Don't invite 'em

Attention L.A. media party hosts -- in making your invite lists for the holidays, think twice about putting Slate's Mickey Kaus and the New York Times' Bernard Weinraub around the same batch of eggnog. A Kausfiles post yesterday called Weinraub "Hollywood's most conflicted hack" and said that letting Bernie write a piece on Jack Valenti was like assigning a reporter who is married to a baseball team owner profile the commissioner. Kaus is exorcised because Weinraub's wife is Amy Pascal, the head of Sony -- and because, well, he doesn't much like Weinraub's work.

I'm not saying Weinraub would write a bland, hack, just-shy-of-fawning piece on Valenti in order to please his wife. He did write a bland, hack, just-shy-of-fawning piece, but that's probably because it's the kind of piece he almost always writes these days. By that, I'm not saying that he's a behind-the-curve embarrassment to the Times, snickered at by other reporters, who habitually either misses the story or gets it after everyone else is sick of talking about it. ...Oh, allright, that is what I'm saying.

The real story, says Kaus, is that the studios heads are unhappy with Valenti.