Adweek's Completely Creepy & Inappropriate Profile Of Female Media Writer

By Tracie Egan Morrissey | May 9, 2011 | 10:30pm

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For some reason, the trade magazine Adweek decided to lead its profile of New York Times media writer Virginia Heffernan with a lengthy, detailed story about the time she hooked up some guy like 20 years ago. Except the experience wasn’t from Heffernan’s perspective—instead, the magazine interviewed the weirdo guy, Euan Rellie, who apparently will tell anyone about his encounter with Heffernan, including reporters and her husband. (“[When] asked about Rellie’s story, Heffernan says, ‘By now, I pretty much only remember his version because I’ve heard it so many times.'”)

Once they were back at her apartment, as Rellie tells it, “She said, ‘Fix yourself a drink; I’m going to get into something more comfortable.’ Just like that. She left me with a decanter of scotch and reappeared wearing a see-through baby-doll thing with furry balls. It was amazing.”

Apparently, the anecdote is supposed to convey how serious Heffernan—who has a Ph.D. from Harvard—is about literature, with the moral of the story being that she wouldn’t fuck him, and ultimately kicked him out of her house, because he didn’t have what she considered the proper take on King Lear. However, it’s beyond bizarre that the piece, which is supposed to profile her many professional successes, would spend so much time talking about an intimate encounter that took place so long ago and has no bearing on her actual career.