The New York Observer editorializes today against its former editor, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, disagreeing with the notion that his ethical lapses in Hollywood are minor:

The star-struck bon vivant editor of Vanity Fair magazine, has crossed a line that no journalist can afford to cross, and few would dream of crossing. As has been recently reported, Mr. Carter has been taking money from the movie people his magazine covers in its pages—thereby severing the relationship of trust that any reputable magazine or newspaper must keep with its readers. The moment Mr. Carter accepted a $100,000 payment from Universal Pictures—money he received in return for suggesting that the book A Beautiful Mind be made into a movie—Vanity Fair as an institution threw in the towel on its claims to journalistic ethics.

The writer of the paper's "Off the Record" column, however, was less than wowed by the Carter revelations that ran Friday in the L.A. Times and NYT. The column says the LAT is "still aggressively chasing leads" but speculates that Carter will elude the hits.

Last Friday’s twin accounts of Mr. Carter’s $100,000 deal, which included confirmation from Condé Nast, read more like the product of a rush to get a solid fact into the paper than as finished indictments...the quasi-exposés hardly gave incentive for future whistle-blowers. Why join the infantry charge if the leaders are carrying small-caliber weapons?

Condé Nast was, and remains, unfazed...Celebrities, it turns out, are as adaptable as staphylococci: The more shaming they take, the more shameless they can become. The larger-than-life Mr. Carter has survived being called a hack and a buffoon. Perhaps he can survive being called a crook.

* Add film critic Henry Sheehan to the list of those who feel, yes, it is a big deal if the editor of Vanity Fair took $100,000 from Hollywood for doing nothing. Sheehan: "Of all the untrustworthy attitudes (cool, fashionable, radical, etc.), that one can affect, the most self-destructive and false is cynicism...One can’t trust a businessman who raids the larder to pay off an editor and one can’t trust an editor who accepts, or requests, the money." (And there's a nice mention there of L.A. Observed as well.)

Also in the Observer: Los Angeles writer Marc Weingarten reviews How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, by David Bornstein.