Manet called him the painter of painters / FRI 5-20-22 / A sumo wrestler's is called a mawashi / Velvet-voiced Mel / Status on a conservationist's "Red List" / Italian nickname that omits Al- / Only one-word country that contains all five vowels / Astronomer Thomas for whom a comet is named

Constructor: Hal Moore

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: GONZO journalism (44D: Highly exaggerated and subjective, as journalism) —

Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story using a first-person narrative. The word "gonzo" is believed to have been first used in 1970 to describe an article about the Kentucky Derby by Hunter S. Thompson, who popularized the style. It is an energetic first-person participatory writing style in which the author is a protagonist, and it draws its power from a combination of social critique and self-satire. It has since been applied to other subjective artistic endeavors.

Gonzo journalism involves an approach to accuracy that concerns the reporting of personal experiences and emotions, in contrast to traditional journalism, which favors a detached style and relies on facts or quotations that can be verified by third parties. Gonzo journalism disregards the strictly-edited product once favored by newspaper media and strives for a more personal approach; the personality of a piece is as important as the event or actual subject of the piece. Use of sarcasm, humor, exaggeration, and profanity is common.

Thompson, who was among the forefathers of the New Journalism movement, said in the February 15, 1973, issue of Rolling Stone, "If I'd written the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism." (wikipedia)

• • •

[Las Meninas (1656)]

This one was a bell curve experience, or something close to it. Started and ended in pretty bad places, but it did have a kind of high point toward the middle, when all the "Z"s and "Q"s got involved (OK just the one "Q," but one "Q" goes a long way). I'm never that impressed by Scrabbly letters in a grid, but in this case those letters just happened to be in the most interesting fill. But back to the beginning—this one had real trouble getting off the ground. OMNI OLD MOOS ABUT UTERO are all tolerable if there's gonna be some kind of long-answer payoff, and while LOIN CLOTH was promising (-ish), INNUMERATE is such a dull technical term that I couldn't even retrieve it from my brain storage house, and DOGNAPPER, yeesh, way to start things off on a depressing, miserable note (16A: Spot remover?). And with a cutesy "?" clue? You're really trying to make dognapping cute?. I love dogs. Put all the dog stuff you can think of in your puzzles, all the dog breeds and toys and activities—just don't hurt them. Hurt the dog and I am out. Your puzzle is no longer my friend. THREATENED and PRESCIENT are solid but offer nothing in the way of sizzle, which a Friday puzzle always needs, and which this puzzle definitely needed after that clunky downer of a beginning. But then, as I say, things pick up. Once we get inside the SUPERSONIC / CURRY FAVOR sector, it's like we've entered a completely different puzzle. Lots of bounce. A RIFF here, a GONZO there, and then the real knockout combination of MOZAMBIQUE and VELAZQUEZ. Maybe "knockout" is an exaggeration, but they're a very strong pair. I really want to reach into this section, grab DOGMATA, and throw it bodily from the puzzle, so uncharacteristically unpleasant is it (43A: Doctrines). There's DOGMA, and there's STIGMATA, but DOGMATA, pfffffft. Raspberries. Still, though, the longer answers here made me forget about DOGMATA pretty quickly. Such is the power of great marquee fill. Don't waste it!

Once you leave the SUPERSONIC / CURRY FAVOR quadrant, though, things once again go to seed. I kinda like seeing crosswordese Hall-of-Famer (Hall of "Fame"-er?) IRENE CARA here in her full-name form, but the other two longer answers of the SW really bring the room down. SOFT TARGET just makes me think of carnage. Of non-combatants dying in large numbers. Here's the opening line of the wikipedia entry for "soft target":

A "soft target" is a person, thing, or location that is easily accessible to the general public and relatively unprotected, making it vulnerable to military or terrorist attack.

The term makes me think of human beings shot or blown to pieces. Even under normal circumstances, I'm not gonna like this answer, but Ukraine + Buffalo makes it a very hard "No" at the moment. The puzzle finally peters out, fittingly, at the very bottom, or nadir, of the grid, as we hover for a second over SURF THE ___, wondering what dated '90s term for The World Wide Web is going to go here. Web? Net? Web? Net? "Web" seems like the better option, but neither one is gonna brighten your day. And so NET lands with a thud, and we round things off with a crosswordese cross of the highest order, where ESTA meets NENA. 

Speaking of crosswordese, I don't particularly like this trend of dressing ugly or aggressively common fill up in newish technical or trivial clothing. ABRA will never be good. Better to not put it in the grid at all then to try to convince me it's a Pokémon (36A: Pokémon that ultimately evolves into Alakazam). And NTH is NTH is NTH. Making it some "calculus concept" adds about as much joy to the grid as INNUMERATE did (45A: ___-term test for divergence (calculus concept)). I am, however, highly in favor of really getting GONZO with your crosswordese clues, like the clue for OAHU today (23A: U.S. locale that, when said quickly, sounds like a cheer). Make me see the word in a weird new light! Make me whisper-shout the word as I'm solving! Wahoo! The clue here basically says "yeah, you've seen this one a million times before, but we're gonna have some fun with it." I appreciate that. [Stock exchange?] for MOOS, also good. Overall, this puzzle could've used more verve. I did enjoy roughly one third of it, though. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]