The corporatist defaming and destruction of feminism could not be better embodied than in the personhood of Cathleen Punty Black: Cathie Black. (Woe to those who misspell her first name! One Hearstian I know was dismissed for repeatedly addressing Black in emails as "Dear CATHY.") Several months back, MIZZ Black was appointed New York City Schools Chancellor by Pimp of the Oligarchs Michael R. Bloomberg. This seemed to shock many of my fellow New Yorkers, for Black had zero experience with public education -- not as student, teacher, or administrator. She wound up requiring a waiver from the NYC Commissioner of Education in order to take office. In the face of a heartfelt and growing waiver-denial movement against her ("Black is wack!"), the waiver was issued. It made sense to me. After all, did not Bloomberg announce Black's appointment at the same time he announced his intention to use his illegal third-term as Mayor to destroy New York City's public school system? It made perfect sense.
And yesterday, my daughter's elementary school announced the termination of their free breakfast program. . .
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I began work at Hearst Magazines about a year before Black was named Magazine Division President. Clinton's New Economy had passed the company by, ad revenue was plummeting, Claeys Bahrenburg (Black's predecessor) -- in a brave attempt to hold off fanatical bottom-liners -- was caught imposing strange new formulas on how ad rates would be calculated (remarkably similar to what Clinton would do to "lower" announced national unemployment and poverty rates), and the decision was made to break what remained of Hearst's still classical approach to a dying medium. That one pre-Black year was a wonderful gift for me, a treasure. Randolph Hearst (the Founder's last surviving son) was still Chairman of the Board and the Family still retained real power. The Magazine Division was still a collection of competing duchies. Every editor-in-chief and publisher, however much at odds with each other, ran their turfs independently, so the titles looked and read and felt (and occasionally smelled) different: different paper stock, issue length, size, history, cover-design, traditions, revenue expectations, readership. The old wall between Church (editorial) and State (advertising) stood strong. And the company itself was like a college campus, housed in half-a-dozen buildings around 57th Street and Broadway. My favorite was 959 Eighth Avenue, the six-story Deco landmark intended to be forty-stories high when the Great Depression smothered that intention. Compared to other Deco remains across Manhattan, the outsides of 959 were nothing special, a drab sort of yellow granite with silly Romanesque statues at the front's four corners. But the insides of 959 had golden cages for elevators, the opal glimmer of marmoreal lobbies and discreet mahogany-lined walls in offices secured against the outside world by blinds, shutters, and heavy drapes.
The eight non-Family trustees decided to destroy all that. CEO Frank Bennack saw the anti-print wave coming: Bahrenburg was fired, Black brought in. (At the time, Black was President of USA Today, where she successfully changed a fun and poppy newspaper into a colorless advertiser-drenched comic sheet.) With Bennack's full support, she went to work right away. She organized a coup against the Chairmanship of the kind and gentle Randy Hearst. (Spreading nasty rumors about Mr. Hearst's wife Veronica's untoward influence over the "old man," to get him out.) Bennack became CEO and Chairman of the Board. Beginning with the honorable Ed Kosner at Esquire, all editors who resisted Black's blatant removal of the wall between editorial and advertising were dismissed one-by-one. (The last straw for Kosner was his refusal to bow to the Chrysler account in its threat to end all Hearst advertising if Kosner did not kill a sexually explicit short fiction piece about a gay couple. More than half of Esquire's editors resigned in protest of Kosner's firing. David Granger of GQ was brought over and Esquire as we knew it was dead.) (Granger would later stand up against Black for the cover-publication of a story by journalists Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss, about something called "Operation Tiger Force": a U.S. Vietnam death-squad which committed My Lai-level massacres on a weekly-basis. A story eventually published by the Toledo Blade and one that would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize. Dozens of advertisers threatened termination. Granger folded, but at gunpoint.) Same with the publishers. Valerie Salembier, Patricia Haegele, Jane Jamison, Susan Plagemann, Donna Kalajian -- the Black Hand as they were known -- Cathie's Girls from her days at USA Today and all enforcers of the new creed: nothing would be allowed in editorial which could possibly offend any actual (or potential) advertiser.
Within five years, everything changed. The magazines now all looked the same, had the same size, emphasized sleaze on every cover, embodied the cheapest paper quality. Gone was Redbook fiction, gone was Esquire's Dubious Achievements (it came back, in retarded form), the award-winning men's titles -- Sports Afield and Motor Boating and Sailing -- gone. So were the elegant and beautifully written Connoisseur and Victoria. And the little things: the magical Christmas party at Tavern on the Green, the midsummer night's party on Long Beach. And you know what? None of it worked. Cathie Black's Magazine Division was bleeding money. (The common joke was: She should change her name to Cathie Red.) Claes Bahrenburg's profits murdered Black's. Practically every title went on the block. There was serious talk of Hearst selling the division off to Disney. Then came the division's "savior": Oprah Winfrey. "O" the Magazine did save the division, from going bankrupt. Most Hearst titles now seem to take their cue from its treacly and self-important tone, the tone of its namesake. Funny thing is, Cathie Black fought against the acquisition of "O". Just as she fought against the virtualization of the magazines as we passed the Millennium. (When she left last year, Hearst web departments were smaller than they were in 1998.) She fought tool-and-nail for the creation of Tina Brown's idiotic (and very short-lived) Talk magazine, launching it with an East River yacht party costing more than the yearly operating expenses of most Hearst titles, combined. She lost brilliant Cosmo editor-in-chief Bonnie Fuller in a catfight. Lost the very gutsy Anne Fuchs as Fashion Group Publisher right after that. (Anne was the Ida Lupino of Hearst.) Refused to accept Anna Wintour as Harper's Bazaar EiC after the passing of Liz Tilberis, instead shoe-horning in the inexperienced Kate Betts, another short-lived disaster with Harper's losing most of its editorial staff in a mass resignation and almost half its advertisers.
Then came the Tower and the Book. In the same way that Richard Nixon could never get over his jealousy of Jack Kennedy (even after Kennedy's execution), small town girl Cathie Black could never get over her envy of Condé Nast Magazines. Condé began to have monthly EiC confabs at Le Cirque -- so did Hearst. Condé started to have seasonal junkets at places like Cancun, Harbour Island, and St. Thomas. Hearst too. (Black's rejection of Anna Wintour as Liz Tilberis's replacement was her version of Nixon backhanding Ted Kennedy's '71 deal on what would've been genuine national healthcare, instead of Obama's corporate sell-out.) In 2002 CN announced its decision to build the 48-story Condé Nast Building, just off Times Square. It would be the greenest building in New York City and would look like a thunderous electronic headache -- just the style to appeal to the ever-tasteless Ms. Black.
Her campaign began. Bennack would not sign on to a Hearst Tower, but he was retiring, and new CEO-to-be (though not for long as he would shockingly -- and mysteriously -- be fired only a few years in) Victor Ganzi liked the idea. Unlike her campaigning in the NY media press to be Frank Bennack's successor as CEO (and failing), and unlike her campaigning within Hearst for a Trusteeship whenever one of the Trustees-for-Life died (and failing) -- here she succeeded. The ground for the new Hearst Tower was broken by Ganzi in April 2003, and four years later we got this:
959 was gone. Since it was already a declared New York City landmark, Hearst had to pay-off quite a few Bloomberg bagmen to get over that precious difficulty. (Another waiver.) So Hearst agreed to redo the subway station below 959. And to retain the original six-story face. Which is like agreeing to throw away all of Robert Mitchum's career except for this:
(Go here for a sample of genuine insanity.)
A $15,000,000,000 Tower, with a $10,000,000 always-breaking-down waterfall in the lobby. As many NYers asked when Black was appointed Schools Chancellor: how was this possible? The Magazine Division had been in the red for almost a decade, with no turn-around in view (or likely). Hearst had been selling off newspapers for years. As well as radio and TV affiliates. Were the Entertainment / Cable properties that flush? Perhaps it was the real estate. Well, there it was (and is) -- all $15BN of it. A building with the odor of plastic cement, awash in the High-Technology of the Self-Flattered, looking like it will live for ten years; then crack in two. The perfect monument to Cathie Black's Hearst tenure.
Or maybe it's her book: Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life). (Really, that's the title.) As my old Hearst pal Marcia Jones would say: "It's beyond beyondo." Basic Black is basically illiterate (one would think a publishing president could hire better ghostwriters), and one of the most unintentionally funny books one could find. It can also be described as one of the most accurate autobiographies one can find, for it is a touchstone in social chi-chi, a book describing an author of undue ambition and impotent imagination, one invariably more interested in being part of an elite machination than in any creative act itself. The question (and answer) is there on every page: whether it is better to trust the individual who travels through desolations before passing sentence; or a poseur who has a good meal, a romp with her hired stud, a fine night of sleep, and a penalty of death in the morning for the culture. For an ex-Hearstian like myself, reading it was to be reminded of the constant sore in one's heart as the blood pumps through to be cleared of love.
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Cathie Black is now New York City Schools Chancellor. Since her appointment, this is what's happened to my daughter's P.S. 139:
-- Four 1st-grade classes (Saya's grade) reduced to three.
-- A dozen teachers fired, including my daughter's original 1st-grade teacher, someone she liked very much.
-- Many traditional school parties, dances, and festivals canceled.
-- Once-a-week school assemblies reduced to once-a-month.
-- The 6th-grade eliminated (with discussion of the elimination of the 5th-grade for next school year).
-- A reduction in the school lunch program, and an increase in cost.
-- A reduction of ESL instruction.
-- Elimination of after-school care.
-- Reduction of extended-day instruction for struggling students from five days per week to three.
And yesterday they cut the breakfast program. Cathie Black is more than just Schools Chancellor -- she is the face of 21st-Century Manhattan, a face Knowing and corrupt and ruthless, dead to all experience it does not already comprehend, closed to any face not near to its own, as selfish and stingy as it is ingrown, and squeezed together with the ferocity of the timid, with a glisten of stupidity in the gleam of the eye -- that particular stupidity which reflects all of moral damage, living in the dread of the undeserving. A face that takes food out of the mouths of children.
