Intelligencer

Trust Falls

By Reed Tucker
Published Mar 6, 2006

If James Frey, Jayson Blair, and half-price sushi have taught us anything, it’s this: Be careful whom you trust. Still, last week’s endless displays of broken confidences must have surprised even the most cynical among us. First up, CBS turned on its former employee Howard Stern, suing him for promoting Sirius while still on their stations, which was easily more entertaining than Stern replacement David Lee Roth. And over in a Manhattan federal court, a guy who once swore to love and honor (and whack enemies upside the head with a baseball bat for) John “Junior” Gotti turned rat on the mobster, implicating him in the shooting of Guardian Angel Curtis Sliwa. But if Gotti does go to jail, he can always take solace in the story of Lizzie Grubman. Even convicts deserve love, and last week word leaked that the PR princess will soon wed boyfriend Chris Stern—whom Grubman stole from a too-trusting now-former employee. Attorney-general candidate Jeanine Pirro attacked Rupert Murdoch’s myspace.com, claiming—OMG!—that the networking site was a threat to child safety. Meanwhile, at the inaugural New York Comic-Con, things couldn’t have gotten more awkward if two 40-year-old guys wearing the same Green Lantern costume were standing in line next to each other. Legions of fans were rudely turned away at the Javits Center door when organizers failed to accommodate demand. “I drove three hours from Hartford, I paid $40 to park across the street, and I was just told, ‘Sorry, you can’t come in,’ ” complained one foiled attendee. Governor Pataki could have used some superpowers. He remained confined to his hospital bed, suffering from both an abdominal infection and a press corps with a frustratingly legitimate interest in the state of his bowels. And finally, members of the transit union began slowly turning on their bosses by circulating a petition demanding a re-vote on the previously rejected contract. In the immortal words of New York sage Flavor Flav, “Who can I trust? Me, that’s who!”