Cindy Adams, I Love You

by Simon Dumenco

Remember newspapers? Remember Cindy Adams? She writes a sassy gossip column for a newspaper, the New York Post, that is available online, but because Cindy doesn’t do Gossip Girl recaps, she doesn’t get a lot of link love on the Internet. Which is too bad, because 80-year-old Cindy, it turns out, is still awesome.

I was reminded today that she still exists because I had lunch at a Manhattan coffee shop and spotted a crumpled copy of today’s New York Post near the front counter. I know — how sweet, right? Some elderly person probably brought it in and left it behind. I grabbed it and sat down to read it, but then almost immediately forgot about it as I checked the actual latest news on my iPhone. Then I was like, For old time’s sake, I will read you, inky newspaper thing. In doing so, I fell in love once again with Cindy Adams.

(The first time I fell in love with Cindy was a long, long time ago when I had lunch at her Park Avenue penthouse apartment. I was running New York magazine’s website at the time, and the CEO of the magazine’s then-owner was friendly with Cindy and suggested I should meet up with her because perhaps she could do something for nymag.com; apparently her contract with the Post was possibly, maybe nonexclusive because it was signed before the Internet existed. Cindy suggested lunch at her house. I remember that she was on some sort of extreme Atkin’s diet, and her housekeeper served an endless procession of meats: roast beef, chicken, meatloaf, etc. There were meat sides to the meat entrees. Maybe even condiments made of meat; I’m not sure. It just wouldn’t stop. Until finally it did, and then charming, wacky, ageless Cindy gave me a tour of her apartment, including her study, which is covered, floor to ceiling-and ceiling- with covers of the New York Post featuring stories that she broke over the years.)

Here’s what a bit of what Cindy has to say about Mel Gibson in her column today: “I now take up the case of one of the world’s most awful vile putrid human beings. Mel Gibson. I give thanks to The Divine One for the fact that this man’s career is receding at the same rate as his hairline. In my kindly benevolent limited view he’s the lowest in human life — except for bin Laden.” She goes on a bit about his famous anti-Semitism, and has a rant about him leaving his “loyal devoted wife of nearly 30 years” because “he found firmer flesh”: some Russian chick named Oksana Grigorieva who quickly got pregnant with Mel’s baby and then apparently lost interest in him.

Cindy closes with: “Mel Gibson. May he take a sleeping pill and a laxative the same night. I feel so badly for him, I’m sending out the party invitations now.”

In this same column, Cindy has an unrelated bit about how ladies used to deal with sexual harassment-and how they should now, instead of suing. “Deal with it,” she writes. “That’s what we did in our younger, prettier days. Dealt with it. In some cases, sticking a pen in the guy’s lower belly and whispering politely, ‘Try that again, pal, and you’ll have to go to Emergency to pee,’ worked just fine.”

So there you have it: Cindy Adams thinks that ad hoc surgical procedures are preferable to litigation-and wishes for Mel Gibson to wake up in a bed soiled with his own watery feces.