Tempest over Tina's column
TINA Brown ignited a raunchy e-mail frenzy among New York media heavies the other day, after sending them to the dictionary for a word she used in her latest Times of London dispatch.
Brown's column lambasted disgraced - but extremely rich - corporate CEOs and in the process used the obscure word "detumesce."
"The great Viagra days of the Nineties," she wrote, "buying another player's company over a round of golf as yours was about to detumesce - are history."
Our dictionary defines "detumescence" as a "gradual reduction of a swelling," especially of the male sex organ.
The hubbub began when two of Brown's biggest fans, Newsweek's Holly Peterson and Avenue magazine editorial directorPamela Gross, sent the column around to 200 of their media friends, including Karenna Gore, Jessica Seinfeld, Diane Sawyer, Lesley Stahl, NBC honchos Jeff Zucker and Neal Shapiro, ABC big Marc Burstein, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, Peggy Noonan, Hollywood producer Doug Wick, Bush media strategist Mark McKinnon, and Peterson's father, the Blackstone Group's Pete Peterson.
In a preface to her e-mail, Holly Peterson offered $5 to the first recipient who could define "detumesce." But her message inadvertently included the e-mail addresses of everyone to whom she sent it. As a result, many respondents ended up sending their replies to every name on Peterson's list.
Scores of prominent e-mail in-boxes overflowed with sexually-charged references from such randy respondents as investment banker Jeffrey Leeds; Carol Radziwill, daughter in law of Lee Radziwill; Hollywood producer Michael Harbert, NBC's Heather Vincent, and ABC's Marc Burstein.
The two winners, however, were Newsweek's Tom Watson and media guru Joe Armstrong, who cheekily volunteered that "detumesce" was a culinary delicacy from his home state: "It's a Texas dish, where we fry the dot, dot, dot," he wrote.
Peterson jokes: "I always knew my friends were deeply unevolved and immature, but I had no idea to what extent."
Meanwhile, Tina Brown told PAGE SIX's Joseph Steuer: "I've gotten a big rise out of this whole thing."