perfidy

Found in Friday's WSJ (4/13, subscription req'd):

The WSJ has a regular section of the paper dedicated to houses I wouldn't want, in places I wouldn't live, at prices I can't afford. They're always adjacent to full page advertisements from Coldwell Banker or some other house-hawker, so perhaps there's an editorial synergy at work.

The story right before the one about Snoop Dogg's home, for instance, detailed a $125 million listing for a 45,000 sq. ft. estate called "Fleur de Lys", being sold by a 46 year old divorcee you've never heard of, formerly married to a man you've never heard of, who started and sold a company you've never heard of. The last line of that listing editorial masterpiece was this:

Joyce Rey, head of Coldwell Banker's Previews division, and Robert Kass of Windermere Real Estate have the listing.

So I'm going out on a limb here, and assuming that each of the stories had its editorial birth in a call directly from a listing agent to Ben Casselman at the WSJ, or someone else who works in the pretend-editorial department for the "Weekend Journal" section.

With that lead-in, I'd like to highlight a portion of the otherwise garden variety article Mr. Casselman produced. It seems that Calvin Broadus, a/k/a Snoop Dogg (or would that more properly be "Snoop Dogg, a/k/a Calvin Broadus"?) has put a house on the market. Blah, blah, blah - sounds like a nice enough place, at something like a normal price for Southern California real estate these days.

As before, I presume the story came from the listing agent, though s/he was not named in the article. Here's the description they included in the article for Broadus, the seller:

The rapper, 35, has sold nearly 19 million albums in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, and has appeared in several films. (He's also known for popularizing the suffix "izzle.")

That, plus he was sentenced earlier this on weapon and drug charges for some earlier, and unimportant to this story, infraction.

Am I the only one who thinks it odd that (if as presumed) the listing agent who provided the story thought it was important to the story to enlighten us all that he is known for the suffix "izzle"? More important than the drug and weapons charges?

Yeah, I'm probably the only one.

[wik] I can just picture, 30 years from now, Calvin Broadus, talking to some kid somewhere, and saying "'izzle? Yeah, that was mine."

[alsø wik] I can picture some kid, 30 years from now, hearing something like that and laughing his ass off.