Yesterday's blog "Media Outlets Line Up to Pummel Anti-Gym's Michael Karolchyk" told about the downturn suffered by the aforementioned Mr. K -- the subject of "No Chubbies? Fat Chance," a January 2008 Message column in which the cupcake-tossing Anti-Gym owner alternately excoriated TV and radio outlets for not running his willfully offensive ads or boasting about his ability to manipulate the press. Among the stations he ripped was Channel 4, which got even, in a manner of speaking, with a Rick Sallinger report aired last night. During a four-minute-plus piece (the TV equivalent of a 5,000-word feature story), Sallinger described finding Anti-Gym documents in a dumpster outside the facility, which was recently shuttered by the IRS. Some of these forms included credit-card data, complete with names and security codes, while others contained personal information about medical conditions, sexual orientation, breast augmentation and more. Also on view: blunt assessments of clients, including one man who was described as a "lazy piece of shit."
In a phone interview, Karolchyk denied tossing this stuff in such an easily accessible place -- but the juxtaposition of thunderstruck clients with file footage of him yelling and screaming at anyone he didn't think was working hard enough likely puts the final nail in his PR coffin, at least in this town. Live by sensationalism, die by sensationalism.
