There's nothing quite as purifying as purging your soul in an e-mail.
It certainly must have been quite a psychic exorcism for Robert Hughes,
Time magazine’s legendary art critic, to excoriate the former head
of Time-Warner, Gerald Levin.
“How can I convey to you the disgust which your name awakens
in me?” begins Hughes to Levin. “The merger with Warner
was a catastrophe. But the hitherto unimagined stupidity, the blind
arrogance of your deal with Case simply beggars description.
“How can you face yourself knowing how much history,
value and savings you have thrown away on your mad,
ignorant attempt to merge with a wretched dial-up ISP? . . .
“ I don’t know what advice you have to offer, but I have
some for you. Buy some rope, go out the back, find a tree
and hang yourself. If you had any honour you would.”
When Hughes isn't berating art that almost no one is looking at.
The best part of this little tantrum is that
the anectdote was revealed in a first-person,
lo-how-the-mighty-have-fallen column by
former Vanity Fair/New Yorker/Talk magazine editor Tina Brown.
What a crotch kick it must be for Brown to have
to genuflect to the Times for a little patch of newshole.