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News Archive for Women's Wear Daily

TED KRUCKEL 12.18.08 11:47 AM

Since the Grinch Stole Christmas Parties, I Went in Search of Secret Santas

Remember Christmas?
Photo: Jason Kempin/Getty Images

There are so many things to be mad at these days, but I hate to run with the crowd, so I have decided to focus my enmity on Lydia Hearst. She’s a big-haired model, and up until recently, a Page Six magazine columnist. That résumé bullet disappeared due to an item in her last column that basically said “shame on you” to Hearst magazines for “partying through the recession.” Then she said she didn’t write that, so Page Six printed her email showing she kind of did. (Apparently her literary skills, journalism pedigree regardless, were slight.) Then she complained about her employer (never wise) and, one way or another, she’s out of a job.

I didn’t need Page Six to tell me she couldn’t write; her musings, even assisted, were proof she can’t really think. I loved her column. But for some reason the swipe at her family’s company—she spelled out the link in case we couldn’t make the connection—got under my skin. First of all, I’m on the party beat, and I haven’t been blown away by the largesse of recent Hearst blowouts.

Secondly, who is this independently wealthy yet paid-to-party girl telling people not to throw them? The ire boiled hotter when I happened to notice that George Gurley, New York Observer writer and unapologetic party-goer (though he does often convey guilt), described a night of unusually debased debauchery—ending at 10:30 the next morning—that included a 6 a.m. phone call with Lydia Hearst inviting him to fly out to California for her birthday party. Now, I don’t think she was making calls to invitees before her morning jog, do you?

In fact, I’d argue that it’s people like her, materially unaffected by the economy yet endlessly bellyaching and cutting back, who are the reason so many professionals in the entertaining industry are having a cold Christmas. MORE >>

Corporate Holiday Parties, Page Six, Time Inc., Food & Wine Magazine, New York Observer, Women's Wear Daily, Condé Nast