And because media mavens are pretty certain they could be earning like investment bankers or corporate lawyers if only they had been willing to settle into so boring and monotonous a life, a great deal of effort goes into embracing and achieving a life-style that vastly exceeds their means. Harper's editor, Lewis Lapham, once told me that he makes more money writing paid advertorial for a free golf magazine than he does editing his tony magazine. But nobody cares what some golf writer or sitcom producer thinks about John Updike or Norman Mailer's latest attack on Tom Wolfe, much less the latest U.S. bombing mission in Kosovo. There is no clear old-fashioned equivalent of the football team or the cheerleaders in the MetaMedia. Where you stand depends in large measure upon where you sit.
Brains count on paper, but looks count in front of the camera.
Making lots of money is, of course, better than not, but it works as a means of keeping score only within your particular substrata, i.e. Rather vs. Jennings, Walters vs. Sawyer, and Tina vs. Harry. No matter what part of the MM world you work in, there are certain rules that everybody seems to know as if by osmosis. Four Seasons works for any meal, but nobody goes to Elaine's for lunch and nobody goes to Michael's for dinner. Don't ask me. And perhaps most important, always have an excuse for why you weren't there, if it's somewhere your reputation might suffer for your having been missing.