Q&A with Brooklynite Cara Buckley: Rolling out the red carpet
If one Googles the word “carpetbagger,” the first words that appear are “noun: derogatory.” It doesn’t get any better after that: “a person perceived as an unscrupulous opportunist.” Dictionary.com’s definition is equally unflattering: “any opportunistic or exploitative outsider.”
Don’t seek refuge in Harold Robbins’ best-seller “The Carpetbaggers.” In 1961, upon the book’s publication, The New York Times book review opens with: “It was not quite proper to have printed ‘The Carpetbaggers’ between the covers of a book. It should have been inscribed on the walls of a public lavatory.”
In 2005, shortly after Thanksgiving, The New York Times itself became a carpetbagger, albeit a far more benign, good-natured one. More accurately, the Times gave the green light to the late David Carr’s The Carpetbagger, an awards season-focused blog covering the Toronto International Film Festival, the Golden Globes, the Sundance Film Festival and culminating with the Oscars. Nikki Finke, creator of Deadline.com, claims the origin of the name for the blog was both a play on Carr’s last name, “but also captured the notion of an NYC elitist coming to Los Angeles to poke fun at the film folks.”