Jon Favreau, the "
hottie Word Guy for the Obama camp" is taking heat for groping a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton. So what?
Better than screwing your staff. The supercilious man who is a cardboard cutout himself and is now panting to be Obama's principal speechwriter, Time managing editor Rick Stengel, is an egomaniacal boomer much reviled by Time mag staffers for his mismanagement of the weekly. He has reamed many of the leading print correspondents by being his diffident self--characterized by a lack of vision that led to producing a lame imitation Economist that bores young readers. There seems to be no plan of direction for the magazine at this late point in the game. (Obama, you don't need this joker. He is past his sell-by date.)
Insiders are betting that , if the beancounters are willing to let Time magazine go on life-support and lose $$ for a few years before finding a new audience, the next editor is likely to be the coldblooded Brit, Mike Elliott. If the plan is to sell Time right away to the highest bidder, and allowed the publication to suffer a mercy-killing, the top post will go to a younger non-visionary such as Josh Tyrangiel, the guy who used to produce MTV news and who has taken the website into a tailspin. Or perhaps Romesh Ratnesar, a hardworking Sri Lankan whiz, should Josh chooses not to have the failure of the venerable title on his resume. Sigh
Meanwhile, there's a ripple of excitement about the prospects of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg running to fill Clinton's senate seat.
