Today is legendary gossip Liz Smith's last day at the New York Post, but before she leaves and clears her desk, she's taking one last (OK.. a few) jabs at everyone - from her bosses, to gossip sites like Perez Hilton, which she says she gives no "credence" to.
She gave the interview to former NY Daily News gossip Lloyd Grove, who was also fired.
She says her firing is "emasculating" and knew this day was coming, as soon as current Editor-in-chief Col Allan was hired eight years ago; they two never got along. She says "never sucked up" nor did she hang out with co-workers at Elaine's, a famous restaurant here in NYC frequent by everyone in media. "I knew I wasn’t their [NY Post] kind of person and so they’ve now proved that I’m not their kind of person."
She says she's "seen him [Allan] three times in my life".
Why do you think you and Col didn’t click?
I don’t really know. I had one little quarrel, just one disagreement with the photo editor who wanted me to kill an item and I said I wouldn’t. It was an item about Mariska Hargitay having a baby. She had called me herself to say she was pregnant, and for some reason, this guy didn’t want me to print it—he said it was his story. I didn’t quite know what that meant. I’d already written it into the column and it had gone, so I appealed to Col over his head and he wrote back that the photo editor had his confidence. I sure didn’t have it. Look, he has a perfect right to think I’m not his kind of writer. I’m not scandalous enough, I’m not aggressive enough, I’m doing philosophical journalism, if you will, because there’s no other kind now. I didn’t really fit the mold there. He had a perfect right to get rid of me, and he’s done that. I just think that his argument of economic hard times is not in the Post’s interest.
According to what I’ve seen, you were making only $125,000 from the Post.
as making nothing compared to what I’d made in the past, and I would’ve negotiated again with them if they were in trouble. I mean, I’m a reasonable person, I know that times are tough.
Now Col sent you a letter. Did he ever tell you anything in person about this?
No, no one has spoken to me. At the end of January I wrote a letter to Rupert because Col Allan hasn’t spoken to me in a year, so I said I was anxious to re-sign and wanted to go on working and hoped to die with my boots on at my desk and all that stuff. And Rupert didn’t answer. And then Col sent me a very nice letter saying he was sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, and they had economic difficulties, et cetera, and they were not renewing my contract. So I’ve never talked to anybody there.
What’s your sense of the arc of the gossip business? What’s it like today compared to when you started your column in 1976?
There were still big stars. There aren’t any big stars anymore.
You’re talking about Hollywood stars?
Well, not just Hollywood. The stars made by television who were once so big you just couldn’t believe it—Johnny Carson, Carol Burnett, people like that, Sid Caesar—they were enormous stars made by television, but there were lots of real stars in America. ... Now you have to talk about people like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears and the people on the American Idol. I mean, it’s very diminished in quality, I guess is what I’d say, the quality of stardom. Because I don’t know who most of those people are. I’m not kidding! I read Page Six mystified every day, and everybody I talk to agrees with me. They don’t know who anybody is. Page Six is mythically the most important thing, gossip-wise, in America. What do you think?
I have to confess having the same experience. Pat Buckley, God rest her soul, once told me that she made the same complaint to [Page Six editor] Richard Johnson—“I read your column and I don’t know who any of these people are”—and Richard, according to Pat. replied, “Well, neither do I.”
Well, it’s almost like they just dump a bunch of chicken feed out there and there’s no bones in it. Nothing is more important than the next thing. I don’t know. I can’t write that way, I’m amazed and happy for their success, but I can’t do that. I’m trying to tell stories.
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