Bill Keller vs. Arianna Huffington
In a March New York Times Magazine column, outgoing New York Times
Executive Editor Bill Keller took on media pirates, singling out
"queen of aggregation" Arianna Huffington, "who has discovered that
if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from
unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array
them on your website and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of
people will come." Huffington called Keller's column "as lame as it
is laughable" while pointing out that "The Huffington Post and AOL
News have over 70% more unique visitors than the New York Times,"
in a post ghost-written by an unpaid celebrity kitten ... or
something like that .
MSNBC vs. Keith Olbermann
In January, midway through his four-year, $30 million contract,
Keith Olbermann declared, in a Friday evening broadcast of his
"Countdown" show on MSNBC, that he'd just been told that "This will
be the last edition of your show." Rumor has it new MSNBC owner
Kabletown told Jack Donaghy that Olbermann had to go, but we're not
entirely sure because Liz Lemon hasn't returned our phone calls
since she went on maternity leave.
"Glee" Auteur vs. Kings of Leon
"Glee" creator Ryan Murphy did not like that Kings of Leon declined
to give his show permission to use their music. "Fuck you, Kings of
Leon," he told The Hollywood Reporter last winter, suggesting that
the alt-rock band was somehow depriving the (prototypical?)
"7-year-old kid" of music education. To which KOL drummer Nathan
Followill tweeted, "Dear Ryan Murphy, let it go. See a therapist,
get a manicure, buy a new bra ..."
Donald Trump vs. The Media
In a March letter to the editor of The New York Times, Donald Trump
said of columnist Gail Collins, "Her story-telling ability and word
usage is not at a very high level." He also declared Vanity Fair's
Juli Weiner to be a "bad writer!" And in the fall he called Jon
Stewart a racist for making fun of Herman Cain. Then that thing
crawled off Trump's head, bit Stewart in the face, peed on Weiner's
lawn and tried to mate with Collins' cat before Animal Control was
called.