Stephanie Miller, on her often-amusing radio show, has a segment or maybe just often mentions stories of the Right eating their own. One good example is Mitt Romney firing Larry Craig as head of his Idaho campaign team after the bathroom sex scandal.
I thought of this eating of their own when I saw the latest news on our old colleague Judith Regan. It seems she's suing HarperCollins, her former employer, and parent company News Corporation, owned by Rupert Murdoch, for a cool $100 million. I just assume this woman doesn't get out of bed to slap her assistant and order a few mimosas for any less than $10 million, right?
Now the case itself is about her relationship with Bernard Kerik while she published him - she may have done some more personal editing, it seems. Honestly, this woman turns more into a Dynasty character by the second!
But regardless of the details, one can't help but view this story through the lens of her love of sensationalism and media coverage, and I think that's just fine. It'll give the fatcat media lawyers at HC something to do. Ultimately, HarperCollins could just cut her a check for $50 million and tell her to buy herself something pretty - and no one will be the worse for it. It's just too difficult to be concerned with Murdoch and co.
Maybe I'm just bitter because I recently lost an author to HarperCollins, but then what editor hasn't? One sometimes feels, with all their divisions, that they're just sucking up good projects from all corners. And to be honest, I hope this media story begins and ends with this, because my interest is already waning... UNLESS there are stories of Regan and HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman getting into fights resulting in them both, fur shawls and all, toppling into the pool, a la Krystle Carrington and Alexis Colby. That'll keep me reading for at least one more article.
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