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Who knew Esquire still published?

Esquire, dusty precursor to FHM, Maxim, Stuff and other lad mags, has belched up a ridiculous article (this one penned by Jeff Miller) that purports to simultaneously bury Dane Cook while giving a gentle, detached and ironic push to “the six comedians who could be comedy’s next big things.”

(Notice the qualifier– “could be!” Declaring them to actually be the next big thing is so… ’90s! Speaking with certainty is so totally in violation of the Alterna-ethic!)

It is said that the anointed six are just as grass-rootsy as the much-reviled Cook and that they are launching their careers by “using the Internet and bubbling up from the underground.” This has as much truth to it as the idea that reading Esquire might get one laid. By a woman.

The lucky six are:

David Cross
Patton Oswalt
Demetri Martin
Flight of the Conchords
Ben Gleib
Aziz Ansari

We’re sorry, did they say “bubbling up from the underground?” Sure! If you count the underground as being on one network or cable show or another for the past 12 years or so (Cross), signing a deal to be the front man in arguably the largest product launch ever (Microsoft Vista/Martin), starring in your own HBO series (F.O.T.C.) or voicing the main character in the most heavily-promoted Disney/Pixar release in the partnership’s history (“Ratatouille”/Oswalt).

These four (and probably the other two) have the muscle and might of whopping corporations (HBO/Time Warner, Microsoft, ABC, Fox, Viacom, etc.). To tell Esquire readers that they are somehow bootstrapping themselves out of obscurity with the help of MySpace and a plucky cadre of loyal fans is insulting to their intelligence. Then again, can we believe anything to be authentically “alternative” if we read about it in a unit of Hearst Communications, a company that raked in nearly $2 billion in 2003?

That they felt the need to savage Dane Cook at the outset of the article further demonstrates the utter unoriginality of the author and/or his low opinion of those readers.

Not to mention that he runs the risk of turning his readers off of standup comedy by his negativity. What sense does it make to trash a standup comic– any standup comic– in the introduction to an article about standup? It is akin to starting out a review of a steakhouse by trashing McDonald’s so stridently and in such detail that the reviewer runs the risk of converting his readers into vegetarians.

Laughably, the article is under the heading of “Opinion.” (Which, we suppose, is short for “Opinion borne of reading press release after press release in a tiny cubicle W. 57th St.?”)