It isn’t news that’s fit to print.
Elusive British graffiti artist Banksy took a swipe at the New York Times today for denying him a spot on the newspaper’s coveted op-ed page, where he was planning to trash the new World Trade Center tower.
“This site contains blocked messages,” screams a graffiti message on a Brooklyn wall at Noble and West Streets in Greenpoint.
Banksy’s web site features a picture of the wall with a caption: “Today’s piece was going to be an op-ed column in the New York Times. But they declined to publish what I supplied. Which was this…”
What follows is a scathing One World Trade Center critique — written in the Times’ distinctive font — that mocks the tower as a “disaster,” a confidence-lacking “shyscraper,” that “looks like something they would build in Canada.”
“It reminds you of a really tall kid at a party, awkwardly shifting his shoulders trying not to stand out from the crowd,” the rejected opinion piece said.
The op-ed mock up even included the newspaper’s famous motto: “All the news that’s fit to print.”
“We couldn’t agree on either the piece or the art, so we did reject it,” New York Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said. “What he has posted on his site is not exactly the same
as what he submitted.”
Banksy is on a month-long “residency” in New York, where he is using the five boroughs as his artistic canvas.
An earlier Banksy piece in Tribeca featured a stencil of the Twin Towers featuring a bright orange flower depicting the fireburst from a terrorist plane crash.