New Yorker? Snobbish? Oh, Wow, Imagine That
Roseanne’s stint as guest “editor” of the prestigious New Yorker caused two staff writers quit in protest.
Turns out they didn’t need to. A New Yorker spokeswoman insists that editor Tina Brown, as usual, made the all the editorial decisions for the magazine’s 200-page “Women’s Issue.”
Wrote New Yorker staffer James Wolcott, “Roseanne.. (was) an editor in her ability to pluck one good idea out of a pile of so-so ones and connect it to larger shifts in society.”
To those critics who claimed Roseanne’s involvement mean that the “semicolons our forefathers had died for were being sacrificed in a bonfire of cheap celebrity,” Wolcott wrote. “The resistance to Roseanne is often a sort of rhetorical class warfare carried on under the guise of Good Taste. It’s the last refuge of a snob.”
Loose talk
Adam Sandler on celebrity appetites (from the Miami Herald): “The most food I’ve ever seen (eaten) in my life was one night I went out with (Chris) Farley, (Dan) Aykroyd, John Goodman and George Wendt. They had big steaks, shrimp, and they were enjoying life. I felt like such a goofball eating my little chicken.”
Turns out, she’s just entering her golden years
Rue McClanahan turns 62 today.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane… no, it’s a preppie
Sure, Dean Cain, who plays Superman on “Lois & Clark,” is a big television star. But unlike many of his peers, he got there by way of school. “Going to Princeton has benefited me because I can write,” Cain told Entertainment Weekly. “And (that) really, really, really makes my career different from most actors’.”
They settled for Lahr because Joan Collins wasn’t available
Contradicting the in-house view of Roseanne’s contribution (see above item), the Village Voice claims that the first article contributed by the visiting editor, in a word, “sucked.” Staff writer John Lahr rewrote it, the Voice reports, although the TV star was given sole credit.
At this rate, he could outdo Liz Taylor by his 35th birthday
The quote: “I couldn’t breathe. I had to come up for air.” The speaker: Charlie Sheen. The occasion: Sheen, 30, was announcing the breakup of his six-month marriage to model Donna Peele, whom he had known for a full six weeks before they tied the knot.
Also, maybe because daddy Aaron Spelling gave him a job
In her TV Guide cover story, “Beverly Hills 90210” star Tori (gag-us-with-a-silver-spoon) Spelling claims nothing is happening between her and “Melrose Place” actor Patrick Muldoon. “He’s like my brother,” she says. “People ask me, ‘Then why did you take him to the Emmys?’ And I told them, ‘Because he looks hot in a tux.”’
I say, Jeeves, have you seen our crown?
Apparently, those fun folk the Windsors - Queen Elizabeth II and her brood, Princes Charles, Andrew, Edward and Princess Anne - may soon be just fond royal memories. The Independent, a London weekly newspaper, reports that 43 percent of those who took part in a poll believe the British monarchy will disappear within 50 years.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Dan Webster