Do I put all the full disclosures in the lede?
I admit: I have in years past been approached to write “the definitive CJ piece.” CJ, Strib gossip columnist (although I gather she objects to that description), was for a time a competitor, in that we both feasted the flame-outs of Twin Cities media “celebrities” — and, obviously, I’m writing this for a publication other than the one that chose to profile her so lavishly and uncritically. Is that all? I’m not sure.
Anyway, here at the Lambert double-wide we observe strict gender protocol when it comes to life-style magazines. They arrive in the mail. I ignore them. My wife on the other hand, gathers them up, plops herself into her favorite chair, and happily leafs through them, ogling the ads for pricey hand-bags, chi-chi restaurants, $40 wine, boutique beauty salons, more upscale restaurants, and, oh yeah, the occasional story.
Every so often I get the alert from the front room. As in, “Oh my God, you have got to read THIS.”
So it was with Minnesota Monthly’s piece — now on the stands — titled, “The Power of One” (inside) and “Hot Gossip: Why CJ Is Swearing Off Sex” (on the cover). Heavens! What would the legacy doyennes of all things, Minnesota Public Radio, think of such salaciously exploitative hucksterism?! (MN Monthly is part of the MPR empire.)
By the time my lovely bride got through three of her summer crime novels, four catalogs, and the latest issues of rival Mpls./St.Paul Magazine, I had already received a handful of e-mails alerting me to the MN Monthly story.
I placed a call to the magazine’s new editor, Andrew Putz, but have yet to hear back. My curiosity focuses on whether, or how much, he ever considered the “definitive” angle on CJ, or Cheryl, as I still foolishly call her. (She objects to Cheryl, too.) When the idea of a CJ feature was brought up to me, primary points of interest were NOT focused on her begin single, black, female, or celibate. (Although, I gotta tell you, that part was news to me. Maybe too much news.) My angle was a lot wonkier, probably duller, and likely of little interest to lifestyle magazine gourmands.
What intrigued me has always been what seemed from a distance a very unique, special relationship she has been allowed to have with the canons of old school journalism as practiced so assiduously everywhere else at the Star Tribune. Who signed off on that? I had curiosity because of the stories that kept being retold in my direction over the years — stories of editors supposedly “terrified” of her and unwilling to apply the normal controls to the way she did her business, or rework her copy, or counsel her on interactions with the rest of the Strib staff.
What the reality of any of the complaints was, I am still not sure. But the stories are pervasive and fairly consistent. Beyond that — here comes the mewling critic part of this post — I always thought her column should be funnier. A lot funnier. I mean, screw the scolding shtick, girl. (Hell, screw the whole “Whitney Houston changed planes at MSP” shtick). Have a damned laugh occasionally at the expense of Twin Cities “celebrities,” of the media persuasion and otherwise.
In my much more limited (and constrained) experience, most of them can take it. Like Frank Vascellaro and Amelia Santaniello. Nice people. Fairly hip to the business. They can take a zinging on matters of more significance than Frank’s helmet hair. Is it really necessary to treat them like your philanthropic cousins?
It’s not like I, or those who had fleeting interest in me writing a piece about CJ, don’t understand the special role of a gossip columnist. MN Monthly’s story, written by Carol Ratelle Leach — who died suddenly before the story was published — seems accurate, and pleasantly written.
While at the Pioneer Press I often heard tell of research showing that CJ and Sid Hartman were regularly neck and neck for the best-read columns in the Strib. (I backed myself deeper and deeper into the PiPress managers’ dog house by suggesting that instead of constantly aping the grayest aspects of our much larger rival we ought to get our own gossip columnist. Sour stares. Bad idea. I should learn to keep my mouth shut.)
So why didn’t the people approaching me pull the trigger on the “definitive CJ story”? A lot of reasons, I suppose. But not the least of them was the obvious minefield of questioning whether or not a well-known minority woman had ever, in any way, abused her employers’ fear of being publicly charged with discrimination in the wake of behavior that would have gotten anyone else disciplined. You could never find out if any such thing had happened without asking, and asking was fraught with peril.
This is the point where I say I’ve always been amused by her, personally. She’s ALWAYS working a story, and always playing the role. I have enough trouble with the reality of a bungling dumbshit. Hell, she even put my kid in a column once. Now THAT was a slow celebrity news day. And I can appreciate that growing up black and female in Alabama, and then moving up here — and getting the racist crap phone calls and mail I don’t doubt for a second she gets — has certainly made her life path tougher than mine.
But I always thought there was a way to tell a more interesting, complex story of a woman like her surviving, especially now, in a time in the life of newspapers when, unions withstanding, it really is every man and woman for themselves.
At what point do you get a pass for playing the toughest, wiliest, “don’t f**k with me, or else” game you can to hold on to what you’ve got? Would I, or any of the other kicked-out, bought-out newspaper types, do any differently if we were in her situation? Don’t know. But I thought it was worth asking the questions.
Not that Cheryl … heh, heh, heh … would talk to me about it.
I had to laugh at this paragraph:
“Scaredy cat media people are endlessly entertaining,” CJ says. “I get a kick out of those who don’t want to return calls — but themselves count on people to return calls.”
I laugh because I’m still waiting for her to call me back from that week this Spring when it looked like the Star Tribune was going to trim back from four to two columnists. I think somebody was scared.
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