TheDirty.com plays rough with Matt Leinart -- a new low for gossip sites?

On Tuesday, TheDirty.com posted some pictures of Matt Leinart that the site's bloggers said depicted the Arizona Cardinals quarterback and former USC star at a Scottsdale backyard party (his backyard). The party had everything: booze, hot tubbing and girls from Arizona State University.  The Dirty also said that at least two of the girls pictured weren't old enough to drink.

Who cares, right?  Isn't this just another celebrity gotcha moment?  Add it to the pile. I won't speak for everyone, but put it this way -- the bar is pretty high these days to make this gawker choke on his cheesecake.   

But here's the trick: the Leinart photos are the exception to The Dirty's Rule. The Dirty is not a celebrity gossip site: it's a regular folk gossip site, complete with regular folk paparazzi. Its roots are in Scottsdale, 10 miles from ASU, where the founders hit on the idea of egging on college kids to snap scandalous pictures of each other. 

It's just that this time, Leinart got caught in the crossfire.

"I got tipped off that Nick Lachey, Vanessa Minnillo, and Matt Leinart were having dinner at Saporro on Friday night," said the site's main blogger, Nik Richie. "Someone took a picture on their cellphone and sent it to me. I put it up and I just put a warning out saying hey, if these guys do anything crazy, send me the pictures."

"Lo and behold, the next night," Richie continued, "these guys went out to Dirty Pretty, [a club] in old town Scottsdale," went back to Leinart's house, "and it was just a college fest.  They got dirty."

The Dirty execs said that they've received e-mails from other students who know the girls, and had also looked at the girls' MySpace pages, and that all of it confirmed they were below drinking age. But these are also guys whose bread and butter is to make regular people look like jerks (none of them would give their real name because they're worried about retribution -- they often refuse to remove pictures when people ask), so I'm taking everything they say with a grain of salt. 

What you can't take away from The Dirty, however, is that the idea of hyper-local tabloids is something pretty dag original.

"Ninety-eight percent of our stuff is through submissions from a regular person of just funny stuff someone was doing, or stuff maybe they shouldn’t have been doing," said The Dirty's COO, Ray Levine. 

"It makes it so much more interesting to the reader because it’s reality, so it’s not Britney Spears or Paris Hilton -- it's in your own hometown," said Ari Golden,  The Dirty's president and CEO. "It's so much more interesting to see something about your neighbor or your co-worker."

The Dirty has sites in a few dozen cities and is trying to plant its dirty seed at as many colleges as possible.  This is a good business plan because college towns generate the most photos per capita of drunk college kids.

Do these guys feel any pangs of conscience for posting pictures of people, celebrities or otherwise, that might end up embarrassing them or harming their reputations?

"A little bit," Richie said.  "No, I'm just kidding." 

But was he?

"We do it very satirically and tongue in cheek. There's no malintent," COO Levine said.  "I don't think anything we do is going to break someone or destroy their life.

"Everyone looks at celebrities or someone else and are pointing the finger at them for what they do, and they don't really realize that they're doing the same, if not worse. It's just that no one's paying attention."

"So the next time they go to pass judgment or throw a stone at someone in the limelight," concluded Levine, "maybe they'll think twice about it."

What's that? For-profit gossipmongers telling their readers -- The Dirty Army -- to go out and snap as many embarrassing pictures of people as they can, and then when they're questioned about the moral implications they say they're doing society a service?

Maybe it's true that we should all avoid being hypocrites and wean ourselves off the Britney Spears addiction.  But it's hard to take that civics lesson from this particular set of guys, who won't even use their real names. And look at the site for five minutes and you'll see plenty of stuff that's not so altruistic. One Dirty blog entry featured a picture of a guy just standing there smiling.  Below was a caption that contained the guy's full name. Then it said: "He is a car salesman who thinks he is gods gift and brags that he makes 200k a year and his girlfriend is a '10.' Too bad I saw her on myspace and she is a total cougar! She is 45 and almost as ugly as he is! If he is so rich why doesn’t he buy his own car instead of driving a demo vehicle!!?...His teeth are really yellow and slimy also and he has a double chin."

Yeah! You go, Dirty! That'll teach people to stand there and have their pictures taken!

Photo: TheDirty.com

Comments

[John]

Matt Leinart is fair game. He courted celebrity before he even left USC. The car dealer is collateral damage in the online gossip game. Self-promotion is the driving force of the blogging/gossip culture. The quest for the "byline", the link, the quote (as you've provided here) is all that matters. This is not journalism, stop applying those old-media standards.

[Lane, Scottsdale, AZ]

I think Nik Ritchie and the rest have every right to do what they are doing. These people get snapped because they are doing things they shouldnt. These people go out in Scottsdale every night and make fools of themselves and fools of this town. If you are going out and acting a fool, drinking underage, etc. you should know better. And Matt Lienart - that is a whole 'nother story. He has been urged by the Cardinals coach and fans to keep a lower profile, but instead he is beer bonging with underage chicks. He DESERVES to be called out on that. Matt, grow up and show some class.

[Mark D]

This post defintely makes some vald points regarding The Dirty. I've been perusing it since shortly after it's debut as "Dirty Scottsdale." While often times funny, at the expense of those who deserve it, it's as frequently mean spirited too. You're example of the guy's picture is an excellent one. Who determined he was a d****e-bag that deserved to be slammed? It's often a forum for spreading rumors that may or may not be true.
I'd have far more respect for the Nik Richies of that site if they would just come out and say, "Hey, we don't give a f#@%. We don't care what we post, as long as we're amused and others find it funny. If someone get's hurt, who cares?" They'd still be jerks, as they are now, but they'd be "honest" jerks.

[Sabrina]

Personally, I think ALL of the gossip websites are disgusting, rude, meanspirited and utterly useless to society. It's too bad people have to get their kicks out of reading stuff that trashes people rather than finding out what really matters in the world today...and then getting out there and doing something about it.

[FROG]

I HATE THIS SITE,THEY TOLD THE WORLD ABOUT MY HAIR PLUGS AND PEC-IMPLANTS...MY LIFE IS OVER...