Here’s a fun post-lunch hour exercise: Count the ways this sentence from today’s Daily News story about Judith Regan‘s possible last laugh at News Corp. is technically true yet still rather misleading!
“After attempting to publish O.J. Simpson’s memoir If I Did It, Regan was fired by HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman.”
Of course, the real meat of the story is the rumor that Regan taped phone calls and meetings with unnamed colleagues, and that said tapes “provide explosive evidence in her $20 million lawsuit.” That’s not as hard to believe as the fact that Rush & Malloy didn’t “jokingly” suggest that Regan must’ve gotten wiretapping tips from Bernie Kerik. (Actually, it’s somewhat interesting that the gossip columnists never question the legal status of these alleged tapes, merely passing along the observation that they could be “damning to more than a few Fox executives.”) Over at Gawker, Emily Gould marvels at Regan’s “pure Shiva energy“: “We were all idiots to think that this lady’s creative/destructive power could be quashed in any meaningful way for any meaningful length of time.” Well, those of you who did think she was down for the count, at any rate…