SHARDS OF PERSONALITY

Credit: NYTs

Secrets Of J.D. Salinger, Literary Man Of Mystery, Betrayed By His Own Words

By Elizabeth C.

FOR A WRITER WHO SPENT HIS LAST DECADES ALIVE ESCHEWING THE FAME HIS LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT BROUGHT HIM, J.D. Salinger’s private world continues to be violated by his own words.

The notoriously private Salinger, creator of the teenage protagonist Holden Caulfield, recoiled from the public eye after his novel Catcher In the Rye became a perennial bestseller. Despite retreating from the publishing world and refusing to publishing his later works, Salinger continued to be vexed by attention, including books written by both his daughter Marjorie Caulfield and his-once teenaged lover, Joyce Maynard. He died in 2010 at the age of 91.

The latest unmasking comes through nine letters Salinger author wrote to a fan who struck up a correspondence after reading his short stories. Between 1941 and 1943, his pen pal was Marjorie Sheard of Toronto, who claimed she was an aspiring writer. Now 95 and with the cost of her care increasing, her family decided to sell the private letters to The Morgan Library & Museum, which shared them with the New York Times.

INTERNECINE WARFARE

Credit: Bobby Doherty/NYTs

Report: NBC Plot To Fire Ann Curry Dubbed ‘Operation Bambi’

By Elizabeth C.

A NEW BOOK BY a New York Times media reporter reveals that the plot to ax Ann Curry from the TODAY show was dubbed ‘Operation Bambi’ by the show’s top executives.

Times reporter Brian Stelter’s first book on the morning TV wars, Top Of The Morning, is expected to exacerbate NBC’s hangover after the botched dismissal of Curry, reportedly tossed as TODAY show cohost due in part to the diabolical machinations of Matt Lauer.

Lauer, according to multiple published sources, “simply didn’t like” Curry.

LEADING A CLOSED CIRCLE

Sheryl Sandberg Is Selling Herself — With Help From Her Powerful Friends

By Elizabeth C.

FACEBOOK’S SHERYL SANDBERG LIVES INSIDE A DEWY RAINBOW BUBBLE. With two degrees from Harvard, a 9,000-square-foot home and an estimated worth of $2.7 billion, she’s decided that if only working women were more like her, if they just “leaned in more,” they too could become mothers, mentors and wealthy COOs — all at the same time.

That’s the message she delivers in her new book, Lean In which so far has received a de facto endorsement by The New York Times (whose editor has also contributed an essay to Sandberg’s website), a launch party by renown sexist billionaire New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and “sponsorships” from Sony, Google, Johnson & Johnson and American Express. Time‘s put her on this week’s cover. And Cosmopolitan magazine plans a 40-page supplement in its April issue touting Ms. Sandberg’s ideas.

TICKING TIME BOMB?

Conflicting Reports & Shooter Descriptions Make Crime Hard To Fathom

By Elizabeth C.

THERE’S BEEN NOTHING MATTER-OF-FACT ABOUT THE REPORTING ON 26 VICTIMS GUNNED DOWN AT A CONNECTICUT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL FRIDAY, the second worst school shooting in U.S. history.

At first, the name of the shooter was misreported most of Friday. Then there were claims that the shooter’s father was found dead inside a New Jersey house. And even late tonight, there are conflicting reports about whether Adam Lanza’s mother Nancy did or didn’t work at Sandy Hook Elementary School where her son opened fire on children as young as five.

The pieces of the puzzling portrait emerging about the 20-year-old boy who used his mothers’ guns to kill are just as ill-fitting.

WANTS HIS ‘PIECE OF THE PIE’

Credit: Robert Caplin for The New York Times

Shoeless, Homeless, Heartless? Is N.Y. Homeless Man Gifted With Sketchers A Scammer?

By Elizabeth C.

WELL, THIS IS BUBBLE-BUSTING: THE homeless man gifted with a pair of $75 Sketchers by a New York Policeman might be a con artist preying on tourists.

PAPER OF RECORD GOES LOW

SNL Spoofs NYT’s Review of Guy Fieri’s Restaurant, Falls Short Of Trolling Reviewer

By Elizabeth C.

WITH PROFITS DOWN A JAWDROPPING 85 PERCENT, THE HISTORICALLY HAUGHTY NEW YORK TIMES is now taking a different tact to attract readers: trolling. How else to explain restaurant critic Pete Wells’s gut-punching take-down of Guy Fieri’s new restaurant in Times Square.

In the week since being published, Peter Wells’ review has become legendary for its incendiary snideness. A taste:

PAINTED LADY

Credit: Vincent Yu/Associated Press

Picasso’s ‘Mistress’ Fetches $41.2 At Sotheby’s Auction

By Elizabeth C.

PABLO PICASSO “WAS THE UNDISPUTED STAR” OF SOTHEBY’S Impressionist and modern art auction held Thursday night in New York, the New York Times reports. Top billing went to the modern master’s Still Life With Tulips, shown above, a 1932 portrait of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter that fetched $41.5 million.

NOT THE SAME OLD SONG & DANCE

Songified Foreign Debate Proves ‘Gregory Brothers’ Will Rule Despite Who Wins Election

By Elizabeth C.

SNIFF SNIFF. (WIPES TEAR.)The MAINSTREAM CO-OPTION OF THE Gregory Brothers is complete.

Those hipster musicians who auto-tune the news have colluded with the New York Times in the release of its latest Songified event: the the foreign policy debate between Obama and Mittens.

THE BEGINNING OF THE BIG SELL

WTF: The Old Gray Lady Figuratively Lunches With “Reformed” Perez Hilton

By Elizabeth C.

WELL, SN’T THIS SPECIAL: PEREZ HILTON HAS GRADUATED FROM DOODLING DRIPPING CUM ON CELEBRITY SNAPSHOTS TO BEING PROFILED IN today’s New York Times. It’s worlds colliding: an old gray lady lunching with impertinent upstart.

But Wait! The Election is Just Getting Started…

WHEN I TURN IN TONIGHT AND SAY MY PRAYERS, along with asking for a break for Britney, I’ll beseech the heavens to make the outcome of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary a surprise. Not that I have a thing against the charismatic Democratic Illinois Senator Barack Obama or the Republican with the man-of-the-cloth manner, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. But I do resent the media’s penchant for reacting as though Iowa’s results are a fait accompli for the rest of the race, particularly for the Dems. Even the hard-to-impress Maureen Dowd of The New York Times has joined the Obama bandwagon, waxing romantically on Sunday about his caucus win: "The Obama revolution arrived not on little cat feet in the Iowa snow but like a balmy promise, an effortlessly leaping lion hungry for something different, propelled by a visceral desire among Americans to feel American again." Little cat feet? Balmy promise? A hungry leaping lion? Maureen, that’s downright mawkish for you.

Despite Dowd’s labeling Obama’s win a "revolution," if you read the same paper the previous day you would have been reminded that only one previous winner of the Iowa caucuses has ever gone on to win the presidency — George Bush in 2000. And the Times’ sister paper, the International Herald Tribune pointedly asks voters and the media for perspective. "Watching the campaign in cold, snowy and mostly empty Iowa, we were hoping…that this year’s Iowa-New Hampshire rush to judgment will be the last…Keeping this race alive so significant numbers of Americans in more populated states can participate would begin to make up for the ludicrous spectacle of the past year, which enriched the television networks and the political consultants (some $300 million already spent) far more than it enriched the political dialogue. We hope both parties will wake up and end the undemocratic system in which the choice of a new president rests far too heavily on nonbinding votes in January by voters who don’t necessarily represent the rest of the country." Crabby could not have said it better.

A year into this premature ejacu-lection, many voters still don’t know what’s inside the suit known as Mitt Romney; they yearn to see the robotic Hillary spill some crocodile tears, a la Oprah, as proof that she really is human; they want time to figure out if Huckabee is Bush-lite in a Barber Quintet’s outfit; they wait to see if the real McCain or the panderer will please stand up. On another note, I think it’s too bad for us all that Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich and Texas Republican Ron Paul weren’t allowed to debate on Fox Sunday night. Whoever said the revolution will not be televised was right. When it happens, we’ll all be watching reruns of The Simpsons..