LOOK, WHEN THE Wall Street Journal implied that New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger had a girly jaw, what it was trying to say was: My, you certainly attract healthy, wealthy mates!
In case you don’t follow the squabbles of wealthy and prickly tycoons: The Journal did a piece on how women from wealthier countries tend to have “feminine” “face preferences.” (Thanks a lot, WSJ. Now we can’t stop undressing everyone’s jaw with our eyes.) To illustrate their point, the Journal‘s image for the story was a series of male faces, including a man with saucy cat eyes, and the soft, sensitive chin of a certain media tycoon.
Vanity Fair blogger Michael Wolff was the first to think, “I know that mouth,” and let us in on a barrage of insults and insights about “young Arthur” that Rupert Murdoch had unleashed when Wolff was writing the Australian super-villain and NewsCorp mogul’s biography. Shit like:
Sulzberger was always, for Murdoch, a punch line. Murdoch even mimicked him in a way to suggest … well … a certain lack of manhood.
A week later, Sulzberger met WSJ editor Robert Thomson at a party, and, according to the New York Observer, no one can agree on what was said. Thomson claims, “We had a good giggle about it,” and that “if you looked at that mosaic of masculinity, Arthur’s jaw was on the masculine end.” But Sulzberger claimed that Thomson had said he didn’t know about the illo until after the story went to print, and that it was NOT actually Sulzy’s chin… but that he refused to print a clarification to dispel the rumors running rampant around the city about the weakness of the Times publisher’s jaw.
Gawker picked up the story, and escalated the feud further, getting this comment from Times Co. spokesman Bob Christie:
A certain Mr. Robert Thomson, an editor of a newspaper, told a reporter a version of events that did not marry with reality. Clearly, principle is a bystander at the house of Thomson. He owes his employees and readers an apology.
Wow, an apology about possible chin mischaracterization? This is getting absurd. We love it!
Angry, heated rivalries are healthy … they encourage papers to out-report one another and give ambivalent readers a reason to pick a side and pick up a broadsheet. The rivalry between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer was, at heart, a squabble between man children about who was bigger (… circulation-wise). Sure, they sensationalized, but they also opened up their coverage to social policy issues like labor and immigration, and started peddling weekly magazines (!!). Yellow journalism is generally considered a dirty word, and it is, but what can we say? We like to swear.
It’s worth noting that Sulzberger owns the Boston Globe and that Murdoch owned the Boston Herald, the rival dailies in this proud two-newspaper town. Just like Poppa, the Herald has a fine tradition of insulting its rival, reserving titles like “bow-tied bumkisser” for Globe readers. We just wish that the Times Co. would stop curling into a fetal ball and start punching back.
SPEAKING OF, THE Herald‘s infant terrible (can you call a geriatric columnist that?), Howie Carr, threw another temper tantrum this week. To further prove our point, when the Globe called for comment, “a woman who answered the phone at his Wellesley home said the radio host was in bed and could not come to the phone.” She’d just put him down for his nap, apparently.
Julie Kahn, vice president/market manager for Entercom Boston, said Carr badmouthed WRKO, his home station, on his show, and will get one week suspension. “His behavior and his anger at the company is unacceptable,” Kahn says. “He denigrates the company, the medium, the station, the signal, and he’s a highly, highly, highly paid employee.” Carr entered into a $1 million per year contract in 2007, which he’s likened to “indentured servitude.”
Whatwhat? The man who criticizes “Cadillac Deval” and “limousine liberals” and just last week used “Cadillac-y” as an adjective to describe state health insurance plans (Carr likes cars, OK?!) makes a mill at one of his jobs?! No wonder he hates doing his taxes.
Carr is probably hoping to break his contract, and may be courting an offer from another station… probably WTKK, which he’s been salivating over since 2007. Could Howie be the next Helen of Troy?
If he is, he’ll probably go for whoever has the weaker chin. After all, he is fabulously wealthy.
