Page Six’s Glossy Gossip

February 9, 2006
Photo: The Howard Stern Show

Richard Johnson, the gossip columnist for the New York Post’s Page Six column, came in to promote a special glossy Page Six magazine that the Post is putting together for today’s edition. Howard said that they have him on so that he won’t write bad stuff about them, but it doesn’t really work. Richard claimed that within the next few months, the Post will surpass the New York Daily News in readership and that the Post already has more readers in New York City, but the Daily News has more nationally. He said that it’s been tough to survive as a paper as advertisers don’t give them the big dollars because they consider the Post to be a low brow tabloid newspaper and the Post actually operates at a deficit and not a profit. He revealed that he’s getting married for the 3rd time, with no prenuptial agreement, much to Howard’s disapproval. Howard told him that he’s crazy for not only going back for a 3rd time, but to have no prenup. Howard added that his fiancée is a really nice woman though and he sees them out at parties all of the time. Howard and Robin said that the blind items drive them crazy because they always have an idea of who the paper is talking about, but, obviously, can never confirm it. A blind item is a headline about famous people that’s usual shocking or embarrassing, but they don’t name names. An example of a blind item that the Post would run would be “A certain recently famous big name Hollywood stud is running around battling an addiction to crystal meth and bulimia.”

Some of the stories that are being revealed in today’s magazine are that Michael Jackson used to feed live rabbits to his pet alligators and had a pet black bear that he named Negro. Also there’s supposedly a New York Congressman who’s no longer living with his wife. Richard said that it’s Charlie Rangel and that he and his wife have separate apartments on different floors of a Harlem building they used to share an apartment in. He also said that he recently received a threatening letter from Keifer “Gravitas” Sutherland’s attorney because they ran a story that he was still at a bar at 8 in the morning from the night before and didn’t have any money to pay his bill, was throwing chicken wings on the floor and was doing karate kicks. Howard thanked him for coming in and wished him tons of luck with the new magazine