Translating Tina
Having trouble understanding Tina Brown's Thursday column in the Washington Post? We're here to help.
No one could have predicted that the book party for Conrad Black's monumental study of Franklin D. Roosevelt at New York's Four Seasons restaurant would coincide with his stepping down as CEO of the publishing company Hollinger International-- owner of the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post and, in the U.K., the Daily and Sunday Telegraph and the venerable conservative weekly the Spectator -- under a cloud of allegations of financial self-dealing and an SEC investigation.
Means "'No one could have predicted' I would still suck up to Conrad Black like a Dyson vacuum even after he's been publicly disgraced."
Even with hosts as luminous as philanthropist Jayne Wrightsman and fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, acceptances shrank to a small band of loyalists like Henry Kissinger and Ronald Perelman.
Means "I do not know what 'loyalist' means."
The meager turnout was a bummer, since Black's 1,300-page biography has had stellar reviews.
Means "I have not read the book myself."
Company Hates Misery [Washington Post]