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Date Posted: 11:05:09 03/20/05 Sun
Author: No name
Subject: Citizen Annenberg So Long Rotten Bastard
In reply to: 's message, "Moses Annenberg Prior PA GOP Leader" on 11:03:58 03/20/05 Sun

www.indybay.org/news/2002/10/152988.php
Citizen Annenberg So long, you rotten bastard

Jack Shafer October 2, 2002
Today's Page One obituaries for Walter H. Annenberg in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post barely scrape the festering keratosis that was his career in crime, journalism, and politics. "Media Tycoon Gave Fortunes to Others," soft-pedals the Los Angeles Times. "Walter Annenberg, Philanthropist and Publisher, Dies at 94," intones the New York Times. "Publisher, Philanthropist Walter Annenberg Dies," echoes the Post.

I'd prefer the headline, "Billionaire Son of Mobster, Enemy of Journalism, and Nixon Toady Exits for Hell—Forced To Leave Picassos and van Goghs at Metropolitan Museum."

The dailies concede that the bedrock upon which Walter built his fortune was cleared by a tax-evading father, Moses; that the son dodged a trip to the slammer with Dad via a plea bargain; that Walter punished his political and personal enemies with his publishing empire; and that he ingratiated himself with his soul mate, the odious Richard Nixon. But in skimming only the surface scum of his life, these obituaries neglect the fetid undercurrents and tidal filth of his complete life. The ugly arc of Annenberg's life rivals that of fellow press baron William Randolph Hearst or even his fictional stand-in, Charles Foster Kane. It's a life that proves that you can earn polite notices in death no matter how you lived if you give away a billion dollars to the right places before you croak.


(In the time-honored tradition of obituary writing, I've plundered the archives for this Annenberg appreciation. I lean especially hard on a June 1993 piece I wrote after Annenberg bought his way onto Page One of America's top dailies by giving hundreds of millions of dollars away. One of the many luxuries of the rich is that if they go philanthropic at the right time, they can read their obituary before they die—obits that are usually more flattering than their real obits.)

Walter Annenberg was born of a congenital criminal, a rascal who never saw a business proposition that he couldn't improve with a bit of violence. Moses "Moe

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