How The New York Times Called January Jones A Bitch Without Calling Her A Bitch

Profile of Mad Men actress January Jones in the New York Times at the weekend shows that quality broadsheets can stick the boot into celebs just as brutally as the tabloids. Of course, the New York Times doesn't just blurt out and say Jones is a cold-hearted bitch - its hatchet job is a classy affair. Here's how the Times does it:

1. The barbed intro

Via premierlife.ca

- "It isn't easy to coax a smile out of January Jones."

2. Reminding readers Jones plays a bitch

- She offers a "credible impersonation of Betty Draper Francis, the sweet and sullen character she plays in Mad Men".

- "You could be forgiven for confusing Ms Jones with her starchy alter ego."

- Viewers "tend to ascribe to Ms Jones the chilly detachment, questionable judgment and unsteady nerves that haunt and define Betty Francis".

- Her character is an "uptight suburban matron", has a "has a childlike emotional response to things" and in an episode this season, "seemed to try a form of deranged foreplay, telling her husband she would happily help him rape a young houseguest".

3. Using not so subtle euphemisms

- "Ms Jones didn't engage in the dithery banter that in Hollywood passes for charm."

- She shakes hands "wanly" and doesn't do eye contact.

- She's "consistently guarded".

- "In person Ms Jones did little to counter" impressions she's frosty.

- "Yes, she can be thorny."

- She has "a stern Midwestern pragmatism".

- "Her recalcitrance seems not to have mellowed over the years."

- She is "deliberately provocative".

4. Bringing up her messy love life

- "The celebrity press has branded her as a coldblooded temptress, a homewrecker. Brian Moylan called her 'a human ice luge' on Gawker."

- Jones has been linked to "Matthew Vaughn, her X-Men director, who is married to the model Claudia Schiffer, and Noah Miller, the director of her latest film".

- She was "seen in the company of the actor Liam Hemsworth, who was engaged to Miley Cyrus".

5. Implying that Jones is partially to blame for her bad press

- "... she is not much inclined to draw back curtains on a private life that seems by turns hermetic and crazily exposed."

- She won't discuss her private life even though "fans might relate better to her if she did".

6. Getting an academic to do the dirty work

- Natasha Vargas-Cooper, author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America, says "Betty, and by extension Ms Jones, 'represents the frosty girl in high school who inspired rage because she's just untouched. Nothing seems to affect her. She is the popular girl who devastates lives.'"

7. Drawing attention to her 'weird fashion' choices

- "She accented the Chanel dress she wore to the gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with messily coiled hair and masklike eyes, prompting self-appointed red carpet pundits to quip that she looked like Batman, or worse, like the white swan's evil double."

8. Making her seem difficult

- "Ms Jones is inclined to question most everything, from the chicken fingers she is served at lunch ('not what I expected,' she remarked with a faint curl of her lip) to conventional child-rearing practices."

9. Getting her to hang herself

- "I'm almost OCD. You will never find a piece of clothing on my floor. I can't relax if I'm sitting in a mess."

- "(My son's) first word was 'Mama'. His second was 'back', 'cause I keeping saying, 'Put it back.'"