Sheep in Wolff's clothing : ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2004/02/01 > Sheep in Wolff's clothing

Sheep in Wolff's clothing
Sunday, February 01, 2004
Autumn of the Moguls
My Misadventures with the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media
By Michael Wolff Flamingo, €14.20
Reviewed by Jonathan O'BrienThis book, a whistle-stop account of the recent trials and tribulations endured by America's biggest media conglomerates and the billionaire barons who run them, could have been something of a minor classic were it not for the annoying tendencies of its author to place himself squarely at the centre of the story.

Michael Wolff, the media commentator for New York magazine, reminds the reader of his insider status so many times that one wonders whether he's trying to convince us or himself about his place in the scheme of things.

"If you knew enough people, were known to enough people, then you were part of the whole," he writes with no apparent irony.

"If you're on the minds of the majority of planners of the guest list, then, with some predictability and inevitability, you become a guest."

Autumn of the Moguls would have been twice the book it is if Wolff had concentrated less on shoehorning this sort of self-aggrandising rubbish into the text, and more on actual analysis of the protagonists and occurrences.

He doesn't seem to be that interested in the nuts and bolts, however. "Paying attention to details is not cool," he writes.

At least the book gets its low point out of the way early. The awful opening chapters consist of a tortuously self-regarding account of an expensive meal Wolff has with two media journalists at Michael's, a prestigious NewYork restaurant.

As he endlessly extols the virtues of Michael's, its exclusivity, its staff and how good his table is, the setpiece is dragged out until it screams to the heavens for mercy.

Autumn of the Moguls' narrative arc hinges on the premise that Wolff will be interviewing Rupert Murdoch live via a satellite link at a business seminar. Anyone expecting a salvo of righteous censure to be lobbed at the NewsCorp chief, however, will be disappointed.

Wolff's awe of Murdoch verges on the embarrassing - at one point he's sitting next to the mogul at a party, and refrains from answering the call of nature in case someone takes his seat while he's gone. Later, he owns up to having a "semicrush" on Murdoch.

Barry Diller, the Hollywood entertainment king, gets similar treatment, with Wolff slavering over him as "the last action mogul".

Diller turns up in more than one cocktail-party anecdote where he seems to exist merely as a foil for Wolff's own wit.

For all its irritating sycophantic tics and deficiencies, Autumn of the Moguls nonetheless has several things going for it. For a start, it's too well written to be a complete turkey.

When he isn't kissing corporate posterior, Wolff is a clever and frequently amusing writer who displays little mercy to those he feels are deserving of his scorn.

The chapter on Tina Brown and her ill-fated Talk magazine is probably the best thing about the book, with Wolff turning his sights on a sitting duck of a target.

He sticks the boot in with undisguised relish, gleefully chronicling the backlash against Brown and her husband Harold Evans as their stock steadily plummets under the merciless gaze of their contemporaries.

"It was not hard to see that one of the key problems of Talk was Tina herself. In a logical enterprise and a rational universe, she would have been fired. Except that she was the only reason for the magazine's existence. Who would have wanted the magazine without her?"

Poor Tina and Harry aren't the only people who get it in the neck (Wolff's penchant for acerbic abuse is nearly as noticeable as his fondness for fawning flattery).

Roger Ailes, the former Nixon and Reagan footsoldier who runs the Fox News network, is de-scribed as "one of the great creepy figures of the age . . . gray and corpulent". Martha Stewart is "a money-grubbing, I-take-what-I-want scumbitch".

Meanwhile, formerVivendi chief executive Jean-Marie Messier (who "spoke a French person's idea of good English") is ridiculed at length. "If you don't know who the fool is in a room full of bankers and deal-makers and media bigs, it's you."

Despite its occasional pleasures, though, Autumn of the Moguls gives the reader a strong sense of a wannabe insider whose nose is pressed hard against the glass, with many of the points he makes taking a distinct back seat to the manner in which he wishes to make them. This book, therefore, has to go down as something of a missed opportunity.