gotta laugh

[realthog]

Regan Sues HarperCollins For $100M

 

reads the AP headline (http://www.wtov9.com/news/14590852/detail.html). Judith Regan, sacked ostensibly over the tasteless OJ Simpson book she'd commissioned, is suing her former employees, NewsCorp, claiming unfair dismissal: it seems her ousting had nothing to do with the OJ book, nor with the antisemitic remarks she's said to have made, but everything to do with the affair she'd had with Bernie Kerik. Apparently the bigwigs of NewsCorp are keen for Rudy "9/11" Giuliani to become US President, and recognize that the biggest fly in his ointment is the close relationship he's enjoyed over the years with Kerik. (Hang on. Yes, it's Giuliani I'm talking about here, not Regan. I got confused for a moment.) When the pouting ingenue (yep, Regan again) refused to lie to federal investigators about Kerik, her days at NewsCorp were numbered. After her canning, she was the victim of a NewsCorp smear campaign.

Enough innocent folks have been the victims of NewsCorp smear campaigns without the tiniest flutter of protest from NewsCorp employees like La Regan, happy enough to take the Murdoch shilling so long as she could, that I find it hard to feel sympathy for her on this latter count: hoisting, petards, that sort of thing. Otherwise, though, the lawsuit strikes me as infinitely cheering news: true, there'll be a bit of sadness whoever wins, but at the same time there'll be a cause for rejoicing whoever loses.

And, who knows, perhaps there really has been some pro-Kerik, pro-Giuliani skullduggery at NewsCorp? I'm rubbing my hands with anticipation on this one ...

The complete complaint she's filed is available as a PDF at http://www.portfolio.com/images/site/editorial/pdf/regancomplaint.pdf. It makes quite surprisingly funny browsing.

Comments

[realthog.livejournal.com]

As for me, I "might have felt better-inclined towards her" if she weren't Judith Regan.

As I said on a blog elsewhere at the time she was fired, it seemed pretty obvious that she'd been badly treated by her employers, but at the same time it was next to impossible to sympathize because of her track record of publishing truly vile, exploitative, often dishonest books. The OJ Simpson excrescence was only one of many.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I would use the word `sympathy....' I don't know Judith Regan and I'm not familiar with her portfolio (although I'm told The Rock's biography is pretty good) It's certainly...er...varied. The OJ book seemed to me less vile and exploitative than flat-out insane. If you've been acquitted of murder you don't then go on to write a book about `if' you'd done it. Whether you did it or not. It just seemed too stupid a thing to do to take seriously.

What this case does do is give us a window into the world of high-stakes, high-pressure publishing - a bunch of mostly unpleasant, power-mad people screwing each other over for their share of a buck. It's not really a very edifying sight.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"It's not really a very edifying sight."

That it ain't. It seems a highly depressing deterioration from the days when (insert senile wheeze here) I was a full-time publisher, when the idea was that you could make probably no more than a comfortable living but that was OK: life was a hell of a lot of fun because the books you were publishing were (or at least you thought so) good. Now the aim seems instead to be to make yourself untold millions publishing books that are crap.

There are still quite a few of the old-fashioned editors swimming around in the publishing pond, but their numbers are steadily dropping as they're swallowed by the Reganesque sharks.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

There'a as long and very good opinion article on the subject by the New York Times's Frank Rich at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/opinion/18rich.html?th&emc=th.