There’s an old saying that goes: “When elephants fight, the grass suffers”. Now that might be true in many walks of life, but in the newspaper world, Lemmer has found, when elephants fight the grass tends to giggle.
This is certainly the case with the current spat between heavyweight columnists Stephen Mulholland and David Bullard. Mulholland, you might recall, is a former editor of Business Times and the Financial Mail and, as managing director, was credited with creating the successful Times Media Limited from the ashes of South African Associated Newspapers. Bullard, on the other hand, is a former stockbroker who tried his hand at writing a column and discovered he enjoyed it so much he traded one side of Diagonal Street for the other. (OK, so it was Pritchard Street. All the Jozi streets are soon to be renamed, anyway.)
After leaving TML, Mulholland continued writing a column for Business Times. Over time it became more reactionary than provocative, but Big Steve was still a force to be reckoned with and no one dared to challenge him. This arrangement came to a rather abrupt end, recently, when the Sunday Times declined to renew his contract. No official reason was given, and Bullard’s Out to Lunch column now occupies that space.
This is background to a delightful series of e-mails that arrived in Lemmer’s inbox this week. Apparently Mulholland is less than enchanted about being dumped by the paper (having conveniently forgotten the number of hacks — this paper’s founders, for example
— whose services he terminated for various reasons), and took exception to a recent column by Bullard that he perceived as being about him.
Big Steve fired off a missive to Bullard that starts in a hurt tone (“There must have been something which I did to earn your personal and, I must say, surprisingly venomous, enmity”), but which quickly descends to the level that is to characterise the rest of the correspondence: “Incidentally, you owe me lunch at which I shall propose a toast to your strong suit, the noble art of brown-nosing, to which I am a stranger.”
Bullard’s responses are in a similar vein (“You will live longer and be much happier if you take yourself a tad less seriously. After all, no one else does”). Though a dispute about book sales descends to the level of a pissing contest, in general the quality of insults is worthy of the two protagonists. Witness Bullard’s comment: “By the way, I was in Katzy’s last night and somebody said that you had become a cult … although the music was a bit loud and I may have misheard him.”
Oom Krisjan suggests that instead of squabbling, Mulholland and Bullard get together to publish their e-mails to a wider public. That would be a best-seller.
Silver bullet
Lemmer was sad to note that Wolfgang Wolf, the splendidly monickered coach of German football club Wolfsburg, was sacked this week.
Capping it all
Last week Lemmer commented on Graça Machel’s rather erratic attendance at University of Visdorpie graduation ceremonies in her capacity as chancellor. In reply to queries as to the exact number of such functions at which she’s been present, the university finally replied: “The duties for preciding [sic] at these ceremonies are shared between the chancellor, the vice-chancellor and the deputy vice-chancellors. Mrs Graça Machel has fulfilled her share each year for the last three years.”
And Lemmer has discovered that there was one she did attend besides that of her son: the university’s Monday Paper has pics to prove that she also found the time to travel to the United States (presumably at university expense) to cap Kofi Annan with his honorary degree from the University of Cape Town at a specially arranged ceremony.
Secondary concerns
This week the Independent Group published an education supplement entitled Primary Matters, aimed at children. But the manne at the Dorsbult were a little alarmed when we read the text. The theme of this sponsored material is athletics, and besides discovering that the most important requirement for becoming a sports journalist is having the correct accreditation, youngsters are also taught that “mens” is spelled that way and one of the events at a meet is to resolve who can “jump the longest”.
Losing the plot
Sometimes Oom Krisjan wonders whether film publicists have ever viewed the material about which they send out information. Take this puff from Nu Metro on The Quiet American: “The movie is based on the best-seller book of the same name by Graham Greene. This is one of those movies that is told with such passion and love that you fall in love with the characters instantly.”
Yes, an embittered lapsed Catholic opium addict and a naively murderous American. I’m in love with them already.
Readers wishing to alert Oom Krisjan to matters of national or lesser importance can do so at [email protected]