybe even the catered lunch.
Much the same thing was tried,
back in the Middle Ages,
during a conclave to select a new pope.
Those cardinals were denied
food and water;
such was the emperor’s exasperation
with their
protracted
deliberations.
Plus, you’d think that after years of churning out insipid articles for The Star, DiManno would be used to being “repeatedly admonished by [her] colleagues” by now. What do you want to bet that the “environmentally lobotomized scribe” now feels pretty much the same about Rosie DiManno as DiManno’s co-workers at The Star always have?

Milky Spice Edition

The Evidence

The opening paragraphs from “Spice Girls relish the reunion hype,” which is about pretty much what you think it is:

They’re well-seasoned Spice Girls now, less sweet and more soured.
Old Spice, rather, a decade removed from the bizarre phenomenon that was their cooked-up and dumbed-down celebrity – five women who couldn’t sing much, couldn’t dance much, but for a couple of years were pop-hot sizzling.

The Verdict

4/6 DIMANNOS
Stop right now, thank you very much.
DiManno gets props for saying “cooked-up” rather than “coked-up” (while still evoking the latter of those two adjectives), but ruins it a few paragraphs later by talking about how Mel B. “shimmied those lactating breasts” on Dancing With The Stars. Ew. As far as participles go, “lactating” is probably the least likely one you’d expect (or want) to see in a newspaper article about anything other than, well, lactating. Was Mel B. actually secreting milk from her breasts on the television show, live? Is this what the writer’s strike has forced the networks to turn to now?

Shanahanadingdong Edition

The Evidence

From the very end of “Painter puts a nude look on hockey heroes,” about a painter doing unauthorized nude portraits of hockey players.

Pity Kauper hasn’t similarly “imagined” Brendan Shanahan.
That one we’d buy.

The Verdict

4/6 DIMANNOS
Well, first things first: we now know that Rosie DiManno has a lady boner for Brendan Shanahan.
Second, there’s that messy editorial we thing. We here at Torontoist are big fans; we rarely, if ever, use “I.” DiManno, however, isn’t consistent: sometimes––like in that article about the Pikton jurors––the article is as much about her as the things she’s writing about, so when she pulls out the “we,” it’s not easy to figure out who, exactly, she’s talking about. Who would buy these nude Brendan Shanahan paintings, then? DiManno? All of The Star‘s staff and contributors? Its readers? The abstract entity of The Star itself? And, more importantly, would the painting depict Shanahan lactating? That one we’d buy.