All The News That Spits

By JOE QUEENAN

Alexander Hamilton was back in the news last week, after a nearly 200-year absence. The founding father of American finance had his face plastered all over the cover of Tuesday's New York Post, the newspaper he founded in 1801 -- with a huge tear dripping down his cheek. The tear had been planted there by mutinous editors at the famously sleazy tabloid who refused to relinquish control to real estate mogul Abe Hirschfeld, the latest multimillionaire to attempt to take over the paper. In 20 pages of nonstop abuse, Post staffers described Hirschfeld as a "nut," a racist, a deplorable landlord, a hostage taker, a sociopath and an anti-Semite -- a daring allegation, given that Hirschfeld is Jewish.

Annoyed that the new boss did not seem to be taking any of this personally, the paper came back the next day and likened him to the Jewish kapos who used to do some of the dirty work for the Nazis in concentration camps. On Thursday the Post switched gears and accused its new boss of wanting to use the paper to become God, an admittedly unorthodox publishing gambit.

Hamilton had been noticeably dry-eyed back in January, when bankrupt Post owner Peter Kalikow unloaded the guns-'n'-buns tabloid on shadowy New York financier Steven Hoffenberg. At the time, Hoffenberg was under federal investigation for fraud. Even so, Hoffenberg had initially seemed an acceptable owner to most of the future Post mutineers. Hoffenberg hired as his editor Pete Hamill, the open-necktie Post alumnus whom he paid $500,000 a year to reprise his long-running I'm-just-a-working-class-stiff act.

Since then, the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Hoffenberg with using false financial statements to sell more than $400 million in securities. When his bid to take over the Post ran aground, he struck a deal with Hirschfeld to share ownership. After this liaison went asunder, the bankruptcy court on March 12 turned over the paper to Hirschfeld, who promptly axed Hamill. Within hours, the mutiny was under way. The cause of the Post staff's animus toward its new chief was twofold. One, Hirschfeld fired 72 employees. Two, he once spat on a reporter from the Miami Herald, a first-rate newspaper, so there's no telling what he might do at a paper like the Post.

Hirschfeld, who professed to enjoy all the attention, nevertheless got a court order barring Hamill from entering the building. At a rally outside the Post on Thursday, virtuoso prole-impersonators such as Norman Mailer and actor Danny Aiello were out in force. The situation reached a new level of hysteria Friday, when the cover of the Post was taken up by "an open letter to the judge deciding our fate." The missive begged Judge Francis Conrad to rescue the paper and, indeed, the civilized world from the "madman."

Nothing doing, said the judge: "It's a done deal." That prompted the two chief combatants to kiss and make up. Hamill would return to the newsroom, and Hirschfeld would confine himself to the business side. "Pete, do you need me back at the building right now?" cracked Hirschfeld. "Abe, go to Boca Raton!" answered Hamill. "Tell jokes, work the lounges -- just sign the checks."

The fabulously loopy Hirschfeld has played his role to the hilt. Perhaps still smarting from a failed attempt to become New York Governor Mario Cuomo's running mate in 1986, he described the New York pol, who was trying to put together a rival buyout team for the paper, as "an idiot." Hirschfeld says his employees will have to learn to "talk with love," because when they talk with love, "they can't talk with hatred." Hamill has also risen to the occasion, describing the Post's 20-page tirade against Hirschfeld last Tuesday as "an act of journalistic courage unprecedented in this century." He then likened Post staffers to the citizens of Prague who stood up to the Soviet tanks in 1968. And he calls Hirschfeld nutty.

The ownership status of the Post remains a tangle. Hirschfeld possesses only a management contract to run the paper and must answer to a bankruptcy trustee and creditors' committee. If Hirschfeld falters, other bidders could take over the paper. No matter which buyers finally lash themselves to the Post, they will have to find some way to halt losses estimated at more than $1 million a month.

Does the Post deserve to live? Throughout the 1980s, it espoused a racist, homophobic, free-market philosophy rooted in unalloyed social Darwinism. Today the free market may very well be handing down its verdict on the Post: Only the strong survive, and you're not one of them.

With reporting by Tom Curry/New York