Bribe Me

(72) Bribe Me

Okay, celebs, it’s time to ante up.

You want to keep your name out of this blog? Fork over some moolah. You want favorable mention in this blog? Well, let’s discuss it at dinner at the Four Seasons. (Oops, a commercial mention that wasn’t paid for.)

Thanks to the colleagues at the New York Post it’s now perfectly okay to ask for money, sex, drugs, rock and roll or whatever from whomever you write about.

Thing is, the kind of people who read the post don’t generally differentiate among the three types of fiction in each edition.

First, there’s the fictional news. Then, there’s the fictional opinion. Then there’s Page Six (which never does show up on page six.) Who can tell the difference? IS there a difference.

We shouldn’t be that surprised that in the fictional world of celebrity gossip, items of real value are exchanged. It’s as old as cave wall writings.

Back in the stone age, cave-person Arg got an extra measure of mammoth for dinner when he sidled up to fellow caver Bork, and said he was about to break a very bad story by writing it on the wall. Bork forked over the mammoth.

What do you suppose was behind the wall posters in China?

Do you think those pretty show-biz women would have banged that ugly toad Walter Winchell because they thought he was SEXY?

One of the great lost artists of the gossip world was Jay Nelson Tuck. He, too, wrote for the New York Post… back when it was a liberal rag. Before (or was it after) that, he was an editor of “Confidential” magazine.

But Tuck had a dirty little secret. He was a real reporter, once. Won the George Polk Award in 1951. He was a leader of the Newspaper Guild Union, and led a strike at the World-Telegram And Sun which always was a classier act than the Post.

Tuck died in 1985, and never said much about where his career had gone. He was 69. But he was a pioneer. The Post should establish a Jay Nelson Tuck Award.

So, let’s hear it for Capital Journalism. Note to potential bribers:

The martini should be dry, made with Smirnoff (plug). The steak should be medium rare and don’t keep this table waiting.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2006 WJR