London Calling

Just got back from a week in London to attend the wedding of our son’s first girlfriend last Friday. Not that he was holding a torch, mind you. Dan and Tash, after all, were just months shy of their third birthdays when their budding romance was laid asunder by none other than media magnate Rupert Murdoch. The tycoon shipped Tash’s family back to England so her dad could be a top editor on The Sun, a tabloid newspaper even more racy than The New York Post where he had toiled for Murdoch for 18 months. While Dan and Tash bonded, both sets of parents developed a now 35-year friendship. Dave and Gemma Banks lived around the corner from us on Parkview Court in White Plains. Indeed, the edges of our back yards touched. We met when our first borns were about 18 months old.

I’ve previously written about Dave (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/search?q=dave+banks) so this posting will be about our visit to my favorite foreign city, and not just because I can usually discern what the natives are saying.

I’ve been to London almost a dozen times, for business and pleasure. It is one of the most walkable cities, with each district providing a unique experience. This time we stayed in a hotel in Islington, a borough in the northeast quadrant of London. Islington is undergoing gentrification. Along its High Street (the term used for the major retail avenue of most communities), restaurants and shops abound, though they have to compete for space with real estate offices proffering apartments and homes that, given the usual small size of English residences, would make an observer gasp at the prices. Million, even multi-million, dollar homes were the norm.

Now that I no longer publish or edit a retail industry magazine, I am under no obligation to dart in and out of stores. Yet, England has been said to be a country of shopkeepers, so the pleasure of being served proved alluring. Service levels were extraordinary. In the major department stores of Selfridge’s, House of Frasier and the like, one had to walk through a phalanx of eager sales people, and not just on the ground floor. Even in small shops, like the Ben Sherman outlet in Islington, the two salesmen were engaging and friendly, commenting about the sad state of the NY Knicks but optimistic that Phil Jackson could turn the team around (I said they were engaging and friendly, not sports mavens). 

London traffic is worse than New York City’s. However, during our week-long stay we never observed a single double-parked car. 

Using public transportation to get around London is a pleasure. An Oyster Card allows unlimited hopping on and off the Underground and extensive bus network. Most convenient were digital signs at bus and train stops advising wait times for desired conveyances. Each Underground and bus stop was preceded by discernible public address messages that often included mentions of nearby tourist attractions. 

All seats on the London subway have armrests which struck me as a form of collective weight control. We didn’t see any obese people in London, especially not on the Underground. Maybe the weight-challenged know they would be restricted to seats just 24 inches or so wide. 

I did observe one interesting and perplexing advertisement in the first Underground ride we took. A picture of some businessmen horrified by the prospect of a terrorist attack advocated avoiding trouble by using a teleconference service for their next meeting. Not the most desirable commentary on the safety of London.

Perhaps as a carryover from the days of IRA bombings, I noticed most pubs had no trash bins in their bathrooms. No paper towels, just electronic dryers. 

One other strange pub occurrence. In the pub hosting the pre-wedding get-together for out of town guests the single TV screen featured a show on dogs. Now I know the British love their pooches, but I would have thought a soccer game or cricket match would have been the favored screen fare.

By the way, English beer is chilled, not cold, and not really carbonated, so you don’t fill up as quickly as in American bars.

Here’s another comparison between the Old and New Worlds—security personnel in London were numerous and for the most part seemed to be from the India-Pakistan subcontinent. We were embarrassed by how few American passport control agents handled our flight at JFK. What a poor show of efficiency to the hundreds of foreigners waiting to enter our country. Moreover, the mostly Hispanic agents talked Spanish among themselves. Gilda opined that it would seem to be a violation to speak in a language not understood by the public as the guards could be commenting about people in an inappropriate manner without their knowledge.

Finally, back to the reason for our trip to London. Unlike the outdoor weddings of our two children, nuptial ceremonies in England must be held indoors, with a roof overhead. Tash and Ali exchanged vows in the council chamber of Islington town hall. No religious readings are permitted in the ceremony, nor is the mother of the bride included in the procession. Dave, however, circumvented tradition as best he could. When asked who gives away the bride, he replied, “I do, as does her mother.”

Tash and Ali are a most adorable couple. Like her father, Tash is an accomplished journalist, recently promoted to a lead position for the science section of The Guardian’s Web site. Alister is a makeup artist chosen to be part of the two-man team to create the beast in Disney’s soon to be filmed Beauty and the Beast, to be played by Downton Abbey alumnus Dan Stevens (Matthew Crawley, Lady Mary’s husband). Born in Scotland, Alister wore a kilt. The last time I saw a groom dressed in a kilt was at Charlotte’s wedding to Trey MacDougal on Sex and the City. 

Celebrities, and Popes, Among Us

One of the things I miss most about not working in Manhattan is the serendipity of coming across a celebrity on the street. Or in the airport while traveling. I’ve written before about running into and saying hello to celebrities as diverse as Neil Simon, Steve Allen and Audrey Meadows, Alan King, Richard Lewis, Johnny Damon, Joe Torre, David Wells, and Gilda’s all time favorite encounter, Al Pacino. 

When she lived in Greenwich Village, Ellie kept up the mystique of running into notables. She once trailed Sarah Jessica Parker for blocks along the Hudson River promenade. The Village is a great place to see stars mingling with the masses. One time after dropping her off, I said hello to Jason Jones of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as he was pushing a baby stroller.

Meeting VIPs seems to run in the Forseter blood. My sister Lee has an avocation of selling jewelry and other knickknacks at flea markets around Los Angeles. Sunday she and her partner Sherry were at the Rose Bowl. Sherry had brought along some chocolates to entice buyers when Dustin Hoffman passed by with two friends. Though she was reluctant to push the chocolates on him, she screwed up her courage later in the day when he returned as they were packing up. He not only took the tasty treat but he also posed for not one but two pictures. 

Lee said, “He was soooo recognizable.” I agree. About 10 years ago I crossed paths with him on East 57th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. He was walking rather briskly so there wasn’t time to even say a quick “hello, I like your work.” I don’t think he’d remember me. I always knew he was short and from our encounter, and now his picture with my 5’5” sister really confirmed it.

Now that the pope is retiring, is Queen Elizabeth II’s voluntary departure from the throne in the cards? Gilda doesn’t think so. I’m not that sure. We’ll see who’s more prophetic.

As startling as the headline about Pope Benedict XVI retiring was, it was hardly as eye-popping as the one a regional British newspaper ran about 40 years ago. In large letters it blared, “Pope Weds.”

It was all a scam by my friend Dave Banks, then an editor on the small paper, and his buddies, a prank they wanted to play on one of their colleagues in charge of newspaper distribution. They had all had a rather liquid dinner. After returning to their work stations, the editors created a fake broadsheet to wrap bundled newspapers trucked to newstands across the country. 

They thought their friend in the distribution area would get a chuckle from seeing the fake headline, but he was too tanked from dinner and fell asleep. By the time he woke up the papers had been shipped with the provocative headline. They scurried to contact all the drivers to retrieve all the broadsheets. As the pope’s marital status has never been in question, they must have been successful.

Murdoch Most Vile

Let’s put my biases out front right away—I’m not a fan of Rupert Murdoch. If the investigations of Hacker-gate on both sides of the Atlantic bring down his media empire, I would not shed a tear.

My antipathy toward Murdoch is both professional and personal. It precedes his creation of the vile news outlet known as Fox News (can we really call it a legitimate news outlet?). It began with his 1976 purchase of the NY Post.

I grew up reading The Post. In the 1950s and 1960s, The Post was an afternoon tabloid, liberal and progressive in editorial slant, yet a sensational police- and fire-chasing paper. My parents would buy The Post on their way home from their factory in Manhattan, usually stopping at a newsstand on the southbound side of Flatbush Avenue just before Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn.

At first I’d devour the comics—Nancy, Mutt & Jeff, Dennis the Menace. As I grew older I matriculated to the sports pages where Maury Allen, Vic Ziegel, Milton Gross, Paul Zimmerman and Leonard Schecter romanced my interests in baseball, football and the occasional boxing story centered around Floyd Patterson or Sugar Ray Robinson. Next I delved into the social columnists: Leonard Lyons, Earl Wilson, Sidney Skolsky. Finally, with more maturity, I absorbed the political mavens: James Wechsler, Max Lerner, Mary McGrory, Art Buchwald, William Buckley, Drew Pearson, Jack Anderson, Murray Kempton, and a newcomer, Pete Hamill, hired to counter Jimmy Breslin’s man-of-the-street prose in The Daily News. It was a column by Wechsler, a review of a revival of the play The Front Page, that triggered my interest in being a reporter.

When Dorothy Schiff sold The Post to Murdoch, I was crushed by the changes he wrought. I stopped reading as the paper became more sensational in its reportage and more conservative in its editorial leaning. Even after Dave Banks became my best friend back in 1979, I continued to boycott The Post. Dave, you see, was one of Murdoch’s British imports. He succeeded in helping spice up The Post, but then Murdoch dealt me and Gilda, who had befriended Dave’s wife, Gemma, a fateful blow.

Casually asking Dave if he missed his family back in England, Murdoch became wary he’d lose him to a rival back home when Dave replied in the affirmative. So he shipped the Bankses back to merry ol’ England, Dave to work on The Sun, leaving Gilda and me far from merry. He later sent Dave, Gemma and their children Tasha and Tim, to Australia for seven years, giving Dave the ability to say he worked for Murdoch on three continents and making him one of the most sought after commentators in Britain on the trials and tribulations of the News Corp. publishing empire, its chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, and the assorted so-called journalists who have befouled the pact that should exist between news organizations and the public. Indeed, during our recent vacation together in Israel, though he’s semi-retired, Dave’s Blackberry beeped continually with requests for interviews, a few of which he granted to BBC Radio.

Naturally we talked about Hacker-gate. No one loves a scoop more than Dave, or an article that tweaks the high and mighty, be they politicos, royals, or celebrities. But violating a person’s privacy, when not in the national interest, as seems to have repeatedly happened at Murdoch’s News of the World and possibly other properties under his domain, was activity beyond the pale, Dave asserted.

For several days in Israel the four of us discussed the similarities between Watergate and Hacker-gate, Gilda noting both scandals came to light with seemingly small incidents, a sort of rabbit hole that widened into an elaborate warren of nefarious and illegal activity.

Follow the money.

Just as Deep Throat exhorted Bob Woodward and his colleague Carl Bernstein to pursue the money trail in their Watergate investigation nearly 40 years ago, money is a key, in my mind.

Reporters and editors of the News of the World tapped into the cell phones of thousands of public and private individuals in a frantic chase for scoops in the cutthroat media circus of Great Britain. The News of the World reportedly paid a private investigator as much as 100,000 pounds sterling a year to hack phones. The editor of the paper during part of that time, Rebekah Brooks, claims she did not know about the hacking.

My question is, who approved the expense accounts authorizing payments for the hacking? When the first bill was submitted, didn’t anyone question what it was for? Assuming a lower level editor signed off on it, didn’t senior management, including Brooks and the paper’s controller and auditor, question how and why £100,000 was spent? What, they might have asked, did we get for our £100,000?

It is inconceivable they did not know. It is intolerable they condoned this breach of journalistic ethics. Brooks has resigned as head of Murdoch’s publishing interests; she was arrested today.

As is so often the case in today’s media world, a scoop of cash is the only way to get a scoop of news. But, as Dave pointed out to us, his reporting background instilled in him an understanding of journalism principles lacking in many of today’s media elite. Too often, he believes, chief editors of British papers have been named whose only pedigree has been experience on the entertainment beat. These young editors cared more about packaging than content, about splashy headlines than accuracy, about beating the competition than integrity.

Several of the principal characters in the Hacker-gate scandal are entertainment and public relations firm alumni, including Brooks, current British prime minister David Cameron and his former press aide, Andrew Coulson. Coulson. Sounds a lot like Charles “Chuck” Colson, the convicted Watergate conspirator who counseled Richard Nixon. Let’s not forget that among Nixon’s key advisors were chief of staff H.R. Haldeman and press secretary Ron Ziegler, both former advertising executives. Ah, the Watergate links abound.

I haven’t even touched on Fox News as a reason to put a lid on the poison Murdoch has spread throughout journalism and politics in America and Great Britain. Let’s save that for another day.

My Night at Elaine's

Did you see the nostalgic article on Elaine’s in last Sunday’s Style section of the NY Times? (OK, so I’m a little behind in my reading. Besides, I’ve had other topics to write about in the interim.) Here’s the link in case you missed it: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/fashion/12elaines.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=elaine%20kaufman&st=cse

I’ll admit to a certain envy of those journalistic brothers who frequented the power den restaurant and watering hole on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. But as a commuter and family man, I wasn’t going to abandon Gilda, Dan and Ellie for associations of questionable benefit. Besides, I never was a heavy drinker, and from all I’ve heard and read about the gang that hung out at Elaine’s, that was a strong prerequisite for membership.

It wasn’t until about five years ago that I finally swung through the doors of Elaine’s with Gilda in the company of our English friends Dave and Gemma Banks. Dave, you may recall from an earlier blog (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2009/12/larger-than-life-journalist_06.html) has been a force in British journalism for some 40 years. After Rupert Murdoch bought the NY Post, he imported several Brits to spice up the tabloid, of which Dave was a key player. We accompanied Dave as he met up with his successors at the Post, editor Col Allan and company (Dave also edited the NY Daily News; the day before we met with the then editor Martin Dunn at his downtown loft apartment prior to dining with him at Tribeca Grill).

Elaine herself came over to our table. Of course, she would, given the provenance of Col Allan. Though she didn’t know Gilda or me, Ms. Kaufman could not have been more welcoming. She had no airs. She showed more interest in our new faces than those of her regulars. In short (and she was short in physical stature), she was a perfect host, making us feel comfortable and important.

I’ve often wondered how my career might have been different had I been more of a drinker and schmoozer and not such a homebody. While a reporter in Connecticut, I didn’t hang out in bars with politicians, the police or firemen, filling up on beer and background stories. When I became a business to business editor, I rarely socialized with the captains of commerce my magazine covered. I still managed to have a successful career, but the question still lingers in my mind—what if....?