Cosmo Editor Helen Gurley Brown Axed
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Helen Gurley Brown
The suits at Hearst have been itching to ax legendary Cosmo Editor Helen Gurley Brown out of the top job at Cosmopolitan for more than 10 years as circulation slipped – but it took a series of impolitic boners she uttered about sexual harassment and AIDS for the ax to finally drop, a new book reveals.
“In the end, Helen Gurley Brown would prove an exceedingly difficult person to nudge from her coveted but comfortable position, and it took another decade for Hearst executives to force the issue,” Jennifer Scanlon writes in “Bad Girls Go Everywhere,” due from Oxford in April.
Brown was compelled to step down in 1996 following 32 years as Cosmo’s editor-in-chief after a number of incidents:
* When asked if sexual harassment existed at Cosmo in the wake of Anita Hill’s testimony that Supreme Court pick Clarence Thomas had harassed her for years, Brown cheekily responded: “I certainly hope so. The problem is that we don’t have enough men to go around for harassing.”
* She referred to Oregon Sen. Bob Packwood, accused by 10 women of making unwanted sexual advances, as “poor old Senator Packwood,” and scolded one journo, “My darling, would you please remember that he was one of the congressmen who supported legal abortion. He was one of us, so we have to forgive him for being a jerk.”
* She ran a piece titled “Reassuring News About AIDS” reporting that women whose lovers were neither homosexual, bisexual or intravenous drug users faced little risk. Brown said, “We spent such a long time getting sexual equality for women, and just when we’re beginning to enjoy ourselves, somebody’s got to come along and say sex kills.” AIDS activists howled, but Brown has since been proven right.
“In the end, [Brown] would have to be pushed out,” writes Scanlon. But Brown, who turns 87 next month, told a reporter at the time her “firing” was “done with all kinds of consolation prizes . . . money, contracts, perks, flowers and a new Mercedes-Benz.”
Until my next celebrity gossip darlings,
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