Does anybody read the New York Observer anymore? I actually didn’t know it was still published, having tuned out when Hilton Kramer retired his front page art column a few years back. But the salmon-colored sheet drew my attention this week with a candidate for the most inane cover story ever: underwear.

Spanx is a girdle-like undergarment that makes the woman who pulls it on appear five to ten pounds slimmer. Even youthful, svelte ladies are addicted to the “power panty,” as the Observer alerts us. I knew the paper’s mission was to cover every nuance of what people are wearing in Manhattan, but this week’s article hits a new low. A wad of filler, its sole objective seems to be displaying a cutesy cartoon of Spanx-sporters Oprah Winfrey and Gwyneth Paltrow in their skivvies.

This drivel proves the obsolescence of a society rag like the NYO in the age of Gawker and other online social diaries.