I've been tied up this week working on a profile of the eldest Emanuel brother--Zeke, who's a senior adviser to Peter Orszag at OMB--so I didn't get a chance to comment on the Times front-pager earlier this week about his brother Ari, the Hollywood super-agent made famous by HBO's "Entourgage." Still, after spending some time with Zeke these last two weeks, I wanted to point out that this line didn't quite pass my smell test:
Mr. Rose [that's Charlie, of PBS], a friend who describes himself as “the fourth Emanuel brother,” acknowledged that something about Mr. Emanuel’s status has changed in recent weeks.
Hmmm. Whatever Charlie Rose's merits--and I'm the first to acknowledge there are many--passing as an Emanuel brother doesn't strike me as one of them. (Some would take that as a compliment....)
Also, this graf from the Ari piece really amused me:
The spat, which broke out when the network balked at financial terms, concluded with “Medium” moving to CBS and Mr. Emanuel threatening Marc Graboff, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, with personal ruin, according to three people with knowledge of the incident. Mr. Graboff declined to comment; an Emanuel colleague insisted the threats were not personal.
I love it--a threat of personal ruin that turned out to be nothing personal. I'd hate to see what could happen if it hadn't just been business.
P.S. The Zeke profile should be available online in a couple hours, probably posted on the homepage next week.
Update: Here's the piece.
--Noam Scheiber