Arianna Huffington and Harry Shearer

Sorry, dear. Exclusives cost more. As was made cruelly apparent by the Times story on the increasing practice of publicists demanding concessions for handing over their celebrity clients for covers and exclusives. Concessions like being able to read profiles in advance, specifying photographers to do cover photos, and the like. I'd be more outraged about this if I hadn't just experienced the results of not being pushy. During the recent acrimony over The Simpsons salary renegotiations, a magazine reporter asked if I would speak to no other magazine. Actually, she was relaying this request from her editor, an old friend of mine. Well, friends do favors for friends, so I said yes. When the story ultimately ran, it described our action as a "holdup". That's what demi-celebrities get for not putting a gun to the heads of magazine editors. Incidentally, sports writers (not usually role models for other journalists) find it reasonable when coaches and players fret about lack of salary parity in their fields, but entertainment writers love to portray the talent as greedy. In both cases--sports careers and being on hit shows--we are talking about flukey circumstances that come about once in a lifetime, and we are talking about money that otherwise would flow to non-greedy characters like Rupert Murdoch.

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