SALON

Tuesday, Nov 23, 2010 3:01 PM UTC

No. 18: Tina Brown

Newsweek's new editor just ran into someone impossibly fabulous at a dinner last month ...

By

Topics: War Room's Hack Thirty, War Room,

No. 18: Tina BrownTina Brown

While it’s obviously fun to focus on Tina Brown the larger-than-life media character — launcher of overhyped money-losing media properties, employer of close friends, big-spending fleecer of publishers, clueless throwback with no clue how the Internet works — her output as an author and pundit is bad enough without getting into her plans to cannibalize Newsweek, her latest editorial toy.

Because Tina the columnist is the one who writes things like “Why America Needed Chelsea’s Wedding” (it was “a happy throwback to the carefree 1990s,” natch). A paragraph begins: “When I saw Bill Clinton at a dinner a month or two ago …” While her comically shallow columns on actual current events resemble real editorials, they tend to lack a point, besides reassuring the reader that Tina’s been keeping up with the news out of Wall Street and Washington.

Her book on Princess Di was really a book about Tina. Her never-to-be-finished book on Hillary was probably shaping up the same way. (It really killed that book’s dramatic arc when Hillary didn’t actually become president.)

And she’s the one who publishes Meghan McCain’s self-absorbed ramblings, which is enough reason to make the list.

Repeat offenses: Inability to escape the ’90s, conviction that people care about the royals, name-dropping, self-parody.
Representative quote:

Excoriating Fergie has been a British national sport for years. But I’ve always found her a sympathetic figure, with her mad bulging blue eyes and appalling taste in men, business partners, and just about everything. She’s generous and instinctively friendly, and you had to admire the way she ate the indignity of having to become an “ambassador” for Weight Watchers to pay the bills. When she comes to town, we usually meet in a fancy hotel suite where she tells me with absolute self-confidence about some preposterous new plan for a TV talk show or a “franchise deal” or a “soon to be announced” Hollywood contract.

Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 19 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

We're listing the worst columnists and cable news commentators America has to offer. Think of this as our all-star team -- of the most predictable, dishonest and just plain stupid pundits in the media.

1. Richard Cohen
2. Mark Halperin
3. Thomas Friedman
4. David Broder
5.

Marty Peretz
6. Marc Thiessen
7. Jonah Goldberg
8. Maureen Dowd
9. Laura Ingraham
10. Peggy Noonan
11. George Will
12. John Fund
13. Roger Simon
14. David Ignatius
15. Mort Zuckerman
16. Michael Barone
17. Bill Kristol
18. Tina Brown
19. Joe Klein
20. Howard Fineman
21. S.E. Cupp
22. Tucker Carlson
23. Howard Kurtz
24. Dana Milbank
25. Mickey Kaus
26. Jeffrey Goldberg
27. Pat Caddell
28. Andrew Malcolm
29. Matt Bai
30. David Brooks

Continue Reading

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations