Jared Paul SternPhoto: Getty Images
Former “Page Six” gossip columnist Jared Paul Stern’s defamation suit against Ron Burkle, the Daily News, and Hillary and Bill Clinton was dismissed in Manhattan State Supreme Court yesterday. Stern had claimed that the negative publicity he received after he was busted trying to shake down Burkle for upwards of $100,000 was the result of a conspiracy between the defendants to ruin his reputation and caused Stern to lose his job and a book deal and, later on, the failure of his start-up clothing business. The judge, Justice Walter B. Tolub, not unsurprisingly scoffed at these claims. But interestingly, Tolub saved his harshest criticism not so much for the content of Stern’s complaint but the style in which it was written, saying that it was a “diatribe” that read “like a Mickey Spillane novel,” according to the Times, that “fails, for the most part, to detail the specific acts to enable the defendants a fair opportunity to defend.” The judge concluded, we hear, by adding that Stern should work on learning to “show, not tell” and handed him several pamphlets for the Gotham Writer’s Workshop.
