Rosenthal can only hope, for about the nicest adjective I heard about his conduct over two years was “abrasive,” with “unfortunate” a close second. Rosenthal is a shouter, a curser, a whiner…and he can hold grudges for years. He is a small man physically but his rages are so violent that he intimidates persons twice his size. “Much of Abe’s supposed bravery in shouting at other men lies in the fact that he can say those two little words, ‘You’re fired,’” one of his deputies said. “Otherwise, they’d have carried him out on a stretcher with a busted jaw back in the 1960’s.”
FEBRUARY 20, 1989 BY LOU CHAPMAN
IS SAWYER’S FUTURE A STELLAR PROSPECT?
Illustrated by Barry Blitt
WHEN DIANE SAWYER RECENTLY confirmed she was jumping ship at CBS News to join rival ABC, the story made the front pages of newspapers across the country.
After all, Ms. Sawyer had been the first and so far only female correspondent on 60 Minutes, America’s most watched news program and, week after week, among the 10 top-rated television shows of any genre. She was making an estimated $1.2 million as a 60 Minutes correspondent and is rumored to have clinched a deal worth $1.5 million a year at ABC, even though her previous assignment, co-anchoring CBS Morning News with Bill Kurtis, was a flop.
Besides, Ms. Sawyer was in the news last year when she was married to Mike Nichols, the movie director and producer, after having dated or had continuing relationships with men about town including Henry Kissinger, the developer Mortimer Zuckerman and the Carter Administration official Richard Holbrooke.
And the former all-America Junior Miss (in 1963, when she was 17) was 42 when she married, making her a magnet for industry mavens and reporters searching out the perfect woman with whom to discuss the biological clock syndrome.
Not to mention that Ms. Sawyer was a press aide to former President Richard Nixon and spent almost four years after his resignation working for him in California, researching his memoirs.
It all looks stellar. But is it? And what does it mean? Maybe it means simply that Diane Sawyer, generally considered to be dazzling, intelligent, hardworking, competent and ambitious—and someone who, if she never really added a unique dimension to 60 Minutes, is a fine journalist nonetheless—is getting something she wants at ABC that she doesn’t see in the tea leaves at CBS.
Insiders and experts seem to think that regardless of what happens at ABC, Ms. Sawyer can’t lose. So far, things seem to have gone that way for her.
“She’s not likely to be blamed if the new show fails,” Tom Shales, who won a Pulitzer Prize last year for his television criticism in The Washington Post, said in an interview. “Theoretically, she could fail. She could perform very poorly on camera. But given her experience and track record that is highly unlikely. I mean, she came back from Morning News, the debacle of debacles, to do 60 Minutes. Basically, if it fails, it’s just one more prime-time magazine that fails…one in a line of many.”
MARCH 6, 1989 BY MICHAEL M. THOMAS
THE MIDAS WATCH: RUSHDIE AFFAIR: IRAN KICKS SAND IN AMERICA’S FACE
ONE CANNOT BLAME HARRY Hoffman or any other bookseller who took Satanic Verses off the shelves. One bookseller of my acquaintance was visited by a couple of hulks, whose acquaintanceship with the tenets of Islam was obviously faint but who were just looking for any excuse to make trouble. Let me say this, however: If we grant the right of the chains and others to suppress Mr. Rushdie’s book in the face of threats, is it right that their pusillanimity, no matter how justified, should be rewarded with extra profits? Without the Ayatollah, who for all I know may be an ad hoc assignment to Viking’s publicity staff, Satanic might have done 50,000 copies. Instead, it’ll probably do four times that, even more if Viking can find a way to efficiently suppress word-of-mouth on the book once it begins to be read.
The chains and others are therefore getting a windfall from a book they ran from, which is money they don’t deserve. Let me therefore propose that Walden and the rest set aside a substantial percentage of these excess unwarranted profits and contribute them to my pal Mary Elizabeth Smith’s Volunteers for Literacy.
MARCH 13, 1989 BY SHERE HITE
THE OBSERVER POLL: Does Getting AIDS Virus Worry Most New Yorkers?
BY NOW WE HAVE ALL HEARD OF AIDS, THE GREAT MENACE “OUT there” somewhere, ever present. But when faced with a rubber condom and the Actual Situation, many New Yorkers, it turns out, sheepishly turn away and hope that “just this time” they won’t get it.
The New York Observer Poll asked a random sample of adults in New York City how concerned they are that they could eventually get AIDS and what measures they are or are not taking to prevent that from happening. Only 28 percent said they are “at all worried” that they someday might contract AIDS.
As one young woman in the poll explained in a follow-up interview: “When I first met him, I was head over heels in love, just crazy about him. I was dying to go to bed with him. But in the back of my mind, there was always this looming question I knew I would have to face at some point: Was he going to offer to use a condom? Would he turn off if I said something? Would I ruin the moment? Definitely!…So I admit it, I didn’t stop him. I didn’t say, How can we be sure? Where’s your condom? And neither did he….”
APRIL 24, 1989 BY LOU CHAPMAN
AT THE NEW YORKER, THE NEWHOUSE ERA BRINGS A NEW LOOK
DANIEL MENAKER, AN EDITOR AND WRITER FOR The New Yorker, tells a story from 1970, when he was working as a freshman fact-checker for the venerable magazine that has been fertile soil for writers ranging from Lillian Ross to James Thurber to Jay McInerney.
A decision had been made, Mr. Menaker recalled in a recent interview, to create a larger, more complete table of contents to appear on the same page, in the same format, each week. At the time, the table of contents appeared wherever it fit within a section called Goings on About Town, in minuscule type and sketchy detail.
None of the Reader’s Business
Mr. Menaker remembers turning to an associate who had worked at the magazine much longer than he and mentioning that a more complete and readable table of contents was a good idea, that it would help the reader know what was in each issue. “She said to me, ‘It’s none of the reader’s business what’s in the magazine,’” Mr. Menaker said.
The anecdote typifies how, for many years, there existed among many at The New Yorker an aloof attitude toward the magazine’s audience. This accompanied an inviolate wall between the magazine’s editorial and business sides.
Today, after almost four years under the ownership of S.I. Newhouse and his family-controlled company, Advanced Publications Inc., and after 26 months under the editorship of Robert Gottlieb, former editor in chief and, later, president of Alfred A. Knopf Books (also owned by Advance Publications), the walls at The New Yorker seem at least to be shrinking a bit.
From Research to President
“There is still a separation of Church and State,” said Steven T. Florio, president and chief executive of The New Yorker Magazine Inc, brought in to run the publication when it was bought by Advance Publications for about $170 million in May 1985. “But I think the Church is rooting for the State, and the State is rooting for the Church.”
Mr. Florio is proud that the average age of The New Yorker reader under his leadership has fallen from 43 to 40—a trend that may result partly from tightly targeted, direct-mail marketing campaigns—and that readers’ average income has risen, from a reported $38,000 to $40,000.
He is pleased that Mr. Gottlieb, the magazine’s third editor in its 64-year history, is known for his fondness of kitsch; for his interest in modern culture as well as in the classical arts; for his desire to draw in young writers on popular culture while at the same time carrying a sensibility for the unique styles of respected New Yorker writers such as Brendan Gill, E.J. Kahn Jr., Andy Logan and Lawrence Weschler. Mr. Gottlieb in fact edited books by several New Yorker writers while he was editor in chief at Knopf.
Since Adv
ance bought The New Yorker, and since March 1987 when Mr. Gottlieb abruptly replaced 79-year old editor William Shawn in what was regarded by many staff members as a personal affront by Mr. Newhouse and Mr. Florio, things have indeed changed, particularly on the business side.
The Goings on About Town section has itself been revised to provide new batches of distinctly separated listings. The section has been spiffed up with caricatures and other artwork, reminiscent of the section in the 1930’s and 40’s.
Of more concern to some staff members and readers has been the addition to Goings on About Town of brief reports and recommendations. “It’s about choices now and opinions, not just listings,” Mr. Florio explained. “It’s saying, hey, we realize you people reading this may never have heard of Rosemary Clooney, but you really ought to go hear her.”
In those ways and others, The New Yorker has begun to adapt to the style and offbeat interests of its new editor. One recent profile, for example, was of Paul Shaffer, bandleader of the David Letterman talk show. A recent article in Talk of the Town was about a collector of plastic guitar picks. Still, there’s no confusing The New Yorker with Rolling Stone. Mr. Gottlieb’s New Yorker still publishes long pieces on such challenging subjects as Uruguayan politics and the Oxford University Press.
“It is eminently logical that Bob Gottlieb is going to bring in new writers, writers of his own standards and style,” said Mr. Kahn, a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1937 and author of the book About the New Yorker and Me. “But a piece on a collection of plastic guitar picks? I don’t know. Then you read it, and you find out that it wasn’t even the world’s best collection of plastic guitar picks. It was the second best collection. Mr. Shawn would never have approved of that.”
AUGUST 21, 1989 BY MICHAEL M. THOMAS
THE MIDAS WATCH: Steinberg Party: Start of Decline and Fall
THE PHONES STARTED RINGING FIRST THING MONDAY morning. Had I seen it? Well, of course I had. I’m up with the dawn, and by the time the first call came in, I’d not only read the Daily News’s Aug. 7 story of Saul Steinberg’s 50th birthday celebration, I’d had time to ponder what, if anything, it meant.
Not much is my guess. The reason’s simple: Out here on the East End of Long Island, nothing competes with real estate. Your typical black-tie dinner party conversation will go like this:
Man: “Six million two.”
Woman to his right: “I heard seven.”
Woman to his left, eavesdropping: “Absolutely not! My masseur says five million eight and not a penny more!”
Man across the table, shrugging: “More like, six four, six five, if you ask me.”
Anyway, we’re stuck with the Steinberg party as a Current Hot Topic. I have a feeling a lot of ink will be spilled on the “Late Roman-ness” of the shindig, and I must confess that I got down Juvenal and Petronius, figuring the latter, at least, might provide a fruitful comparison between Trimalchio and the pudgy green-mailer of 740 Park Avenue, but no soap. I’m therefore going to leave Gibbonian dialectic to others.
Facts Let’s start with facts. The party is supposed to have cost $1 million. (The guy on the adjacent stool here at the Candy Kitchen just looked at what I’ve written, put down his paper, gave me an all-time “you schmuck” look and muttered: “Eight hundred grand, meathead!”) There were 250 guests, all the usual suspects.
There were a couple of omissions. The Swine family appears to have been presented only by the cadet branch, the Prince himself being otherwise engaged. Where can that fellow have been? What is he up to these days? One hears all kinds of neat stories.
The big news was the “living art” that carried out the theme of the evening: “An Evening of 17th Century Old Masters in Celebration of Saul’s 50th Year.” Models were posed in simulation of great paintings, none of which the chubby Maecenas owns, beginning with (I understand) “the Arnolfini Wedding” by Jan Van Eyck, a painter active around 1430, but what’s a century or two among friends. Vermeer and Rubens were also among the emulees, but the lion’s share of post-party attention has gone to the nekkid girl who disposed herself after the fashion of Rembrandt’s Danae.
This picture, painted in 1636, was an interesting choice. For one thing, it hangs in the Hermitage in Leningrad, so I suppose it could be construed as a gesture toward Glasnost. Then, of course, the Danae myth teaches that the way to get the girl is to come on to her in a shower of gold coins, and I really don’t think I need say any more than that in this context.
Now, according to which society scribe you read, the Danae vitrine was at various points in the evening subject to attempted encroachment, at some point, by Time Warner supremo Steve Ross and later by Jim Wolfensohn. Press accounts are silent as to whether either of these gentlemen was thereafter taken by the ear by his lady wife and made to go home, after the fashion of a “Maggie and Jiggs” cartoon. I think we should be told.
Obviously, it was a spectacle. The people I’ve talked to invariably dwell on how it was done, and of course we’re living in a world where if something is well done, it doesn’t seem to matter what it is. Comparisons are advanced with the Besteigui party in Venice in the 50’s (although nothing can come up to the photos of gondolas full of catamites disembarking at the Palazzo Whateveritwas at that affair) and Truman Capote’s “Black and White Ball” 20 years ago.
Anyway, does it matter? Suppose a tidal wave had swept in and carried off the lot, would American capitalism be better off? Probably—but who’ll ever know?
What do I keep coming back to are a few lines from one of this century’s great masters of revels (I’m doing this from memory, so there may be a slip or two).
“I went to a mah-velous party with Noonoo and Nana and Nell; it was in the fresh air, and we came as we were, and stayed as we were—which was hell!”
If we deconstruct those last two lines of Noël Coward’s to read in terms of a stretch of time longer than the several hours of mere party duration, to encompass, say a lifetime…oh, hell, let me put it this way, by rephrasing Winston Churchill’s famous riposte to the homely woman who accused him of being a drunk: “Indeed I am, but tomorrow I will be sober, and you will still be Saul Steinberg.”
NOVEMBER 13, 1989 BY CHARLES V. BAGLI AND MICHAEL TOMASKY
Dinkins Wins, Will Govern a City Beset by Problems
NEW YORKERS HAVE BEEN ELECTING mayors since 1665, but not until Nov. 7, 1989, did they elect a black mayor.
Manhattan Borough President David N. Dinkins, an ex-Marine who came up through Harlem politics, emerged from a bitter fall campaign to defeat Rudolph Giuliani and win election as the city’s 106th mayor.
Shortly after the polls closed, Mr. Dinkins was declared the winner, based on exit polls, by all three major television network’s local stations.
Jubilant Atmosphere
Mr. Dinkins, who is 62, will take over on Jan. 1 from Edward I. Koch, the three-term incumbent who lost in the Democratic primary.
The atmosphere at the Dinkins campaign headquarters for the evening, the Sheraton Centre Hotel, was jubilant. In the Grand Ballroom, where large video screens where set up to bring the news to the 1,000-strong crowd, at 8:40 the band struck up “Take the A Train,” the Billy Strayhorn song that helped give identity to the mayor-elect’s home neighborhood. At Suite 2150, where Mr. Dinkins, his wife, Joyce, and close friends and supporters gathered, security was so tight that several elected officials were turned away.
Throughout the fall, experts almost unanimously predicted a Dinkins victory, which would make New York one of the last big cities in the country to elect an African-American as mayor. In a process that began in 1967 with the election of Carl B. Stokes in Cleveland and Richard G. Hatcher in Gary, Ind., African-American mayors now hold office in a host of large cities: Atlanta, Baltimore, Birmingham, Ala., Detroit, Hartford, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Washington.
Mayor-elect Dinkins’s elation at his historic victory was sure to be tempered by the daunting economic and budget problems h
e will face upon taking office in January. The job growth the city enjoyed for much of the 1980’s has come to a halt and the boom in development has slowed substantially. Mr. Koch recently was forced to submit a revised spending plan designed to close a budget shortfall estimated at $550 million. Next year, the gap is expected to widen. Little help can be expected from the Cuomo administration, which faces its own budget problems and last month instituted a 2 percent cut in spending by all state agencies to offset a projected $277 million shortfall in revenues.
“Six months from now, everyone will forget we elected the first African-American mayor,” said a prominent union leader who backed Mr. Dinkins. “The rocks will start flying. It will be arithmetically impossible to meet the expectations of the coalition that elected him. I think the best thing we can expect is a change in problem solving: trying to bring people together and work out a compromise. I’m just pointing out the problems. I think it will be great for the city.”
JANUARY 1, 1990 BY HILTON KRAMER
New Round of Controversy Hits the Whitney Museum
NOW THAT THE POWER STRUGGLE raging at the Whitney Musuem of American Art has become a public scandal and prospect is bright—brighter, anyway, than it has been in years—that Thomas Armstrong, the museum’s director, will at long last be sent packing, perhaps we can all begin to think seriously again about what the mission of this institution, the only one in New York specifically devoted to American art, ought to be and what it’ll take to set the museum on a proper course.
At this writing there is no guarantee, of course, that Mr. Armstrong’s directorship—which has been such an unmitigated disaster for the life of art in New York—will actually be terminated. But the signs are promising. Some of the less docile members of the museum’s board seem finally to have awakened to the true dimensions of the debacle over which Mr. Armstrong has so long presided.
The Kingdom of New York: Knights, Knaves, Billionaires, and Beauties in the City of Big Shots Page 5